Schadenfreude

[Dave70]

For reasons beyond my control, (pregnant sister) my first batch in the new house became a battle against the clock. This is what happens when you rush.

To open proceedings, heating the strike water took twice as long as anticipated as I had to use the BBQ, this put me behind the eight ball right from the start.
The mash was a 75 min affair, that went OK, but then I started draining into the kettle way to soon after finished I pouring in the mash water.
Something new I learned, not letting the grain settle can result in a stuck sparge, and it did.

All my vigorous huffing, puffing and blowing back through the tube coupled with my desperate prodding at the braid with the wooden spoon caused it to dislodge, filling the kettle with grain..
Re-attach braid, and after much stuffing around and scalding of fingers in the 83 deg soggy mash, empty the kettle back into the esky and start again.

When the wort finally came to the boil, I was already being asked 'how long is this going to take'. It was a sixty minute boil and I had to leave in forty - so it was gonna be tight.., so I decided to go as long as I could and finish when I got home. So it got 1 x 35min, 1 x 25min four hours later..

So at around 10.30pm I'm ready to cube up. I twist the little brass tap on the kettle to start the flow - and the handle snaps off in my fingers so close to the tap body I can't even get a set of pliers on the shaft, I guess it copped a hit in the move and cracked it.
With no other option left I decide to siphon it into the cube, but the wort is so hot the tube keeps collapsing and stopping the flow and I need to get it started again - and get a cheek full of boiling hot liquid in the process.

That really, really fcukin hurt. I still look a little like I've been punched in mouth today.

To cap it off, I had a look at my additions and realized in my haste that I'd mixed up the final hops and raw sugar back to front. So it got sugar at 5 and hops at 20. This may go some way to explaining the 1055 sg..

Anyway, it all seems to be bubbling away nicely now and I'll be interested to see how it turns out. I'm guessing it will be so good that I'll get plastered on it and suffer some kind of 'Three Stooges' slapstick type of injury - then wake up with a deathly hangover. It would certainly be a fitting denouement I think.

The real lesson here?

Brew day = brew DAY, not brew afternoon.



Anybody else had their special day go pear shaped?

 

[raven19]

Ouch dude.

Best to fill the siphon tube with no rinse sanitiser then use it to start the siphon, once the wort gets to the end of the tube, place it in the cube.

Or no chill in the kettle overnight, and siphon the next morning onto some active yeast.

 

[cdbrown]

Wow that sucks. I'm so glad I have one of those auto siphon and silicone tubing. Not too sure about the split boil idea, I probably would have left the boil till I could do it all in one go. Hopefully you'll get some more time for the next one.

My brew day haven't really gone pearshaped, but by rushing the resulting brew was no where near target efficiency. Rushing a brew always results in something not going right.

 

[The_Duck]

While never injuring myself that many times or that badly I have had brew days that have gone pear shaped, usually ending up with me capping the fermenter or the cube in the wee hours of the morning with an early start a few hours later.

You have my sympathies.

I have a few rules for brewing:

Rule 1. Single batch - mash start time must be <11am
Rule 2. Double batch (2 diff beers) - 1st mash start time must be <8am
Rule 3. No brewing on a "school nite"
Rule 4. Any significant equipment failures = abandon play
Rule 5. Any significant personnel failures = abandon play
Rule 6. Anything not covered by the Reinheitsgebot that enters the brew better have a damn good reason for being in there or "make like a shepherd".


Hope your injuries to body, equipment and pride are all healing nicely


Duck

 

[jbirbeck]

Ouch dude.

Best to fill the siphon tube with no rinse sanitiser then use it to start the siphon, once the wort gets to the end of the tube, place it in the cube.

Or no chill in the kettle overnight, and siphon the next morning onto some active yeast.

+1

boiled water in the other end of the tube and a quick drop starts a nice syphon without the pain...but I have learnt that the hard way too

 

[WarmBeer]

I have a few rules for brewing:

Rule 1. Single batch - mash start time must be <11am
Rule 2. Double batch (2 diff beers) - 1st mash start time must be <8am
Rule 3. No brewing on a "school nite"
Rule 4. Any significant equipment failures = abandon play
Rule 5. Any significant personnel failures = abandon play
Rule 6. Anything not covered by the Reinheitsgebot that enters the brew better have a damn good reason for being in there or "make like a shepherd".

And here I was, thinking our hobby is meant to be "fun"

 

[argon]

While never injuring myself that many times or that badly I have had brew days that have gone pear shaped, usually ending up with me capping the fermenter or the cube in the wee hours of the morning with an early start a few hours later.

You have my sympathies.

I have a few rules for brewing:

Rule 1. Single batch - mash start time must be <11am
Rule 2. Double batch (2 diff beers) - 1st mash start time must be <8am
Rule 3. No brewing on a "school nite"
Rule 4. Any significant equipment failures = abandon play
Rule 5. Any significant personnel failures = abandon play
Rule 6. Anything not covered by the Reinheitsgebot that enters the brew better have a damn good reason for being in there or "make like a shepherd".


