Home brew nightmare.....

So this evening, I went to my local beer store, looking to buy one of their mini-mash kits.... but a magazine catches my eye "250 commercial clones" - I open it and find interest in the Pliny the Elder clone. I take the recipe to the front counter and the worker scoffed at how much it was going to cost - I didn't care, have heard so many great things about this beer and it's not sold in my area. Bought all of the ingredients, (got whole leaf simcoe since pellets were sold out) - and the price came to $90......never thought I would brew something this costly.

I get home, start brewing shortly there after... have to steep grains for 45 mins and then have a 90 minute boil - pretty substantial process. I get my wort chilled, have my girlfriend holding the strainer while I'm pouring my wort into my primary with the additional 3 gallons of water (will never buy whole leaf hops again, what a pain). I have a few gallons poured in, and PLUNK! Girlfriend drops the strained, chalk full of whole leaf hops into the primary. At this point i'm at the high end of my yeast pitching window...and I sanitize my bottling bucket.....pour wort in there....clean out primary, and try to strain out as much of the hops as possible... almost certain that I'm going to end up with an infected beer.... ughhh....


anyone had anything like this happen?

it'll be fine, dont worry. If your sanitation was good, theres no reason to be concerned. You dropped a sanitized strainer filled with sanitized hops into sanitized wort. You transferred it to a sanitized container, then back to another sanitized container. Right? It's not like you dropped a roll of quarters or a half pound of unmilled grain into the beer. Theres a bunch of threads on here about people that had mishaps but still made great beer, for sure worth a read.

on a side note, $90 seems a bit pricy for that brew. I think theres some online vendors, including ones on here, that sell the hop kit for that clone for a lot less than that... Maybe Im wrong though as I have never brewed it.

Rdwhahb

So you're worried that the HOPS infected your beer? I'm not saying it's impossible, but...pretty much. Hops are a natural preservative and people deliberately put hops into their fermenter all the. In fact, for any proper Pliny the Elder clone (especially if you paid $90) you should have several ounces of dry hops additions over the next couple of weeks.

Of all beers, a pliney clone should be able to fight off an infection pretty well... it's just sooooo much hops.

You don't have anything to worry about. It will be fine.

On another note, invest in a wort chiller. They are easy enough to make and handling 5 gals of 60-70 F wort is significantly less dangerous and nerve racking than 5 gals of hot wort. It will help you settle the nerves... as will a homebrew.

$90!!!!

i priced it out at our LHBS and it came to be about $65. still on the deep end for my price range. but Pliney is supposed to be the Godfather of all IPAs. would like to try one before i brewone.


Best of luck

order this
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f41/pliny-pack-sale-12-25-a-171436/
and purchase your grain and/or extract at LHBS or online vendor of your choice, I belive i did a pliny clone for under thirty dollars

Read these stories and relax while you wait the several months it's gonna take for this beer to be finished.


https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

And go brew something smaller that will be ready sooner and take your mind off this one.

Yeah, I thought when reading the title something serious happened. That is nothing major at all. You'll be fine man, don't worry about it. You handled it very well


Rev.

I have accidentally dropped my strainer into the primary every batch I have made (I have only made one). But mine turned out fine.

I am by no means any kind of expert heck I barely deserve the title nOOb but from what I have read here and from other sources as long as you do a good job of sanitizing before you start it apparently is not that easy to mess it up.

Again I'm still new so I may just be talking out of my ars. best of luck to you hope it turns out great!

So, you didn't yell at your girlfriend for dropping it did you?

Like everyone said here, you'll be fine. For me, I've made many errors like this without a problem at all. I have no clue how my beer that actually did get infected, happened.

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