Friggin worst brew day

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jodell

Welltown Brewery
Joined
Aug 18, 2016
Messages
495
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Location
Tulsa
Today was the friggin worst. I went for a simple hefeweizen, and here is a list of everything that went wrong.

Used rice hulls. The rice hulls clogged my herms coil. I had to dump the water and rice, filter through a t-shirt, and reheat my water

Finally got to mash in. Because I didn't have any more rice hulls, it clogged, couldn't recirculate fast enough to keep the temp stable.

Finish mashing. Transfer to brew kettle, start boil.
10 minutes later. I'm still at 150 degrees. After 20 minutes of searching found out a wire had come undone from the heating element. Turned everything off, rewired, back in business....

After that I accidently plugged my now empty HLT into the boil. The element popped.

Get done with the boil. I decided to built a wort chiller that day (this is the one were I really only have myself to call dumb-@$$) obviously I did not finish it with everything else so I decided to put it in the ferm-freezer. As I was transferring to the carboy, my carboys bottom blew out (I'm done with glass).

All of this to say, today sucked, my house is a mess, and SWMBO is pissed
 
Damn that sucks. I could feel the anger in this post. RDWAHAHB! On a plus next times bound to be better.
 
No need to apologize. I get the same way one thing leads to another and another, in general. I find sometimes it's because of my mindset after the first thing happens and that kinda sets my mood up for more **** to go wrong. I've found lately if I can just collect myself for a minute and let things roll off my shoulders I seem to be able to handle the back to back to back bs better. I often say "meh such is life sometimes" in kinda like a challenge accepted kinda way. At very least you learned a couple lessons and will almost always have a more enjoyable brew day!
 
The good news is that, It cant get much worse than that. I once dropped a Carboy that was full of wine that I had setting in secondary for 6 months. it exploded, forever stained my hard wood, nearly got me kicked out of the house.

Long story short, man I feel ya. Some days, your better off just staying in bed.
 
Submit it to basic brewing as part of their 'brewing disaster ' series, win a prize!
 
This surely goes on record! Blowing the carboy at the end of the ordeal totally sealed it.

Very brave to come forward, so sorry for what happened!
 
Yeah, sounded like a ****ty brewday then the carboy explodes. You didn't even get beer out of it :(

I broke my pH meter and thermometer in yesterday's brewday, thanks for making me feel a bit better :D

Glad you came here and vented, no doubt SWMBO wasn't in a talkative mood after.
 
Luckily I only lost a gallon from the carboy. I did end up with 9 total and 1 gallon on the floor. If anything did go well yesterday, my new spike brew kettle was awesome
 
Wow, you had a rough day, bud! I lift a glass to you and your heartache....it will be better next time. One the positive side...it really can't get any worse, right?
 
Yeah, sorry to hear it.
I hate breaking carboys.
Glad to hear that with those foibles nobody got hurt.

But at least now you get to justify some equipment shopping.
Better luck next time. :mug:
 
Glad you survived.
My guess is you'll look more forward to your next brew day than your next work day.
 
Whoa, If anyone deserves a high ABV homebrew its you, man.
When things go wrong I always (try to) think, "someone is in a way more F'-ed up situation than me right now, be thankful for what you have"
So, what did you come out of this experience with? No more glass carboys?
That's a start. I use better bottles (plastic) and glass and haven't had a disaster yet, but some day it will happen, I'm sure.
How about simplifying your process? Do you really need to use a HERMS that is prone to clogging? Maybe get a round cooler, put a BIAB bag in it and don't worry about stuck mashes anymore? Or maybe have that as an option for some brews?
Home brewing is supposed to be a fun hobby, when it becomes a hassle, perhaps its time to make some changes and make it fun again.
 
Sorry to hear about your brew day. I have the same system as you and it works awesome. Every now and then though with some grain bills I noticed particles, bits, flour, etc get past my false bottom and get in my mash tun's siphon causing flow problems. So I got this bad boy from Jay Bird at NorCal Brewing Solutions and I have never looked back. I put it underneath my false bottom and it is another filter. The mash tun siphon goes in the middle and any grain that gets past the false bottom gets caught in the filter and no more flow problems. This thing works great. I won't brew without it. Here is a link if you want to take a look. It might solve the issue for you as well.
http://www.norcalbrewingsolutions.com/store/Level-3_15-Inch_FB_Stand.html
It also supports your false bottom like a rock if you use a huge amount of grain. Something to think about...

John
 
I know how you feel, my last brew day that I was looking forward to for weeks I got violently ill. Out both ends. Started off just vomiting what I ate, told myself "**** it, I'll skip lunch and dinner and brew on." 20 min. into the mash and trying out decoction mashing, I knew I had made a mistake. Went back and forth between the bathroom and the brew kettle constantly. Once the wort was chilled, I realized I forgot my funnel (had been brewing at another location) AND my auto-siphon, so I transferred the wort to the carboy by sanitizing my hands and a water bottle, carefully pouring it into the carboy a quart at a time. At the end of the day, though, the beer did get made and I'll bottle it in a week.
 
Haha your brew day sounds like some of mine over the years. It never seems to fail, once one thing goes wrong, EVERYTHING goes wrong.

A few brewdays ago, I was messing with a new 3 vessel system I built. Started off with having to dump the water out because the acid just went crazy with the pH. Had to run back to the store to get more RO water. Came back still had problems but said screw it and carried on. Forgot to add stuff in the boil when I was supposed to, forgot to add the sugar, and forgot to add the whirlfloc. Added it anyways and let the boil go 15 mins longer. Finally after a super ****ty brewday, I started running it through the counterflow and into the fermenter via my chugger pump. I held the 1/2 I'd tubing on with a metal clip. When in the house for no more than 5 mins. Came back out and the clip popped off,wort sprayed EVERYWHERE and on EVERYTHING in my garage. The whole kettle was emptied. Then I set my blichmann 10gallon electric kettle up on top of my blichmann tower controller, and as I was down on my knees cleaning something on the ground, I snagged some of the tubing connected to the kettle and it came slamming down onto my head. Rang my freaking belland my neck and jaw hurt for a few weeks. I left everything and came back out the next day to clean everything up.

Moral of the story, we are homebrewers, we have more bad brewdays than good..Lol at least I do
 
So regardless of how bad that day was, I still needed with 5.1% of delicious hefeweizen

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