Well you pulled it together thats all that counts. My day was similar, was brewing Yuri's thunderstruck pumpkin. Anticipating a slow sparge and possibly stuck mash I threw in a couple big handfuls of rice hulls into the mash and began mixing with my new cordless/paint mixer. As I began to voraluf a large amount of grain and hull came out. I figured I might have pushed some grain through the FB with the drill/ mixer. My pump and hoses clogged. I took apart the pump cleaned it and the hoses, and began voraluf again. same thing happened. scratched my head and grabbed my other pump so I wouldn't be wasting as much time and cleared the hoses. This time I figured manual voraluf, and began draining 1/2 gallon at a time and returning it to the top of the mash. I had to clear the valve with a coat hanger a couple times. 1 hour later and it was finally clearing. Got about 2/3 of the runnings when it stuck. I removed as much of the wort from the top of the mash getting a fair amount of grain with it and dumped to the collection vessel. I cleaned the mash tun figuring another handful or two of hulls to act as a filter bed and I would rerun it to remove the grain and husk. Thats when I found the problem. The FB had collapsed. This wasn't a cheap one it was supported in several areas. When it collapsed it put the drain valve above the false bottom. I cleaned it all and positioned the FB so the only portion that wasn't collapsed was on the valve side and proceeded to finish the brew. I took a WAG on preboil and finished volume(7.5) and continued the brew. What started out as a 10 gallon batch turned into a 7 gallon batch. Then while kicking myself about the FB ordeal forgot to refigure hop and spice amounts for the new volume. I spent 8.5 hours on a brew that should have taken 6 tops, lost 3 gallons of wort, and had to clean most of the equipment several times. the silver lining here is that my WAG was pretty accurate, to the point the both preboil and OG were within .02 of estimate. It should ferment pretty quick since I had made a stepped up double starter. Here are some pics of my customized FB.
well this will force me to get the keggles up and running since I wont be brewing this week. I could fix it but it will be even weaker and I have the 9-9-09 barley wine coming up.
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.. I press one telling myself that my brewing forefathers/mothers brewed without thermometers so I can too.
