Rochester Mills Big Brew Day

Damn!...Hope the guy or gal is okay mors? Sometimes the canopy setup is more trouble than its worth.

mors said:

Well my canopy survived Rochester Mill Big Brew Day but not the National Big Brewday... Wind ended up taking my canopy for a ride and destroyed it... It also managed to get the leg to catch on my propane line before going sailing and spilling my hot (180F+) sparge water all over someone's leg and feet... Damn wind.

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Now that sucks bad. Hopefully they weren't hurt bad. Did your beer turn out? You can call it Stranger in Danger Ale.

haha yeah he seemed fine.. His leg was pretty cold the rest of the day though... He said he had some blistering on his ankles and feet though. The canopy was a necessary evil yesterday as it was also raining half the day. Thankfully after I retrieved the canopy I was able to bend it back into shape and still use it yesterday. Though It was never going to be able to be collapsed and reopened again. lol. The brew was actually not mine, but my girlfriend's. She brewed up a saison and other than a little trouble getting her boil going due to the high wind everything went off good with the brew ;-)

So, here's one for you all.

I was happy that my two batches (from the parti-gyle I did) were bubbling through the airlocks like gangbusters. I added some sugar to my big beer after the fermentation was going strong in hopes of drying it out a bit. I figured there would be plenty of head space, as it ended up as a 4.5 gallon batch in a 6.5 gallon carboy. About 36 hours after pitching the yeast, everything was looking good.

I was happy with how it was going and had no qualms about leaving town for a week with my wife and daughter.

Well, a week goes by and we keep in touch with the in-laws (we live with them ), and everything is great. We get home earlier today and I'm unloading the car (including a great haul of beers that I can't get around here which I might post about in another thread), which includes taking some stuff downstairs to the basement near my fermenting beer.

I take a peak at my fermenters and I SEE THE CARBOY HAS NO AIRLOCK?!?!? Even with 2 gallons of head space, the fermentation was nuts enough to clog the airlock and dislodge it. The t-shirt covering the carboy was covered in speckles of yeastiness, but it didn't look like much had gotten anywhere else. My guess is that the bung just eased out of the carboy and fell off, rather than building up pressure and spewing to the ceiling.

Anyway, I see 2 major results coming from this.

1) Those that have seen me comment on HBT about people that preach the necessity of a blow off tube and how they just need to use a big enough fermenter will probably give me **** about not having a blow off tube in place.

2) My big beer was left without an airlock or any sort of covering over the opening of the carboy for probably about a week. We left town last Monday -> the incident probably happened within 24 hours of that point, as it was at what appeared to be high krausen already -> an entire week of being open to dust, dog hair, and who knows what else that could just fall right in through that carboy opening.

I generally haven't freaked out about sanitation stuff since my first few batches, however this has me a bit nervous. The beer was pretty heavily hopped, high gravity (should come out around 10% abv or so), and already in ultra-active fermentation, so the odds are in favor of the beer turning out just fine and not being infected.

Here's a question, though. Should I go ahead with my planned dry-hop and then bottle it up? Or should I let it sit for a while and see if any signs of infection appear, so as to avoid possible bottle bombs or other issues?

It's likely fine.. At least part of that time the beer would have been actively fermenting (if it pushed off the airlock) and thus would have negative pressure inside the carboy (nothing can fall into it since co2 is blowing out). As long as your dog wasn't licking the the top of the carboy I would say it's fine ;-). As for #1 I never ferment in carboys for this very reason. I have switched all my fermenters over to stainless and glass. Stainless for primary and glass if I choose to do a secondary. All my stainless fermenters have plenty of headspace that I never need to worry about it overflowing etc... I also have headspace for degassing meads etc... Carboys for primary are just too much of a pain in my opinion. I also feel (if they are glass) that that is how most people end up breaking them. As secondary fermenters they don't get handled much and thus have a reduced chance of breaking in my opinion.

I would go ahead and get it off the yeast and dry hop it. I'm sure it's fine.

