Don't Brew Pi$$ed

[evildrakey]

evildrakey:

Weigh them all out beforehand and put in order.

Lol... I'm pretty good on hop and adjunct additions... Just on closing taps...

 

[manticle]

You said you forgot.

Back to drinking while brewing then.

 

[eviljesus]

You said you forgot.

Back to drinking while brewing then.

I think you might be referring to me. Good suggestion. That should make it pretty straightforward/******** proof when ti comes time for additions. Also easy to see if you have forgotten anything at all.

 

[stux]

interesting side question - at what point in the brew do you crack the first beer?

For me, it's the start of the boil usually, or sometimes during the sparge.

If I get too hammered the beer still turns out ok it's the cleaning up part that doesn't

I weigh out my hops after I start the boil.. 90 min boil, so 30 mins until the first 60 min addition.

Crack a beer after weighing out

 

[Fat Bastard]

I don't know how you lot can brew pissed! I managed to lock myself out for an hour after flameout stone cold sober, I'd hate to think what would happen if I had a few during the process.

Mind you, I normally weigh out the grain, hops, water salts and set everything up the night before so I don't forget anything on brew day. I'll normally have several pints during this process so I have to brew with a stinking hangover the next day.

 

[Malted]

I work on a drinking ratio of 0.5 pints per litre of beer brewed. This is based on an into the fermenter volume, sometimes on a preboil volume if I am feeling generous. Late drinking levels may be increased to 1.0 - 1.5 pints, depending upon the style of beer being brewed.

Jeezuz Malted. If I did that I'd have to have 27.5 Pints. And thats at your non-generous rate.
I guarantee there would be 0L getting to the fermenter if I had 27.5 Pints.

If my maths and guess is right, you're slamming down around 10 pints per brew day?

Sometimes 11 pints but it can lead to brewed beers of unpredictable characteristics. You might even get some skunk in your product. If my missus is lucky I might get my junk in her, or at least that's my logic at the time. Truth be told I'd be lucky to bang a door in that state.
A ratio of 0.25 for a 22L batch is better but you can still be on shaky ground even at these levels. I try not to wear wobbly boots in the brewing area as it is not a safe practice.
Perhaps if it concerns you, you should save your drinking for flameout additions? Or maybe a single big whirlpool drink? Certainly late drinking leads to a greater perception of flavour, or perception in general (as oppossed to regular high volume drinking before and throughout the brewing process).
Hello Spinner, I am glad you came in.

Do you factor that into your 'losses' when formulating a recipe?

Now that is a good question!
Depending upon how you look at it.
I know chaps who are fond of drinking straight from their fermenter, post fermentation, so I would say that the drinking ratio would certainly be relevant to bottling or kegging volumes and thus should be a consideration for deciding what the batch volume should be.

In the BS2* scenario below, I would advise a larger batch size.

*Not based on 'Beersmith 2' but based on '******** 2'. In fact, this whole post is based on my BS2.

 

[Tony]

I had a few too many one night and melted all the skin of my hand rescuing a cube full of 95 deg c IPA that fell over. I remember looking ta my fast swelling fingers and thinking...... they will cut off my wedding ring at the hospital, so i pulled it off..... and it took a lot of skin off my finger on the way

while in a lot of pain, i quickly sealed up the cube (couldn't waste all the hard work), grabbed a bottle of whiskey on the way up the stairs, swallowed a few strong painkillers and sat on a chair with my bright red hand in the kitchen sink under running cold water, and drank scotch as was my want!

This was at about 11pm and when the wife came home at 1am from work she said........ WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

I just smiled and said....... I just drank half a bottle of laphroaig.... that's all

the 2 hrs under water stopped 90% of the blistering, i was lucky.



I have also picked up a very large flame out addition and put it in as a bittering addition.... and then thought, Ahhh ****! Strait into promash to calculate the damage and recalc the hops.

I dont mind brewing half cut..... you never know whats going to happen!

