First attempt at a double decoction

Today was my first attempt at a double decocted Bavarian Weizen. I tried to use LABrewer (Johnnyliberman on BA) schedule but things did not work out so well. Here was the sequence of events:

Strike Temperature was 122F which was perfect. I immediately pulled out 1/3 of the mash after stirring and brought it up to 156f and let sit for 15min then boiled for 15min.

The mash temp had dropped to 119F and I added the boiled grains but it only brought it up to 124F.

I previously had tried to leave back as much water as possible so I decided to pull out water and grains and only bring to a boil and keep adding untill I hit my final temp to begin vorlaufing. I pulled a third and brought it to a boil then added and it brought it to 144F. I pulled another 1/3, boiled, added and it brought it to 151F. Did a final boil of 1/3 and it brought the overall temp to 163 and I gave up there. Started the vorlauf.

Got a stuck sparge. I added more rice hulls and stirred it up again and let it settle and re-vorlaufed. That did the trick. Sparged at 170F.

Obviously I didn't have a fun brew day but once the boil started everything else ran smoothly. And my effiency was actually 82% which is about 14 points higher than normal. I would attribute that to the decoction process and that the mash time was longer than normal but adding some pH stableizer probably helped as well. Here is the recipe:

Batch size: 5 gallons
Boil Time: 60 min
Effiency: 82%
Grain Weight: 10lbs
OG: 1.066

7lbs wheat (70%)
3lbs German pilsner (30%)

1oz Hallertauer @ 25min

Pitched on saved yeast cake of White Labs WLP300 german weizen yeast.
Ferment at 75F to bring out lots of banana

I'm still waiting on my bugs from Northernrewer so I can do my Bret C experiment. Next brew after that is probably going to be a Belgian Quad.