Hope your injuries to body, equipment and pride are all healing nicely


Duck

all this ^ equals me never brewing... i don't think i've ever had a brew day without one of the above

 

[The_Duck]

And here I was, thinking our hobby is meant to be "fun"

You say that like my personal rules above take all the fun out of it

Not the case at all. My situation is that the only time I get to brew is on the weekends when SWMBO is at work which means I am on "daddy day care".

By following my rules I get my brews done without copping a week of grief from SWMBO which DOES take all the fun out of it.



Duck

 

[WarmBeer]

You say that like my personal rules above take all the fun out of it

Not the case at all. My situation is that the only time I get to brew is on the weekends when SWMBO is at work which means I am on "daddy day care".

By following my rules I get my brews done without copping a week of grief from SWMBO which DOES take all the fun out of it.

Duck

Haha, I'm sure you still manage to have fun. Especially as you don't have "Rule 7. No beer until the first hop addition" in your list

I'm in a similar situation, in that can only brew on the weekend, but manage to "work around" the kids:

Night before. Mill grain, setup esky, HLT and burner.
Pre-dinner. Turn on HLT. Once up to temp, add strike water to esky.
Dinner.
Post-dinner. Mash in. "Kids, come help daddy stir his beer". They love being involved.
Get kids off to bed. Brush teeth, tell stories, kisses good night.
Brewin time. Mash is mostly completed, start the sparge, open the first (of many) beers for the night :icon_drunk:

 

[argon]

Haha, I'm sure you still manage to have fun. Especially as you don't have "Rule 7. No beer until the first hop addition" in your list

I'm in a similar situation, in that can only brew on the weekend, but manage to "work around" the kids:

Night before. Mill grain, setup esky, HLT and burner.
Pre-dinner. Turn on HLT. Once up to temp, add strike water to esky.
Dinner.
Post-dinner. Mash in. "Kids, come help daddy stir his beer". They love being involved.
Get kids off to bed. Brush teeth, tell stories, kisses good night.
Brewin time. Mash is mostly completed, start the sparge, open the first (of many) beers for the night :icon_drunk:

This is almost exactly as i brew... get the little one away and just have to time it when there's a show on TV that SWMBO likes

 

[MarkBastard]

My stovetop brewing was always like the above, a stressful mess, but since going BIAB in an urn I haven't had a single brew day problem and all of my brew days are done within 3.5 to 4 hours including cleaning.

I don't do school night brewing just because it's the last thing I want to do when i get home from work, but I reckon it'd be easy enough. Start at 5:30 finish at 9:30 latest and plenty of time to eat dinner, drink beer, watch TV etc during the mash and boil.

 

[WarmBeer]

Haha, I'm sure you still manage to have fun. Especially as you don't have "Rule 7. No beer until the first hop addition" in your list

I'm in a similar situation, in that can only brew on the weekend, but manage to "work around" the kids:

Night before. Mill grain, setup esky, HLT and burner.
Pre-dinner. Turn on HLT. Once up to temp, add strike water to esky.
Dinner.
Post-dinner. Mash in. "Kids, come help daddy stir his beer". They love being involved.
Get kids off to bed. Brush teeth, tell stories, kisses good night.
Brewin time. Mash is mostly completed, start the sparge, open the first (of many) beers for the night :icon_drunk:

Oh yeah, almost forgot: No-chill. Saves me over an hour on brew night.

 

[The_Duck]

Yes yes... I am loving the cubing.

At least until I take out a second mortgage to buy a copper coil to make a chiller :blink:

If the "Big B" is cheaper than everyone else then I might be a cuber for a long time. $110 for 18m of 3/4" copper line !!!!


Duck

 

[argon]

Yes yes... I am loving the cubing.

At least until I take out a second mortgage to buy a copper coil to make a chiller :blink:

If the "Big B" is cheaper than everyone else then I might be a cuber for a long time. $110 for 18m of 3/4" copper line !!!!


Duck

mate only way to go... i have 5 cubes waiting to be pitched... brew when i can, ferment when i need. I if i had to brew and get it into the fermenter as soon as i needed to i'd have gaps in my system for sure.

 

[proudscum]

I used to get everything ready the night before.

Fermenters sanitized
HTL full
Check gas +power supply
check mash tun is complete(no broken eazi mashers)
prep hops
minerals
have grain ready to be cracked

This process would help me make 2 different 25l batches in around 6 1/2 hrs
including clean up and yeast pitch.The first brew would be a very simple mash
and the second would involve steps as i had the time for the first brew to boil for 90min
then 20-30min to cool.I also had a timer on my HLT so i could set it to come on early and my strike water would be ready to go,it was set up with a thermostat so i would not over shoot strike temp.

Small failures include fermenter tap left open when running off,destroying eazi masher in both mash tun and kettle from stirring.melting the insulation on mash tun a few times.

For me i dont drink during the process.if i invest time and money i want to be rewarded with a couple of good kegs for my efforts.then i can have beers when i clean down.

Night brewing is hard if something breaks or you run out of gas you cant fix it.
Not being pissed goes a long way to being able to drive to the hardware/brew shop in an emergency.

My system is by no means pretty(Cost $450 but has some temp control and a pump plus junk that people had sent to the tip) but the attention to detail is what makes good Beer.

Look at coffee expensive machine/good coffee bad Barista=bad cup of jo
sounds familiar.