 

[the_new_darren]

No beer before the boil for me

tnd

 

[milob40]

nothin like a few brews for inspiration, some of my best brews were done half cut,
just wish i'd remember to write down the mistakes instead of trying to repeat it unsuccessfully
on future brew days, gotta agree with kev though, once the first hop addition is added it's way safer
to over indulge, gonna have to invest in some self closing fv taps, keep going to bed with sticky feet.

 

[bignath]

Sometimes 11 pints but it can lead to brewed beers of unpredictable characteristics. You might even get some skunk in your product. If my missus is lucky I might get my junk in her, or at least that's my logic at the time. Truth be told I'd be lucky to bang a door in that state.
A ratio of 0.25 for a 22L batch is better but you can still be on shaky ground even at these levels. I try not to wear wobbly boots in the brewing area as it is not a safe practice.
Perhaps if it concerns you, you should save your drinking for flameout additions? Or maybe a single big whirlpool drink? Certainly late drinking leads to a greater perception of flavour, or perception in general (as oppossed to regular high volume drinking before and throughout the brewing process).
Hello Spinner, I am glad you came in.



Now that is a good question!
Depending upon how you look at it.
I know chaps who are fond of drinking straight from their fermenter, post fermentation, so I would say that the drinking ratio would certainly be relevant to bottling or kegging volumes and thus should be a consideration for deciding what the batch volume should be.

In the BS2* scenario below, I would advise a larger batch size.

*Not based on 'Beersmith 2' but based on '******** 2'. In fact, this whole post is based on my BS2.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Thats ******* hilarious!

Best post ive read in ages mate.

* gotta love MS Paint dont you?

 

[Tony]

i remember pitching a yeast in a lager one night, and after about 4 days of inactivity i wondered if i actually pitched the Saison yeast that was sitting beside it

No idea if that Saison was actually a fruity high temp lager or not but damn it was good

 

[Kranky]

I messed up a double batch of Pliny the Elder once when pissed. From memory I skipped the whirlpool and couldn't drain about the last third of my boil kettle no matter what I tried. I had a pretty spectacular **** attack and ended up tipping the boil kettle straight into the fermenter and going straight to bed (it was after midnight). I ended up tipping the beer, it was dreadful. Since then I don't usually have a beer until after the beer is in the fermenter. I'm just one of those people who shouldn't drink on the job.

 

[Rowy]

I started early one brew day and didn't remember swapping over recipes in brewmate to buggerise around. So when I checked the OG it was miles lower than I wanted. I then wacked in a heap of LDME then looked at the recipe and saw what I had done, chucked in some water to dilute it................wasn't a bad beer in the end.

 

[Doubleplugga]

I try my best to stick to a "no beer before sparging rule" its amazing how many pints you can drink during a 90 mash! my worst brew day was along these lines.2 brew mates and their wives rock around my place for a bbq and maybe we will put down a brew. I had already consumed 6 pints of the Doctors landlord before they arrived. so we hook into the beers and then decide we should brew an APA. well it all went ok from what i remember until the hop additions. forgot to buy some extra chinook for the day so when I ran out ( dont know what addition time it was) i decided to use galaxy instead. didn't take any notice of the AA difference or how much we put in! the brew day somehow ended with the fermenter in the fridge fermenting away. when I woke up the next morning unfortunately everything was as i had left it. we all know how good grain smells the next day when you are hung over and it is a 35+ degree perth day :icon_vomit: anyway the resulting brew was the most bitter passionfruit tasting thing i have ever drank or smelt. pretty close to undrinkable. I now try my best not to get on it until mash out, well most of the time. and one last thing... when you are pissed the more hops you put in at flame out sounds like a good idea but doesn't mean you will get an awesome aroma! waaaaay too much

 

[eamonnfoley]

I start dancing and need to look out for loose hoses and extension cords.

 

[sponge]

If my missus is lucky I might get my junk in her, or at least that's my logic at the time. Truth be told I'd be lucky to bang a door in that state.

Just read that to the mrs, and she said 'wow, these are the people you hang out with at brew days?'

As Nath said, glorious post.

I shall raise a glass or three to you



Sponge

 

[Bribie G]

Did it again last night. At 10pm I decided to do a double brew today, so to get myself ahead I milled 2 grain bills and doughed in one of them (a FES) at 67 and wrapped it up for an overnight mash.

