My first bad brew day

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IowaHomeBrewer

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In total, I've been brewing about 2 years. Adding up all the times i've started/stopped. I've never had a bad day of brewing. That all ends on one fateful day in September.

It all started on Thursday. Long read, you won't get any of your time back so just click the back button on your browser.

I'm trying to educate myself on hop impacts, so I've been doing a few experiments. I have a grain bill, yeast, and bittering hop that I stick to. I just change out the flavor / aroma hop so i can get a good idea of what each one does so that I can design my own IPA recipe. Kind of like a SmASH, but not really. Same concept.

I already did a Citra, most recently kegged was Centennial. This week i was going to do El Dorado.

The bittering hop I'm using is Magnum, and I've never had a problem getting it. It is always overstocked. Of course when I go to the store, they are out of Magnum pellets, so I get the cones thinking "whats the worst that could happen?".

Trying to get ahead of the game, I did my Starter on Friday night, WYeast 1098. This morning I popped it in the fridge to help the yeast crash, and couldn't help but notice how small of a yeast cake there was. Then it hit me when I looked at my notes.. I only put one ounce of DME, not 100 MG of DME. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time.

Fast forward to the brewing. Everything is going great, love the smell of the el dorados. Hitting my temps, everything looks good. Boil is done, cooling everything off and I pull a sample for a gravity reading.

My grain bill is 14 lbs of 2 row and 1 lb of crystal for a 5 gallon batch. My hydrometer reading says 1.03. I dump out my sample and fill with water, sure enough my hydrometer is broken (how the **** does a hydrometer break??).

Ok, no big deal. It is broken, so what. Well, kind of a big deal since I know that I underpitched my yeast due to starter fiasco, gravity readings are going to be important.

I just tell myself I'll give it 2 full weeks before dry hopping, and then i'll pull a hydrometer reading, and do the math to make sure its done. If its supposed to be 1.08 and it read as a 1.03, I'll just take the 5/100ths of a point in mind during final reading.

I turn the ball valve on my kettle to drain into my fermenter. Nothing happens. Sure enough, those ****ing cones are clogging my valve. I get out my racking cane and do that. 60 minutes later, after constantly removing blockage, I finally get it drained. Pitch my yeast, throw it into the ferm chamber. Time to clean.

First, I dumped the wort remnants into my utility sink. Clog in the sink drain. 20 minutes later sink is empty. I realize that my valve is completely jammed up. I have to disassemble the quick disconnect and entire valve to get the hops cleaned out.

Do a nice thorough rinse to get rid of debree, then throw some cleaner in there, fill the kettle up and turn the heating element on to let it sit at 170 for about an hour. Turn my pump on.

Clean up the rest of the gear and put it in its rightful place. I have about 30 minutes until I need to whipe down my kettle, so I think I'll go have one of my newly carbonated IPAs.

Wrong.

I take one step, and realize that I'm standing in about an inch of water. WTF?? Then I realize that my utility sink drains into the floor drain in the basement, which is now backed up because of the god damned hop cones. An hour later of digging in disgusting filthy water, I finally get it cleaned up and get the hops out of there.

My brew day normally takes 4 hours (cleanup included). Today it took 9 hours. All because of ****ing cones.

I will never, for any reason, buy cones again as long as I live. I'd rather not make wort than make wort with cones.

/end rant.
 
Very sorry about the first bad brew day! It happens to the best of the best I can assure you of that.

Take it as a learning experience and move on, don't let it deter you!

Brew on!
 
I use a 5 gallon paint strainer. Keeps the hops contained, but it big enough to allow plenty of contact with the Wort.
 
I won a pound of leaf/cones as part of a prize from a home brewing competition last year. I traded them away to a fellow home brewer for a bottle of beer. Never used them, never will.
 
Isn't that what hop sacks are for? I've never heard of anyone throwing cones directly into the boil before, for these obvious reasons.

Also, you stated you made your starter of Friday night and cold crashed Saturday morning. That seems like a really small amount of time on the stir plate. I never go less than 24 hours, and sometimes up to 72 hours for older vials of yeast (5 mos. or older). And it always takes about 3 days of cold crashing for the yeast to completely settle out. Otherwise you're throwing good yeast cells away when you decant.

Just food for thought.
 
Isn't that what hop sacks are for? I've never heard of anyone throwing cones directly into the boil before, for these obvious reasons.

Also, you stated you made your starter of Friday night and cold crashed Saturday morning. That seems like a really small amount of time on the stir plate. I never go less than 24 hours, and sometimes up to 72 hours for older vials of yeast (5 mos. or older). And it always takes about 3 days of cold crashing for the yeast to completely settle out. Otherwise you're throwing good yeast cells away when you decant.

Just food for thought.

I agree with using a hop sack, but look at all the videos where most just throw the hops in the boil. You do need a way to keep the hops from clogging everything up.

18-24 hours is plenty, that is the reproduction phase, (with fresh yeast) after that the yeast is no longer reproducing much and mostly fermenting the "beer".

I chill for 12 -18 hours usually. The wort is quite clear. Am I tossing some good yeast? Most likely but I am not concerned since I have made a properly sized starter.

OP: Sorry to hear about your troubles. Look on the bright side, you got it out of the way so you can look forward to some great brew days to come.
 
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I like pellets more but use bags when fooling with leaf/cone hops. Just easier that way.
Sorry your day sucked but you did learn something and that's what brewing is all about. And of course, just great beer!
 
Well this weekend I had a great brew day. Kegged up my new wheat beer recipe (delicious).

Took an FG reading on the IPA from the first post, and gravity reading was at 1.12, so even though the starter was weak I'm getting enough fermentation, dry hopped it today.

The Galaxy and Lemondrop hops I ordered online (brew shop has been out for weeks) came early so I was able to make my new IPA recipe I think is going to be the bomb.

AND my Conan yeast will arrive in the mail tomorrow so I will be able to make the exact same recipe next week and compare the beers.

I was also able to start using my new stir plate to harvest yeast ($$ saving time!).

Brew day went really smoothly. Figured out I could use the pump line I use for recirculating during mash for a whirlpool, so i did a nice long hop stand and cooled afterwards really quickly.

I've got 6 different beers now bottled up with the growler filler adapter I got for my kegs (new beers were ready before kegs were cached so I emptied them into botles), 2 really good beers on tap, 2 kegs ready to roll, 1 in the ferm chamber will be ready next weekend and 1 will be ready in 2 weeks.

Now my biggest problem is drinking enough beer so that my wife doesn't kill me when I buy more bottles to hold it!
 
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