Cool. Thanks for the reassurance. I'm probably going to just dry-hop in primary, since I'm not going to bother harvesting yeast from such a high gravity batch. I will save some yeast from my small beer, though.

Well the main reason to not dry hop in primary is that yeast absorb hop oils. You'll get a much better hop aroma if you dry hop it off the majority of the yeast. Many breweries actually filter their beer prior to dry hopping for this very reason. I usually just cold crash and rack off of the yeast then dry hop in either a secondary carboy or directly in the keg.

So, a belgian trippel ended up winning today. I'm a little disappointed that my gumball head clone wasn't picked, but I did try the trippel and it was good. So, there is some comfort in knowing that a tasty beer was chosen. Congrats to the winning brewer!


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Yeah I went to the Ashley's Rare & Vintage Beer TasteFest. It was a pretty good time. I got to try lots of beers I have been wanting to try... It wasn't particularly cheap though ;-)

I guess for that Tripel they didn't end up using their provided hops... At least not for that beer...

I completely forgot about the tasting/judging event until it was too late. About 3:00 I thought, "Hhhhmmm... what day is that tasting event happening?"

Doh!

Wish I could've been there.

Had the opportunity to trade my beer for other great home brews,received a bbq invite and met some cool people. Not a fan of peoples choice and the two boneheads that were walking around talking trash becauuse no one was tasting their home brew.

Who's going this year (this upcoming weekend)? I'll be there. Going light for this trip and just doing BIAB.

I'll be there along with another brewer friend.

Is it bad that I'm going to try and copy a beer made by a different brewery than the one hosting the event?

I had Brewery Vivant's MELA a while back and loved it. It's just 85% pilsner and 15% melanoidin, so all I had to buy was the melanoidin malt and some Belgian yeast. Not a bad price for a full batch of beer.

Also, I just kegged up a batch of Legacy pale ale last night, so I'll have that with me to share. The sample tasted great. Definitely an easy drinking beer. Can it be a session beer at 6.7% ABV? I guess I'll find out.

Maybe it's an imperial session beer.

Oh, and I will probably have the last bottle of my huge IIPA from last year's brew day. It took a long time to carb up, since it was over 10% ABV. But the 8 ounce dry-hop has held up decently over the course of the year. It's past its prime, but still tasty.

I'll be coming back for this year. Plan on brewing up a beer I did with one of my buddies back in Indy - a jalapeno cream ale.

Also, I plan on bringing a keg of a chocolate-vanilla coffee stout that I kegged a few weeks ago.

Hmm, yeah I have not given much thought to what to bring to drink yet. I mostly brew on an indoor setup so my concerns have been focused on getting the outdoor stuff around... hopefully it's not as windy Sat as it has been the past week or so...

mors said:

Who's going this year (this upcoming weekend)? I'll be there. Going light for this trip and just doing BIAB.

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I will be there and will be doing a no sparge batch. Learned my lesson last year, having too much brew gear and worrying about a canopy flying away is no fun at all. Keeping it simple so I can enjoy the actual event.

Yeah I'm planning on bringing the canopy (because it sucks roasting in the sun while brewing) but may not put it up if it's really windy...

Looks like it'll be somewhat cloudy and only in the mid-50s on Saturday, so I'm thinking the sun won't be an issue. Although, we are in Michigan, so the forecast may completely change over the next few days.

As long as the weather is better than today, I'll be happy. And if it isn't, I'll bring my ingredients home and brew another day.

We will be there, along with some of our local HBC guys. Cheers!
-Jim

I've got most of my gear loaded into the car already. Think my bucket of sanitizer will freeze sitting out there over night?

The keg of pale ale is in the garage to be thoroughly chilled, but not frozen.

Looking forward to a fun day!

heh I loaded up the car last night as well.. Left only ingredients etc out. At least 3 of use Berkley dudes out there today. Kind of weird lol.

I finished really early... but then drank a bit too much. Good times... Drinking some of Winnie's whiskey after he won wasn't be best of ideas...