Dave70
Le roi est mort..
- Joined
- 29/9/08
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- 5,603
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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?
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?