RoKozak

Recipes 

I brewed my first AG beer yesterday. A few things happened that I was wondering if I should be concerned about:

1) Some sink water splashed into the beer while I was chilling the wort. Not a great deal but some minor splashing.

2) I put my thermometer in once or twice without Star San when checking temperature after the boil. Oops.

3) The wort boiled with the lid on the brew pot but I did remove the lid at one point and it appeared to settle into a barely boiling point. How necessary is it to be at exact boiling temp or more during the whole process?

Should I be concerned?

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Primary: Holiday Nut Brown Ale
Bottled: Common Room ESB

jvp1

Recipes 

1 or 2 shouldn't be huge. A chance for infection but RDWHAHB. 3 concerns me though because I was under the impression boiling wort with the lid on can seriously hurt your beer's taste. I believe Palmer recommends that if you need the lid to leave it partially off or for it to have a steam vent. Else, some of the chemicals that get evaporated in the boil hit the lid, condense, and drip back in.

But nothing you can do now. I'm sure you'll be OK

__________________
Primary: Cooper's Cerveza
Secondary:
Bottle conditioning:
Bottled: Altbier, Mr. Beer IPA, Dodging the Draught, JVP Thrilsner, Sweet Caroline Honey Ale, Stout

RoKozak

Recipes 

To be a bit more clear, the lid was on for maybe 10-15 min of a 60 min boil. Good to know not to put the lid on in the future. During those time, hop debris would line the sides of the pot that didn't have wort so I stopped immediately.

I was getting impatient with waiting on the boil because I kept thinking that it wasn't good to wait so long for a boil. Does it matter how long it takes between sparging and getting the kettle to a boil?

__________________
Primary: Holiday Nut Brown Ale
Bottled: Common Room ESB

RoKozak

Recipes 

and I assume it's bad for hop debris to leave the boil...

billl

Recipes 

1) Oops. Not ideal, but probably not an issue. Water from the tap is pretty clean.
2) Oops. Not ideal, but anything floating around in the air was probably landing in the wort as well as on the thermometer.
3) Not great. Once it starts boiling you should take the lid off. Boiling drives of the DMS chemicals, so you don't want those dripping back into the wort. As long as you kept it off from a good chunk of time though, you should be fine.
4) If the hops stick to the sides of the pot during boil, just push them back in with a spoon.
5) It doesn't really matter how long it takes you to get the wort up to boiling. However, getting a good, rolling boil does make a difference. The 2 are kinda related - ie if you've got a monster burner to boil the wort quickly, that same burner will keep a good boil going.

headbanger

Recipes 

Should be fine.

TopherM

Recipes 

Definitely never boil with the lid on again......you do need the lid off to boil off DME, and also all recipes assume water boil off, and you won't have much water boil off if you leave the lid on.

Besides that, you're all good!!

__________________
Primary #1 - Citra APA
Primary #2 - EMPTY!
Primary #3 - EMPTY!
Secondary #1 - Downtown Flanders Brown (Due June 2013)
Secondary #2 - Pinot Noir Wine (Due December 2013)
Keg #1 - Hard Cider (Spring SeaCider)
Keg #2 - NONE!
Keg #3 - NONE!
Bottled - NONE!

ReverseApacheMaster

Recipes 

Should be ok but definitely do not reuse the yeast from that batch, just to be sure if there is contamination it doesn't extend into future batches.

RoKozak

Recipes 

Nope, won't be reusing the yeast from this batch. Are you talking about contamination from 1) or 2) and not the lid issue?

__________________
Primary: Holiday Nut Brown Ale
Bottled: Common Room ESB