Sometimes you have to laugh (this is why you do a test run)

So, I've been assembling equipment and learning from this fine forum for about three months. Setting up right now to do my first "real" Brew-day. My buddies coming over in a couple hours and we're gonna try our hand at partial mash. We'll head to LHBS at pick up the last ingredients for four or so good brews. We're doing a hefe for the 1st brew. I fired up my turkey cooker w/ my keggle on it and about five gallons of H2O in it. It got up to boil nice at quick, thought I'd test my nice, new/expensive floating thermometer. I slid the themo in the pot gently, it F#c%ing shot to bottom (5gal in a keg ins't to deep), shattered into lil' shards all into the water! This is WHY YOU ALWAYS DO A TEST RUN! If that would have been my wort, there's no way we could have filtered ALL the shards of throat-slashing glass. But you know what? We would have drank the s#^t anyways. So doing a test run, pretty much saved someones esophagus,(though we could have called it "Revenge of the Hefe"). Oh well about my thermometer, it was the nicest floating one I could find. I have a couple digital pen ones, that I don't trust. I'll find a suitable one at LHBS. G'day all, I'm gonna RDWHAHB and brew a damn fine beer.

If that would have been my wort, there's no way we could have filtered ALL the shards of throat-slashing glass. But you know what? We would have drank the s#^t anyways.

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Seriously? ouch! lol

seems like you got off to a good start. lol To bad about the therm.

At least it was just H2O. I have thought about this day for a long time, all serious, wanting to get everything right. This made me realize I just need to chill a little bit, and have fun. I'm sure all said and done it will turn out good, and I think laughing my ass off is worth the price of the thermometer.

Congrats on getting your first brew going. Sorry to hear about the therm.

My thermometer busted somewhere late in the boil of my recent AG brew. Fortunately I had it floating inside the paint strainer I dump my hops in. Even if that didn't catch every single sliver, this beer is getting transferred 5 separate times (boil kettle to primary, primary to secondary, secondary to bottling bucket, bucket to bottle, bottle to glass). Every single transfer involves letting the sediment settle out, and I expect any possible glass shards that might have made it out of the paint strainer will be sitting on the bottom of the fermenter underneath all the sediment I intend to leave behind anyway. Short story: Broken thermometer may not be the end of the world (or a batch of beer - same thing... )

watchout for hydrometers too, Ive broken a few of those bad boys.

Skacorica said:

watchout for hydrometers too, Ive broken a few of those bad boys.

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Those little suckers are too fragile. My buddy set his on the counter after a test and forgot to rinse it off. He saw it laying there the next day (not knowing the wort had turned sticky overnight) and when he picked it up the stem just snapped off.

Wow, reminds me of my BIL. He was in a bar and finished off his beer. Next thing he knows he's coughing up blood. He swallowed a chunk of glass about an inch by half inch. Cut him up pretty bad inside. He spent the next few days in the hospital. He did get a relatively small settlement from the bar but not worth it IMO.

Glass shards are pretty good about settling in the trub, but I've heard that increasing your mercury consumption can give you superpowers... The digital pen thermometers work just fine in my mashtun, I wouldn't worry about the fancy floater.

Apollo said:

Wow, reminds me of my BIL. He was in a bar and finished off his beer. Next thing he knows he's coughing up blood. He swallowed a chunk of glass about an inch by half inch. Cut him up pretty bad inside. He spent the next few days in the hospital. He did get a relatively small settlement from the bar but not worth it IMO.

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Oh damn, the things we do for beer. Well everything went perfect. We were mashing about 6 pounds of grain. I calculated we got bout 72% effic.before adding extract. Not bad for 1st time PM and using a mesh bag. I can see stepping up to AG soon as get my mash tun finished. All in all I knew it would turn out. The thermo just broke the outer glass tube, my buddy thought we should still use it, but i thought I'd avoid the shot ballest in the brew. Goes to show, Don't Worry, Relax, Have a HomeBrew and it will all be okay.

Sweet that you still have a sense of humor about it too!

Rickochet said:

Sweet that you still have a sense of humor about it too!

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Thanks, no way else to be really. You have to be able to laugh at yourself, or else nothing is that funny. I thank this forum for giving me the tools to chill.

Jughead said:

G'day all, I'm gonna RDWHAHB and brew a damn fine beer.

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Good work, I hope you had somebody else homebrew to relax with when you broke the therm. might be a long wait

Luckily I had some extract brews and mead hanging round in bottle to get me through, still better than most commercial! Im looking forward to the leap to all grain.:rockin:

You don't have to worry too much about filtering broken glass if a therm breaks in your wort. Anything big enough to cause damage will sink to the bottom. Small pieces typically won't hurt you. My 2 year old son ATE a good chunk of a glass ornament this last Christmas and was fine. Its the big jagged pieces that are dangerous, like the bar story. I'd really like to know where that glass came from too. Mercury also isn't a concern normally. It's pretty hard to come up with a mercury thermometer anymore and I don't think there are any designed for cooking that are. They normally use alcohol or some other non-toxic substance.