Another newbie question thread

[william146]

Just brewed my first "by myself" batch - I had been helping my brothers-in-law get into the hobby since Christmas, and have brewed with them several times (all-grain twice).

Anyway - my brew tonight was a LME Kolsch kit. Things were going smoothly (except I broke my hydrometer - doh!) until the end. I went ahead and did a 5 gallon boil since i have an 8 gallon brew kettle and a burner. I noticed as I was putting the chiller in that I lost the typical 1/2 gallon during the boil.

Wort temp gets down to about 95 or so and stalls. It got from 220 or whatever to 95 in about 10 minutes, and then i waited another 20 minutes and it's still not going below 90. I then realize i've gained about 2/3 gallon of liquid in my kettle - i then realize that one of my clamps on the chiller isn't tightened and some water was leaking into the wort.

I guess my question is - this is OK right? I mean, i'd be adding water to the fermenter anyway if i didn't have 5 gallons. I ended up putting the wort into the fermenter at around 80-85 degrees and tossing that in an ice bath for 20 minutes before pitching. Anyone else had that cooling problem?

 

[JOHN51277]

You should be ok. Don't worry, the yeast should take over and help kill any little thing that may have gotten in there. I have had it happen to me once and it turned out an awesome beer.

 

[Olddog]

That happened to me once and my beer turned out fine. After that I learned to test my chiller before putting it in my wort.

 

[Displaced MassHole]

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

I do remember freaking out though when I realized what had happened. It all turned out just fine in the end. As long as your not running swamp water through your IC.