I did something stupid

Ugh I had the perfect batch going. I hit my mash temp dead on ending up at 80% efficiency, I had a resplendent vorlauf, the sparge was amazing, I got a great hot break, and I even remembered to throw in a whirlfloc tab but then it happened: I put my kettle in a tub with ice water, hooked up my wort chiller and turn the faucet on FULL BLAST. I get back to the pot and I hear water gushing out but it's not coming out where it's supposed to so I take off the lid and I find the chiller hose blew off and my wort was being loaded with hose water...I'm not sure how much but at least half a gallon. So I took the kettle out and put it back on the burner and brought it back to a boil then shut her off and cooled it down.

What do you guys think? Am I screwed? lol

you're fine...(probably even without the extra boil) -- you just lightened your beer a little.

I had that happen once also - luckily the water ended up on the ground and not in the pot. Wait, I guess it didn't happen to me after all!

Let us know how it turns out - we can add it to the "it's harder to kill beer than you think" thread (if there is one - maybe we could start a new post?)

yes...that was stupid...but it happens. It will have a lower than intended OG.

Oh Well. Call it a session beer.

I don't think you hurt your beer, except that It'll be lower gravity than you intended. Take a hydrometer reading so you'll know. If you boiled back down to your intended volume, your gravity will not be affected.

I think it will be fine. I didn't take a post boil gravity but my pre boil at 7 gallons was 1.046 so that should get me around 1.062 which is higher than I expected anyway. I was going to boil it down a bit but I didn't want to mess up my hop schedule and also I was afraid I might scortch the bottom because the beer was in ice water for a few minutes prior and my spoon ended up on the ground and I didn't feel like cleaning it. Just eye balling it I think I still only ended up with around 5.5 gallons so I may be still on target.

I'm not too worried about it...Brew and learn!

Yes, and learn to be paranoid about your equipment. I once started siphoning a beer into my bottling pail with an open valve. I noticed it pretty quickly since it was draining on my foot. That's alcohol abuse, as far as I'm concerned.

What was her name?

That happened to me once. My chiller was leaking out of the water out connection, and the water ran back down to my wort. It was Edworts Stone IPA clone. It still turned out good, just a little bit lighter than I expected. The flavor was still there, just a little thin. I made sure It didnt happen again though.

LMAO @ BuffaloSabresBrewer

Half a gallon isn't that bad. It should be fine.

It's funny that this has happened to so many people. It happened to me too (and at the time I thought I had to be the only one). I got the bright idea to try and attach a sprinkler to the hose and water my lawn at the same time. All of a sudden I heard aster off in the distance and I ran to see a nice fountain of water ruining my beer. The end result was a beer that was very sub par. Was it due to the excess water though? I don't think so. I think I had some extreme temperature swings during fermentation.

I've never sprung a leak into my wort but I've certainly oversparged and not wanted to deal with boiling for 2 hours to raise the gravity. I just went out and bought bigger beer mugs and resigned myself to more trips to the bathroom. Beer tasted great, too.

enohcs said:

It's funny that this has happened to so many people. It happened to me too (and at the time I thought I had to be the only one). I got the bright idea to try and attach a sprinkler to the hose and water my lawn at the same time. All of a sudden I heard aster off in the distance and I ran to see a nice fountain of water ruining my beer. The end result was a beer that was very sub par. Was it due to the excess water though? I don't think so. I think I had some extreme temperature swings during fermentation.

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I blame it on the fact that I haven't brewed in over a year so I'm a little rusty, I was in the back yard and it was really dark, I used to use the hose in the front and I guess the back is different. I didn't really crank it up that much but obviously too much lol.

A $3 pressure regulator helps. You can find them in the irrigation section of a big box store or in the RV stuff of the auto section at your local Wally World. Without it my chiller leaks no matter how many clamps I put on it.

Just to update after 10 days in the primary I racked to the secondary and the beer tastes awesome. 1.062-1.014. I'm gonna dry hop 1 ounce of Ek Gold and bottle after about 10 days (14 days secondary with the last 10 days dry hopped) Hooray good beer!

TeleTwanger said:

Just to update after 10 days in the primary I racked to the secondary and the beer tastes awesome. 1.062-1.014. I'm gonna dry hop 1 ounce of Ek Gold and bottle after about 10 days (14 days secondary with the last 10 days dry hopped) Hooray good beer!

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I'm glad to hear the beer is turning out well.
I think the dry hopping is a good idea - I was thinking that when you reboiled the wort you might have lost some hop aroma / flavor, but the dry hopping should help bring back some aroma.

It should be fine. Tap water is quite suitable really, very little bacteria as they pump it full of chlorine and flourine. The worst is a very slight taste from the aforementioned, but most likely you won't know the difference. The key thing is that you're unlikely to have developed a bacterial infection.

There is a lack of hop aroma maybe I should add another ounce of hops at dryhop. I've got simcoe, palisade, columbus, amarillo, and glacier. Which one? I think glacier would keep the beer a proper English ale.

Congrats on proving it's hard to ruin beer. Heck, this might be your best ever.

Ok I tried this beer last night and it's feakin' awesome! It's a little green and undercarbed but really good already. I did 10 days primary, 2 weeks secondary and 1 week in the bottle so its only gonna get better. The glacier/ek gold dry hop combo is really good too BTW. Glacier is my new fav hop.

So once again it turns out the only really stupid thing that one can do is dump the batch. Aside from that we are just making "unintended recipe modifications" until it goes in the glass.

(Maybe there's hope for that batch that I racked from primary onto a gallon of iodophor solution. Three months in bottle and fingers still crossed.)