Brew Day Disaster

[JonnyAnchovy]

Hi All,

Today was first brew with my new converted esky/mashtun. Had a bunch of new bling to try out - brand new mill, and brand new crown urn (kettle)

Was planning on making a bit of a frankenstein porter with the following grainbill:

5Kg halcyon
.5kg choc chit
.25kg pale choc
.2caramunich
.150 carapils.
+ a few additions of Perle and Goldings

Everything was set to go - mill worked a treat (made a larger 3KG hopper, and widened the stock hopper opening a little), mash in hit the temp I was looking for almost perfectly, mash tun retained heat, and the first runnings were bright and clear.

The problem started when I started my first batch sparge - I added all the sparge water, gave it a stir, opened up the ball valve and absolutly nothing happened! :unsure:

Eventually I realised that while I was mixing the sparge water I'd disconnected my stainless braid. AARRG.

ended up abandoning the sparge all together, and just boiled the 14ishL, improvised my hop schedule a little, and ended up with a very big beer (big gravity wise, but tiny in volume ) i think it ended around or just above 1.080, but couldn't tell in the end because I dropped my hydromiter sample all over my kitchen floor.

Guess its just been one of those days.

 

[Pollux]

Sad to hear dude........

Hopefully it will the best error you ever made.

 

[white.grant]

Bad luck Johnny, but its the kind of thing that happens to everyone sooner or later.

You know, when sparging you can always dump your mash tun contents into another handy container, reconnect the braid, transfer everything back in and continue on as if nothing has happened. Gives you better efficiency too.

cheers

grant

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

Cant buy experience like that.The best learned experience is buy mistake, and cost nothing.Look forward and all will come together. Mechanical problems will disappear .My golden rule is check every thing twice and then check it again.Forgot to add hops once but extended the boil buy 60 mins.All good.
GB

 

[winkle]

Hi All,

Today was first brew with my new converted esky/mashtun. Had a bunch of new bling to try out - brand new mill, and brand new crown urn (kettle)

Was planning on making a bit of a frankenstein porter with the following grainbill:

5Kg halcyon
.5kg choc chit
.25kg pale choc
.2caramunich
.150 carapils.
+ a few additions of Perle and Goldings

Everything was set to go - mill worked a treat (made a larger 3KG hopper, and widened the stock hopper opening a little), mash in hit the temp I was looking for almost perfectly, mash tun retained heat, and the first runnings were bright and clear.

The problem started when I started my first batch sparge - I added all the sparge water, gave it a stir, opened up the ball valve and absolutly nothing happened! :unsure:

Eventually I realised that while I was mixing the sparge water I'd disconnected my stainless braid. AARRG.

ended up abandoning the sparge all together, and just boiled the 14ishL, improvised my hop schedule a little, and ended up with a very big beer (big gravity wise, but tiny in volume ) i think it ended around or just above 1.080, but couldn't tell in the end because I dropped my hydromiter sample all over my kitchen floor.

Guess its just been one of those days.

You could have left the ball valve open and burnt your foot with hot wort as well :icon_cheers: . I did something similar and ended up filtering the entire batch through a hop sock, worked ok.

 

[NickB]

Or you could get so drunk during the brew that you forget to do a batch sparge.... "gee the kettle volume looks a little low" (hey Winkle... h34r



Cheers

 

[razE]

If his gravity is high wouldn't topping up with some water be the go and also get him some more beer for his money?

 

[hoohaaman]

Jonny I had a day like that not long ago.Sad thing is,I can't repeat the process.The beer,it was a cracka

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

Jonny I had a day like that not long ago.Sad thing is,I can't repeat the process.The beer,it was a cracka

Yes you can, get pissed while you brew and get some else to do the paper work!
GB

 

[jlm]

Yeah, done that before only mine was on my 26th AG (according to beersmith). Probably worse in my case 'cause as I was (apparently) experienced and confident enough to have a "few" whilst brewing, the process of dumping the mash into my kettle, getting the braid back onto hosetail (sticking myself in the finger with the end of the braid many times) and tightening the hose clamp back up took a lot longer than it should have. Was a weizen so you guessed it, stuck sparge (twice). Not my best brew ever.....

 

[boingk]

Should've just started screaming in advance and fumbled around blind in the tun to reconnect the braided line

In all seriousness though, tell us how this one works out. Be interesting to see what it'll be like, what with high-gravity brewing being discussed and all.