This morning I eventually got round to unwrapping it and heating it up to mashout for bag-hoist etc.
It had dropped to a tad below 60 overnight so it took a while to bring mash up to 78 - so I pumped it up and down with the paint stirrer, walked away, made a cup of tea, went back to the urn and gave the mash a pump for a while, walked away.

Eventually it reached mashout so I hoisted the bag, squeezed and drained and took it out to the yard to empty and hose down ready for the next mash.

I went to fish the anti-bag-burn rack out of the urn. Whilst pissed I hadn't put it in the night before, the bag had been sitting on the element as I ramped the temperature

Bag didn't come to any harm whatsoever .... now that's interesting.
Maybe the patron saint of drunks was helping out.

 

[hsb]

Lucky lucky BribieG and 'the bag that refused to burn'.

I never drink and brew until last weekend, visitors over, sneak a brew in, already had a few, all set up, hops weighed, grain cracked, water ready, dough in, pour another one whilst "amazing"* our visitors with the brewery tour and starting my recirculation for temp ramps.
15 minutes in - whoops I haven't switched the heat exchanger on - switch to auto (WARNING SIGN DUMMY!!!) - carry on amazing/imbibing, even break out the iphone to show off my brew interface and head indoors for a bit.

15 minutes later i started to get worried as to why my ramping was just not happening - trip back downstairs and yes, the heat exchanger is cranking away without any water in it = one nice melted element and brew in the bin (was still at protein rest and i hit the CBF button after much cursing.)

I'm with Kranky, some people just aren't meant to drink and brew. h34r:


*note: amazement of others may be perceived by me and not actual, real, or in any way actually happening.

 

[Nick JD]

I did about a 4 hour boil once. With is a lot considering I boil high-gravity anyway.

Luckily the beer only had one bittering addition in it - I'd virtually made malt extract when I remembered it was on the boil.

 

[Aces High]

I convinced the mrs to give me a hand bottling on the weekend (i usually keg)

Near the end I realise we're gonna be running short a few bottles, the wife dissapears into the house and comes back with a six pack that someone had left and told me we better start drinking, bless her practical mind. This would be 10.30am saturday morning

We both continued drinking while I then managed to finish brewing a double batch munich lager into the cube and cleaned up by 4pm, then stumbled up the pub to harrass the locals. The last think i remember is dancing to the cover band and then waking up in bed the next morning with a blinding headache.

Somehow i logged the brew in drunken scrawley handwriting and even hit all the numbers correctly. We'll see how it tastes.

 

[Bribie G]

Dancing to the cover band <_< Now that's almost bordering on sad

Best thing that happened recently, we live in a wee cul de sac which runs off a light retail / commercial area. Very handy for Chinese and Indian, shops, banks, hot bread, you name it. However we also get the stuff that goes along with it, like the gas supertanker down the laneway at 6am filling up the Chinese LPG tank, the Cleanaway bin collections clang bang etc. No big hassle.

One night I wake up and I've forgotten to take the bag off to the spot under the trees out front where I dump the grain, don't want it stinking the garage out so, in my knickers, I head for the trees. It's 1 am, area dead as a doornail. I badly need a piss.

So standing there in my holeproofs taking a leak with a shroud of voile hanging from my other hand when along comes Ace Security or such on his rounds to check the shops. I get spotlighted. I wave. (wave hand that is)

He proceeds on.

 

[hirns]

All was going well untill I decided to cool the wort further by throwing in a 2lt block of ice which splashed the ceiling. No probs, got up on the breakfast bench and wiped the ceiling down. Then had dinner and noticed that I'd missed a bit. Climbed back onto the breackfast bench to get the missed spot whilst the kids were delivering their dinner plates around my feet. Lost my balance with no where to place my feet and landed head first onto the kitchen floor. Wife who was watching TV thought that I'd simply slipped in some spilt wort laughed and it was not until the kids came back out of bed after dinner for a drink that I was discovered.

