When A Little Knowlege Is A Dangerous Thing

[Spork]

I'm sure some of you could use a laugh, and being Aussies we tend to find the misfortune and misadventures of others pretty amusing, so here is the story of my brewday.
Started just before 9:00 am. Filled the urn and crushed the grain. Minimill worked great! The crush looked perfect and 5kg of Maris Otter took only a few minutes. (I need a bigger hopper, could only fit about 1/2 the grain at a time).
Using STC-1000 to emasure I got to strike temo, and overshot just slightly. Lid removed, urn stirred, wait a few minutes until desired strike temp achieved. Mashed in and checked temp again - 66.2c. Pretty close, was aiming for 66c.
"Dressed" urn (over the sivler windscreen sun shade went his GorTex wind-stopper ($5.00, salvos) and old wooly jumper then all wrapped up in a blanket.
1 hour later bag was hoilsted, with my 2 pulley system. This went much better than last time. I gave the bag a bit of a squeeze and let it dribble into the urn and checked gravity. 1.048 - perfect! I thought I was the greatest brewer ever! Bringing urn to boil I recalled reading somewhere that hop socks were a waste of time, just chuck the hops in, they help settle the trub. etc.
Wort is on a nice rolling boil now, in go the bittering hops. Meanwhile I bottle my last brew, an oatmeal stout. Looks and tastes great so fat, can't wait for it to carb up...
10 minute hops go in, then 5 minutes later the koppafloc. 5 minutes on I turn urn off and whirlpool. 20 minutes later I've finished cleaning up after bottling and have a cube and fermenter sanitised and ready to go.
I go to drain the urn into the cube - but it only dribbles out slowly. Hop blockage.

How can I save my brew? My precious brew? ****. **** **** ****.
Grain bag into sanitised FV. VERY carefully pour hot wort into that.
Hoist "hop bag" above urn and squeeze wort out. Pour wort from FV into urn. Heat to >70c for 10 mins to resterilise. Whirlpool. Type this while waiting 20 mins. GTG in a sec to take dtr to work... Will (hopefully) be able to empty urn into cube when I return. Shame about my late hop addition, but I hope otherwise to have salvaged my beer. In future - hops in hopsock.

 

[Tim F]

yeah it's a bugger isn't it, first time I used whole flowers I had to drain the kettle overnight. Next upgrade was a hose braid filter on the pickup!

 

[ampy]

You could always siphon it out into your cube

 

[aaronpetersen]

No chill in your urn. Wrap gladwrap all around the lid to seal it as well as possible then just pour it into your fermenter in the morning when it's cool. I do that all the time.

 

[Hinji]

Yep it's a *****. Good thing is you only do it once!

 

[gunbrew]

I also no chill in the urn with gladwrap like AaronP.

Other thing I do is put my flower hop additions through a blender so they are all small bits. (like if they were pellets)
Stops whole flowers blocking the tap and it seems that I get more hop bang for buck when I blend them.

As said by others it will probably be the 1st and last time that happens to you.

 

[petesbrew]

haha, Boiling up a London Ale, I had a flame from my burner directly hitting my tap. I thought, ah whatever, till it came time to drain the kettle. Nothing came out.
The flame had caramelised the wort in the tap to the point it was hard toffee.
After a noob attempt at siphoning, I ended up just getting a jug and emptying it into the fermenter that way.

And it turned into a very damn fine beer... at the cost of a ruined tap.

 

[argon]

You've got to do that at least once. When i did it i was half cut in the middle of the night. Thought **** it, i don't need no stinking hop sock for this 200g of flowers. When i went to drain and the tap stuck, i ran round like a headless chicken not knowing what to do, swearing and cursing... throwing things. Ended up taking the tap off the kettle and letting it spew forth into a not so clean fermentor... splashes and all, gave myself quite a few burns and was very pissed off. Let it cool over night. a few weeks of worrying about infection and hot side aeration and it turned out fine.

Next day, with a clearer head, i remembered that i could have just siphoned out into the cubes and it would have been fine.

I no longer drink during a brew day.

 

[kelbygreen]

is your pick up tube positioned the opposite way to what you whirlpool?? if it is when you whirlpool it will push the trub and hops up the pick up tube. position it the same way the wort flows and nothing will get sucked in when whirlpooling.

 

[MarkBastard]

I think the first time I did this I was able to use my boil spoon to sort of guard the entrance to the tap so hop flowers wouldn't get through.

Luckily I'd remembered that this problem exists after adding the flowers but before going to drain into the cube.

(First post in ages!)

 

[Florian]

I had dranage problems yesterday as well. Turned the tap open and shut a few times and out came a whole bunch of hop seeds from the previous brewday. A few minutes later the tap was blocked again. Same procedure and a big chunk of something made it's way ino the cube.
Hope it sterilised alright in the cube, not sure how hot the tap really gets, it could have been rotting in there for the past two weeks.

Time to take that tap apart.


EDIT: Good to see you back here Mark, hope you've been OK.

 

[Tim F]

Which leads to the question... Is it better to whirlpool clockwise or anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere?

 

[MarkBastard]

EDIT: Good to see you back here Mark, hope you've been OK.

Cheers mate, no dramas, just haven't brewed since December last year (will be brewing this weekend)

 

[Spork]

Which leads to the question... Is it better to whirlpool clockwise or anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere?

Lmfao.
I usually go anticlockwise, just find it easier to stir that way.

Kelbygreen - I don't use a PU tube. If I want more wort than I get from a straight pour I just gently tilt the urn forwards a bit. I only leave approx 750mL of trub and a little "clear" wort behind this way.

The "funniest" part - while doing all that, when the urn was empty I got rid of most of the hop flowers. Only one I forgot was the one in the tap...
I refused to repeat the whole procedure. I'm making a APA and i wanted some hop flavours in there.
My silicone hose doesn't fit onto the tap. Nothing I had fits onto the tap. Ended up getting a small funnell and cutting a thisk slot out of one side of that, attaching hose, jamming funnell over tap, opening tap and blowing. Tap cleared enough for me to drain wort. At last. Now it's all cubed up, and I'm having a (very well deserved) beer.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Good to see you back M^B.

Your posts were always either informative or amusing (and frequently both).

On topic - never drink during brew day - my worst brew days have ended up with more juice in me than in the fermenter.

Sober until yeast is pitched.

Goomba

 

[manticle]

I no longer drink during a brew day.

I find this very upsetting.

 

[Nick JD]

I find this very upsetting.

Likewise. I could train a monkey with a penchant for amphetamines and a bad case of arse nits to reliably make a batch of beer using my techniques and as such am often quite rightfully kerschmazzled while brewing.

Especially when I find the monkey's barbituate stash and make snowcones from that and dried out spent hops. KA-ZING!

Never know quite what I've brewed.

 

[Zizzle]

Get some silcon hose if you don't already. Use this for the drain out.

When a hop blocks the tap, pinch off the hose a few centimetres out from the tap with one hand, pump by squeezing the bit between the pinch and the tap. This often works to dislodge the blockage.

You can also blow back up the hose to do the same then re-sanitize the hose.

 

[peaky]

No hop blockages here

 

[razz]

Nice one Peakydh, home made is it?