First horrible brew day - still made beer (probably)

5th AG batch. I fianlly have time to myself after exams (and some more exams), so I get up at 8:00 this morning with the intention to brew my stout. I weigh everything and heat up my water. Hit 163F with my liquor, dough in. Check temperature. 140F. F?%$. I add a little boiling water and wait 10 minutes. 140F. WTF ?

I add some more boiling water and put the pot back on the stove under gentle heat. Check back in 10 minutes. 140F. I check my thermometer in cold water. Still 140F. %?$$%/$%.

So now I have no idea at what temperature I was mashing at. Plus, I'm starting to see some rising bubbles in the wort due to applying direct heat. I get the pot off the heat and just forget about it for another 40 minutes.

I heat up my sparge water to whatever. After "mashing" I take a gravity reading. I got conversion somehow since I'm over 15 points in gravity. I was at the end of my half sack and I guess I had more flour in there than I thought. I put my colander on top of my pot and start to sparge. 15 seconds later, I see the colander giving out and the whole thing falls down in the pot, splashing hot wort EVERYWHERE: curtains, windows, toaster, floor, inside cupboards. I learned about nook and crannies I never thought I had in my kitchen.

I finish sparging and strangely hit 6 gal right on without any problem. My gravity is still 15 points too high even after throwing away at least half a gallon of wort...

Now I just realized I haven't made any ice to cool the wort afterwards. I might just leave it in the shed for 3 hours and wait for it to cool down to pitching temp at this point... LOL.

sounds familiar.....except the splashing...try POURING wort all over your kitchen floor....sticky ..very sticky lol.

Sounds like a perfect excuse to get a propane burner and start brewing outside!

I pretty sure we've all experienced this on a similar level. Hang in there and don't give up on your beer. Who knows, it may turn out to be your best beer yet!

I do everything outside outside of mashing: it's snowing right now.

Took about 2 hours to chill the damn thing to pitching temp: thank god my ground water is almost at 50F. I'm buying an immersion chiller and a REAL thermometer before next brew day. I'm done with water baths that trash the bathroom with soot and have me twiddling my thumbs for hours at a time.

The wort was really, really creamy during the boil and it's the first time I have decent break material in little trubby cones at the bottom of the kettle. Go figure.

OHIOSTEVE said:

sounds familiar.....except the splashing...try POURING wort all over your kitchen floor....sticky ..very sticky lol.

Click to expand...

I'm in this club.

On my last brew day (which was a while ago) I made a post about how frustrating my brew day was and all of the little mistakes that popped up. Some pretty dumb things happened and I couldn't believe all of the bumps in the road that I hit that day.

I made beer and it really was pretty decent. I'm sure your beer is fine and even though I don't do AG yet I agree with the person who mentioned brewing outside. I brew in the garage with the doors open and love it.

I do brew outside (cleaning, sanitizing, boiling), but I can't realistically BIAB-mash in the shed. We have snow on the ground here and my temperatures would be dropping pretty fast ! Plus I like to save on propane if I can.

My metal colander was in the dishwasher, so I thought the plastic one would work in a pinch. It worked, for 30 seconds before snapping its handle and shooting precious wort all over. On the plus side, my girlfriend wasn't home when that happened, so I was able to put the curtains and everything in the washing machine. When she asked about it in the evening, I acted all smooth and said I found them pretty dirty (they are next to the kitchen sink after all...) and thought about cleaning it for her as a surprise.

It worked :rockin: and now I have a big fluffy krausen in the fermenter. It looks just like a good espresso. And if it ends up too dry due to the low mash temperature, I'll just add lactose at bottling. And if my mash temp were high, I'll just enjoy the chewy mouthfeel.