Spent the night in government hospital before being discharged, bled through two replaced pillows without even so much as a band aide. Two weeks later had a private medical scan and the nurses went nuts saying don't move, you should be dead! Had a massive brain bleed and now have need hearing aids after having lost most of my hearing.

Hmmm! Will I brew again? YES! Whist pissed, arrrmmm probabley to be honest!!!

 

[Rowy]

Dancing to the cover band <_< Now that's almost bordering on sad

Best thing that happened recently, we live in a wee cul de sac which runs off a light retail / commercial area. Very handy for Chinese and Indian, shops, banks, hot bread, you name it. However we also get the stuff that goes along with it, like the gas supertanker down the laneway at 6am filling up the Chinese LPG tank, the Cleanaway bin collections clang bang etc. No big hassle.

One night I wake up and I've forgotten to take the bag off to the spot under the trees out front where I dump the grain, don't want it stinking the garage out so, in my knickers, I head for the trees. It's 1 am, area dead as a doornail. I badly need a piss.

So standing there in my holeproofs taking a leak with a shroud of voile hanging from my other hand when along comes Ace Security or such on his rounds to check the shops. I get spotlighted. I wave. (wave hand that is)

He proceeds on.

He probably thought you were a ghost, that pale pommy skin, white holeproofs and the bag floating in the breeze.............the one over your shoulder I mean

 

[Bribie G]

My God, hirns, that's bloody terrible. How we suffer for our art.
Brain bleed, mate you indeed are lucky to be still here - hope the hearing improves - sounds like you should have a word with Molly Meldrum.

In my mid 20s I spent a couple of years as a steelworks rigger and would happily walk over gangways without rails above ingots of white hot steel passing 50m below - after five pints of Brains SA but nowadays I shyte myself if I have to go up a step ladder sober. :huh:

 

[evildrakey]

Had a 7 gallon pot and 7 gallon rubbermaid full of starsan and water soaking in the bathroom... This is the first time I've brewed in her house (she lives in QLD, I live in SA)... I ask her these are heavy, do you mind if I pour them down the drain hole in middle of the bathroom floor? - yeah, sure she says...

Now she knows all the other pipes in the bathroom and toilet are connected where they should... But in the 7-8 years she's owned the place, she had no idea that when the house was built, the plumber got lazy and the upstairs bathroom drain hole leads into 6" of plastic pipe and then terminates abruptly...

So yeah, 14 gallons dumped into the roof space over the garage, where it slowly decided to pour out through the light fitting... I wasn't popular that day...

 

[Kingbrownbrewing]

Had an interesting brewday the other day...

We were doing two double batches, so 80L in total.

We started 'sampling' some unique beers that my brother brought around during the mash on the first brew (about 9:30 in the morning)

By the time we got to the second sparge on the second brew, I was well pissed.

My brother changed the gas bottle and didnt do it up properly so a whole bottle of LPG leaked into the garage.

Whilst he was at BCF getting his SECOND refill for the day, I realised that due to some vigorous use of the mash paddle, the silicone hose had slipped of the false bottom and the HERMS wasnt pumping and as a result boiling over.

I donned my elbow length gloves and went diving in the mash, and actually managed to find and connect the two before my brother got home. I don't think I could have stood the heat on my arms if I hadn't had a skinfull.

We still ended up with 80 litres and hit all targets, even found a couple of points of efficiency somehow.

Its not a real brew day unless some **** goes wrong.

 

[bradsbrew]

Nothing quite like waking up on the brewery couch at 2.30 in the morning, with Pantera belting out, thinking "**** I need to fill those cubes because the last thing I vaguely remember is doing the whirlpool" only to find that I had successfully filled the cubes and cleaned up. Funny how brewdays turn out when the wife and kids go away for a day or two.

 

[alfadog]

After reading some of the posts on this thread I am pretty tame whilst brewing drunk.

The worst I have done is forget to turn the fermentation fridge on for 3 days after pitching (worst part is that I was not even drunk for the three days)

 

[Deebo]

I wasnt even pissed and for some reason I decided my 40g of homegrown saaz looked like 40g of willamette pellets and chucked them in at 90 mins of the boil last weekend..