Failure as a brewer

I am a complete and total failure.... So, this is the first time i've brewed in about 3 months. It was also the first 10 gallon batch... It was also my first overall failure (so maybe not but i feel like it was)...

I'm not drunk (unfortunately) so this has to go under Mindless Mumbling.... Hey could we add Ridiculous Ranting to that?

Anyway, so it starts off yesterday when i mash tun springs a leak, it's always leaked but this was Ole Faithful. So i re-did my spigot and got all set and found out i have a little under a qt of deadspace in my tun, so what i'll take that. Mashing goes off without a hitch, sparging did great (except i have a thermometer that doesn't work anymore, digitals always break, suppose that's problem 1). Well I actually hit target gravity (closest i've ever been), I was thinking MAN 10 gallon batches rock.

On to the boil, takes forever to get 10 gallons of anyting up to a boil. well it's a new burner and i'm still playing with the settings, i had it just a bit high, I was smelling burned S'mores, i chalked that up to the burner frame smelling funny. Everytime i would turn it down it would stopped boiling, so i kept it going fairly higher.

Well it scorched and i missed my final volume, instead of 10 i got 8, boiled down from 11.75 gallons....

OH, and it took me about an hour to get it down to an appropriate temp...

Woe is brewing, i need to get back into the swing of things....

I've honestly had worse man. Don't lose faith. Keep truckin :rockin:

None of those things really indicate a "total failure" on your part. Scorching always sucks, but that just tells you to stir more vigilantly next time. The leak needs to be fixed. The volume issue isn't a big deal at all. Better to be low than high. So all you really need to do is boil and cool some water and add it to the wort to reach your target.

Until you spend a day mashing, sparging, boiling, cooling, airating, and pitching, and then bang the carboy against a carboykiller and stand there feeling the warm wort gushing over your ankles , you don' know what it means to be a failure as a brewer. Smile bro, it gets better.

PTN

paulthenurse said:

Until you spend a day mashing, sparging, boiling, cooling, airating, and pitching, and then bang the carboy against a carboykiller and stand there feeling the warm wort gushing over your ankles , you don' know what it means to be a failure as a brewer. Smile bro, it gets better.

PTN

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If you're speaking from personal experience here, then I applaud you for having the restraint to not just slit your wrists with a shard of carboy glass and end it right there. I've broken a carboy before, but luckily all it had in it was oxyclean.

Don't sweat it man, I had all kinds of problems when I switched to PM, took me a while to get the new process dialed in...wait...I'm still getting it dialed in

Seriously, it sounds like you'll end up with beer so no worries.

One difficult batch doesn't constitute failure. (and I suspect it will be ok regardless.)

The only way to fail as a homebrewer is to quit.

Really i was just a little frustrated, i tasted it and it tasted great it just had a bit more of a 'roasted' flavor to it... Eh, it's fermenting so i guess that's the best thing i can hope for right now...

Now to get everything planned for my next beer....

Oh and i fixed the leak problem before i mashed...

Anyway i've had a couple problems worse than that and everything always turns out fine... Thanks guys...

I was thinking about adding a bit of water to it to reach volume but i said screw it and left it how it was...

Now i got a porter at 1.070, eesh... lol

I call my brown Debacle Brown Ale

DeadYetiBrew said:

Now i got a porter at 1.070, eesh... lol

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And your problem is????

Hang in there. It gets better and easier batch after batch.

EdWort said:

And your problem is????

Hang in there. It gets better and easier batch after batch.

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Amen to that. After a while it all just becomes automatic.