I am getting ready to brew this recipe and have been listening to the episode a few times this week. During the interview, the brewer says that this is a difficult beer to brew because of problems the amount of dark grains cause during lautering. What problems would they cause? The things I thought could be issues are maybe because the wort is so dark it would be hard to make sure it is running clear or maybe issues with PH drop sparging because of all of the dark malts? If it is a PH issue, do I need to worry as much if I am batch sparging? I have always used bottled water for my all grain batches so I never really worried about PH, but I am getting ready to start using my own water (I am sending a sample to ward labs this week). Is there some other issue that I am not thinking about in regards to the difficulty of making this beer?
Thanks,
Kevin