Massively sucky brew day.

Just need to vent.

Brewed 10.5 gallon batch of witbier last night. Rounded up on my strike water volume and strike water temp was a few degrees high.... 152 mash turned into 156 until I could stir it back down to 152 (took 1/2 hour).

Even though I had fermcap-S right there, I for some reason didn't plan on putting it in until I reached a boil. Naturally I boiled over when the boil started.

On recent batches I've noticed if I kill the flame when adding the first hops, I can avoid the excessive foaming and boil over without frantically stirring. Well I guess I felt like frantically stirring and having another boil over, because that's what I did for some reason.

Never thought to use a bag for my coriander, chamomile and orange zest, so of course that plugged the pump somewhat for whirlpooling, chilling and pumping to the fermenters (2 6-gal buckets). So since its was transferring slowly, I allowed my wife to distract me the cake she was making. I came out to the garage to find the first bucket overflowing onto the floor in a huge puddle. When it was all said and done, I lost 1.75 gallons of awesome smelling and tasting wort.

Fortunately I sprayed star San all over the end of the transfer hose to the fermenter, so I'm hoping it being submerged will not contaminate the wort.

This batch is either gonna be terrible (infection) or legendary (Murphy's law considering the lost volume). RDWHAHB, right?

Hopefully it turns out fantastic and you can put this behind you. I don't think the hose will hurt anything since you sanitized it. Another thing I have done almost 7 gallon boils in my 7.5 gallon pot. One thing I do is skim the protein off the top, before the hot break hits, and that has helped with boil overs. But once it is almost to the hot break, I lower the heat quite a bit.

I decided to convert a keggle now though, I don't like pushing the limits that much

Yeah, I have no excuse, I was boiling less than 13 gal in a 15 gal boilermaker. (Last batch I oversparged, LONG story, and I had to boil down 14.75 gal in that 15 gal pot. FermcapS saved my live there.)

Really this is from not having brewed in over a month and being rusty.

I learned on here to quickly bring down the mash temperature, stir in a few ice cubes. Worked well for me.

It will be great. You'll win an award. When you go to accept it and they ask your secret, all you'll be able to say is, "uuhh..."

I use fermcap. But I also have a spray bottle of water I keep next to me during the boil. When foam comes up I just spray a bit right on top. Works like a charm.

OK, so lots f good boil-over advice here. Any special tricks for not overflowing the fermenter and losing ~15% of your volume?

There's only one solution: Stop your wife from baking. It's way too risky.

On the bright side, this wasn't your first ever brew. You may have given up brewing and taken up baking with your wife instead!

eyedoctodd said:

152 mash turned into 156 until I could stir it back down to 152 (took 1/2 hour).

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Next time - measure out a half gallon of cold water. Add a little at a time until hitting temperature. Then - subtract 1/2 gallon from your sparge volume and add what water you didn't add to your mash to your sparge water. In the end - all volumes equal out.

Easy and quick way to bring down your temp. 5 minutes - tops.

arturo7 said:

It will be great. You'll win an award. When you go to accept it and they ask your secret, all you'll be able to say is, "uuhh..."

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This happened to me -- I had a disaster of a brewday with a Schwarzbier (every single thing that could've gone wrong in the process did, all the way to bottling) and it won Best of Show in Toronto last week.

Maybe this one's a moneymaker

a spray bottle will keep boil overs in check pretty easily, or a bigger kettle.

eastoak said:

a spray bottle will keep boil overs in check pretty easily, or a bigger kettle.

Click to expand...

I use fermcap in my boil and boilovers are a non issue.

+1 on making your wife stop baking. Too dangerous indeed. Plus, you're going to wind up eating her baking, and then you'll have to buy larger pants. Which means shopping with her - another source of danger. And then you won't be at home to brew.

I try to brew when my wife is away. Because I've been there before: Her: "honey, can you help me for a second?" Me: "sure" Me, an undetermined time later: "$%@*&!!! I forgot to add/remove/turn off/check/turn on/open/close/..."

At least I can tell my kids to get me another beer and then go watch TV. (Maybe that's why they don't mind me brewing. I usually tell them to turn the TV off.)

Good advice all around. The next brew, I put the fermcap-S in the kettle along with the first wort hops so I wouldn't forget when approaching boil. Of course, I forgot the 5 mL of lactic acid for pH adjustment (could that make me come up 7 points low on a 1.069 IPA? Or is a very thick 1qt/lb mash the source? Usually I'm 75-78% eff and this was quite low for a change.)
SWMBO is taking the baby to visit grandparents for a week in July, so I'm gonna brew 3 times that week, all lovely uninterrupted brewing.

Oh, and the witbier did in fact turn out awesome. Murphy's law never fails.

hell yes!