- boingk

PS: Damn, just spilt my glass of stout. Into my keyboard h34r:

 

[Mantis]

PS: Damn, just spilt my glass of stout. Into my keyboard h34r:

Hope its a black Lenovo like mine, and not one of those poofy macs. The stout would make a real mess of them eh h34r:

 

[tazman1967]

Me too Johnny..
I forgot to put my Beerbelly falsie back in, added the grain and water and realised what Id done.
Not wanting to put my hand in (tried that one as well...Ouch ! burnies, I transfered the grain to my kettle and ramped it back up to temp and put it all back in, after installing my falsie and cleaning the tap of grain.
Ended up a full batch decoction..lol
Brew was a good one as well...
Cheers

 

[boingk]

Its the family computer, sporting a 5 year old Microsoft navy and white keyboard. Scungy as hell, good to type on though. Few minutes with a hair dryer sorted it out quick smart. Definitely wouldn't want to spill stout on a Mac though.

- boingk

 

[hoohaaman]

Yes you can, get pissed while you brew and get some else to do the paper work!
GB

Or could have brewed sober as usual.

 

[JonnyAnchovy]

In retrospect the whole day wasn't a waste - it was a good test for all the new equiptment and tweak things. I'm thinking that I might move to a copper manifold instead of the braid - or at least put a piece of copper inside the braid to ensure there aren't ever any collapses.

It was all my own fault - the hosetail I attached the braid to was way too short - I really should have anticipated this happening.

Anyway, thanks for the encouragement guys - I'll report back on the results of my f-up when I rack it into the secondary.

Cheers!

 

[JonnyAnchovy]

Bad luck Johnny, but its the kind of thing that happens to everyone sooner or later.

You know, when sparging you can always dump your mash tun contents into another handy container, reconnect the braid, transfer everything back in and continue on as if nothing has happened. Gives you better efficiency too.

cheers

grant

Cheers Grant - I actually did this, but there was such a huge ammount of splashing involved that I thought I'd HSA'd the crap out of it. Also, I think I must have overtightened the clamp, because once everythign was back in the tun there was still no flow.

Should've just started screaming in advance and fumbled around blind in the tun to reconnect the braided line

I seriously though about it - until the missus/brew assistant reminded me about third-degree burns! I really should HTFU when it comes to brewing!

 

[drsmurto]

Hi All,

Today was first brew with my new converted esky/mashtun. Had a bunch of new bling to try out - brand new mill, and brand new crown urn (kettle)

Was planning on making a bit of a frankenstein porter with the following grainbill:

5Kg halcyon
.5kg choc chit
.25kg pale choc
.2caramunich
.150 carapils.
+ a few additions of Perle and Goldings

Everything was set to go - mill worked a treat (made a larger 3KG hopper, and widened the stock hopper opening a little), mash in hit the temp I was looking for almost perfectly, mash tun retained heat, and the first runnings were bright and clear.

The problem started when I started my first batch sparge - I added all the sparge water, gave it a stir, opened up the ball valve and absolutly nothing happened! :unsure:

Eventually I realised that while I was mixing the sparge water I'd disconnected my stainless braid. AARRG.

ended up abandoning the sparge all together, and just boiled the 14ishL, improvised my hop schedule a little, and ended up with a very big beer (big gravity wise, but tiny in volume ) i think it ended around or just above 1.080, but couldn't tell in the end because I dropped my hydromiter sample all over my kitchen floor.

Guess its just been one of those days.

Did that on my 1st AG. Forgot to tighten the screw of the flase bottom. Nothing came thru. I put dishwashing gloves on and tried to reconnect it but 66C is far too hot!

Thankfully, my 55L willow esky mash tun has a twin. So i dumped the mash into the other esky, connected the falsie, dumped it back into the 1st esky and its was play on.

I re-tighten the clamps on the false bottom before i add grain every brew day.

 

[Osangar]

Hrmm this takes me back

For the first few brews I had not got around to getting me a worm drive clip to clamp the plastic host to the false bottom.

The first brew went fine no problems. The second, well that was a different story. Had to empty the whole lot into the brew pot thanks to luck it was not later in the sparge or I would have had problems.

Well, its all a learning experience.

Even with the clip now in place, and brew 23 under my belt, I have had to dump all into a fermentor to clear a sparge pipe on the odd occasion.

 

[JonnyAnchovy]

Its nice to know that it's not just me..... Seems like heaps of people have had almost the exact same experience!

I've got to make it down to the local plumbing shop sometime soon to try to get a more suitable setup - if they don't have anything, I think I might fork out for the bulkhead from beerbelly.