Brewing is not like bicycle ridding; you can't just pick it back up and feel like you never took a break. The hot summer weather, busy schedule and vacations kept me out of the brewery for much of the summer. But fall is approaching and I want to have beer to drink when my birthday and gift of tap handles arrives.

A quick hydrometer read after I'd extracted four gallons caused me to draw the conclusion that my efficiency had been terrible. I decided for some reason that the solution was to stir up the mash and re-circulate again. WTF did I decide that for? I can't even remember except that I had this very bad thought earlier that stirring a mash would improve efficiency. This thought does not, upon reflection, make any sense to me and I'm sure I would have summarily rejected it had I been brewing lately.

The problem, also a lapse brought on by the hiatus, was that I didn't stir the extract before taking the reading. Duh.

By the way, I made a beer on the cusp of norther english brown and london porter. It would have been a pure brown except I accidentally mixed a 1/4 pound of black patent malt into the grist. So now it's on the verge of porter. He's the recipe:

6.25 lbs. of Maris Otter
1.5 lbs. cargill 2-row
1 lb. brown malt
1 lb. 60L british crystal
.25 lb. black patent malt
1 oz. target
White Labs Burton Ale Yeast

Mash the grains at 154 for 60 minutes. Boil hops for 60 minutes.