A Great Brew Day Until....

Well, today was going great. I was brewing my Scwartzbeir, which is SWMBO's favorite beer. I was trying out a few new things with hopes for a much higher efficiency. My time management was great, and then tragedy struck.

While I was cooling the wort down to pitch the yeast, I went to start dumping the sanitizer out of my carboy and my ale pale. I happened to walk by the kitchen door and look out side to see me brew kettle over flowing all over the porch. I raced outside, and sure enough, my brew kettle was flooding. I yanked the wort chiller out, and sure enough there was a split in the bottom most coil. Needless to say, I wasn't happy at all. I threw the wort chiller across the back yard and yelled a certain 4 letter word. I went in and grabbed a hydrometer and took a reading...1.005. A whole freakin 10 gallon batch of beer ruined. Twenty-three pounds of grain and 3 ounces of hops poured out it the grass.

I am ready to chew nails right now.

I still have the yeast, so I may give it another go tomorrow. I'll have to see if I have the hops and if I can get over to the LHBS.

Yeah, that sux... sorry to hear about that.

Wow- that would have really ticked me off. All that work for nothing! Plus, now you need a new chiller. Hopefully, you have a few beers around so you can drown your sorrows tonight.

I actually picked the kettle up to about shoulder level and dumped it. Keep in mind that had 15 gallons of water in it. SWMBO said that she thought that I was going to completely Hulk out and throw the kettle across the yard.

ahh man that sucks!!! Hopefully you get a redo tomorrow. Might as well take this chance to get a CFC.

Show us a picture of the "chiller split" if you can. This is really weird???

Hell, I can barely afford to rebuy the grains(luckily, I have the hops in my freezer), much less a CFC, as much as I would love one.

I just checked my garage, and I have a 50' coil of copper for another immersion chiller. The problem is that it is only 1/4" OD. That means that I'm not going to get a lot of flow through it. However, since it's 50', I can make a much bigger coil. That should make up for the reduced flow...I hope.

Just buy a coupler and patch the one you have? If you have 50ft of copper laying around I'm guessing you have tools to solder it.

You need 1/2 inch copper. Mine is from Morebeer. Bigger is always better when talking coolers.

Even the the 1/4" pipe can't carry as much water through it at a time, it does have a larger (if your old one had a larger diameter) surface-to-volume ratio which should result in faster heat exchange. So you may end up with a chiller that works at about the same rate.

I'm sorry to hear about your beer. I'll pour one out in remembrance.

Oh...My...God....

Sorry buddy.

Man Deco, that sucks big time! Sorry to hear it happened to ya!
I know about that Hulking out thing... my brothers still talk about the motorcycle I threw once!

Here are a couple of pics. The crack is so small that it was hard to get a good picture of it.





I just got off the phone with my BIL. He has some silver solder that he says is for soldering food grade stuff. He's coming by tomorrow night after work. He should be here right about the time that I am starting my boil.

That's about the saddest brewtragedy I've heard so far. I mean, I lost 4 gallons of bitter into the depths of my kegerator and had more time invested into it, but 10 gallons sux.

Is there a chance it had water/wort in there and froze? It's the only way I can imagine this happening.

Yup, I agree Columbo, split copper tubing in Michigan in January. Should be fine with a little solder.

Keep it drained and it should last a lifetime.

Thats what I would think too... I've got a copper tube that runs under my deck to a spigot, and if it doesn't drain well it will burst just like that...

That is just horrible... I'll pour one out for you as well...

Bobby_M said:

Is there a chance it had water/wort in there and froze? It's the only way I can imagine this happening.

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I agree... I have never EVER seen copper break like that. You should be able to just cut that section out and use a 1/2" copper butt connector to replace the gap.

In the future, I would try and blow as much water out of your IC once you are done with it... Also, I always run the water through it before I put it into the boil kettle for the last 15 of the boil. Even though I trust my soldering skills, I don't trust them enough to put into a 12 gallon batch of IPA...

My last schwarzbier picked up a lacto infection from the keg. At least you didn't have to wait a month and a half to see it go bye-bye.

But ten gallons, ouch. Condolences.

It's possible, but I did inspect it before I put it in there. I also soaked it in a bucket of hot water before that. AND it spent the last 15 minutes of the boil in the brew pot.

I guess that some water could have been in there and froze and weakened it, and then when I started passing water through it, it gave up the ghost. Or, I could have just missed the crack.

Or perhaps the brewing gods demanded a sacrifice. Now everyone of my batches will come out perfect and full of beery goodness.

This sucks, but if it's the worst thing that happens to me this year, I can live with it.

I feel for you man, I've dealt with my fair share of spilled wort. I've got a 10 gal RiMS and spent one brewday morning cleaning with water and PBW... flushed the system from one end to the other and then drained via the dump valve in my keggle. I had a hose attached and running the cleaner in to a big bucket.... fast forward to sparging time and I notice that the bucket was now spilling out onto the garage floor..... guess who forgot to close the valve? Talk about blowing a gasket!

On another brew I was using the high temp tubing to pump from my MLT to the brew kettle.... one little hose clamp wasn't tight enough and BAM! hot wort spraying at 600 GPH all over the place.

I say count it up as a battle scar and march on.

Decojuicer said:

This sucks, but if it's the worst thing that happens to me this year, I can live with it.

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Thats a great way to look at it!

Losing 10 gals of homebrew does suck. Believe me, I feel your pain! hopstopper users... - Page 5 - Home Brew Forums

I had a dream that I walk away from my cooled brew pot and come back to find my cat around in it. I don't know why but that's the dream.

I'm sorry to hear this and I can only imagine the "oh ****" in your head when you saw the pot overflowing. Suck it up because that beer must be made!

Mark K.

I just made this chiller out of 60' of 1/4" copper tubing and some miscellaneous pieces of 1/2" pipe and fittings. It's made to fit the 15 gallon heavy duty brew kettle from MoreBeer perfectly. Tested it out last week and it cooled a five gallon batch from boiling to 70 degrees in under 10 minutes. However, it was 48 degrees outside.



If you've got 50' laying around, could easily construct something similar. The tubing was by far the most expensive item of the build.

Sorry for your losses (beer & chiller).

Well, it's kind of a good thing that this happened.

I called up the LHBS owner today and asked him to put the same grains together. When I started telling him which grains I wanted, he told me that he didn't have the Munich 20L, just 10L. I asked when he ran out of the other, and he said that he never had it. Then he gave me some other options for my other grains. Options that the guy who ground the grain on Saturday never gave me. In short, it would have really affected the recipe. I changed it in Beer Smith, and the color was pretty different, and the S.G. was a bit lower.

When I talked to the guy who usually gets all my stuff for me at the LHBS, he was pretty angry about it. I told him that I wasn't upset, but somebody else might be.

I do have the grains now. They are crushed, and my mash water is heating up. I should be mashing in about 15 minutes or so.

keelanfish said:

I just made this chiller out of 60' of 1/4" copper tubing and some miscellaneous pieces of 1/2" pipe and fittings. It's made to fit the 15 gallon heavy duty brew kettle from MoreBeer perfectly. Tested it out last week and it cooled a five gallon batch from boiling to 70 degrees in under 10 minutes. However, it was 48 degrees outside.

If you've got 50' laying around, could easily construct something similar. The tubing was by far the most expensive item of the build.

Sorry for you losses (beer & chiller).

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Sweet Mother! I don't even see how that thing works!