Tried a late night brew session

So, in order to try and work when my wife was asleep I started my brew session at 11:00pm. Here is a short list of what happened. My digital thermometer started reading 10deg low which lead me to do all my rests 10 degrees to high. Needless to say my conversion sucked. I had a hose pop off while transfering wort. Finally, my 2 gallon test batch of Barley wine ended up being 3 gallons because I labored all night looking at the 12 quart mark...because 12 quarts equal 2 gallons...lol...

Work during the day

Athos

Athos56 said:

...because 12 quarts equal 2 gallons...lol...

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F***ing hilarious...

I know, I was transferring the wort into the 3 gallon better bottle thinking, "gosh why is there so much of this?"

Having a similar night... Put too much water in the boil while eyeballing and now have very little headspace and an almost guaranteed blowoff... Not to mention I am doing extract with no wort chiller and still way too hot to pitch yeast and should be heading to bed soon but cant till my temps drop. Oh well... Back to the Bacardi and Coke since I don't have a decent pipeline yet.

OClairBrew said:

Having a similar night... Put too much water in the boil while eyeballing and now have very little headspace and an almost guaranteed blowoff... Not to mention I am doing extract with no wort chiller and still way too hot to pitch yeast and should be heading to bed soon but cant till my temps drop. Oh well... Back to the Bacardi and Coke since I don't have a decent pipeline yet.

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I figured that even with the extra gallon I would need a blowoff, but no the fermentation has been very polite, nothing as expected Rum and Coke sounds great.

I brew almost exclusively at night - prep as much as I can the night before, then fire up the HLT once my son is in bed (usually 7 or 7:30). If I don't do much cleanup, I'm crashing by midnight, but if I cleanup/put equipment away, I'm up till 1am.

Wouldn't be so bad, except for getting up at 5:30 to get to work...

Hopefully my ferment can be as nice to me as yours. At least your temps are cooler and easier to keep in line, my house rarely gets below 75, even with temp control my ferments tend to be angry, even when I keep under 70.

Sounds like the day when I cooled the wort and kept wondering why the Better Bottle was getting farther away as I was racking... apparently it wasn't cooled enough and the bottle was melting away from me. Glad I caught it before it burst, but... rdwhahb

I have to brew on Friday or Saturday night after the kids are in bed. That way I can sleep in a little the next morning (after staying up until 2:00 am).

All this for the love of beer

My kids don't let me sleep in. I'm planning on going into work late on Friday morning for my next brew. Shhhhh - don't tell my boss.

AgentHubcap said:

I have to brew on Friday or Saturday night after the kids are in bed. That way I can sleep in a little the next morning (after staying up until 2:00 am).

All this for the love of beer

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We all have bad brew days when nothing seems to go right; just don't blame it on the night brews. I have small kids and that seems to be an ideal time to brew.