Anyone else ever have brewing sessions like this?

[IanC]

Just made the wort for my second batch today, a nice wheat ale, and had a few unexpected surprises:

1. A tiny tiny fly flew into my covered fermentor where my 2 gallons of water were cooling. Didn’t notice until right before adding my yeast.
2. Thermometer shattered while sanitizing (and fortunately not while checking my wort)
3. Heat reflected from the bottom of my very large pot seems to have scorched my stove top surface (wife hasn’t noticed this – yet)
4. Decided to try cooling wort in a snow bank outside my house – 40 minutes later I’m still at 115 degrees…
5. Lifted the lid to measure the temp and a bunch of snow fell in the wort.

All in all I’d have to say my first effort at brewing went a lot more smoothly! Ah well… hopefully it’ll all come out tasting ok in the end – some people add citrus rind, others season with tiny dead flies.

Anyone else ever have brewing sessions like this?

 

[MalFet]

Yep. It gets easier, but the good news is that it will likely all still be great beer. Congratulations!

 

[chaydaw]

As for the snow cooling method. It doesn't work! It acts more as an insulator so it really does a poor job of cooling. Skip it and use an ice bath or an IC.

 

[IanC]

As for the snow cooling method. It doesn't work! It acts more as an insulator so it really does a poor job of cooling. Skip it and use an ice bath or an IC.

Agreed. For my first batch I dropped my 5 gallon pot into a 8 gallon one, coiled a hose around it and let er rip, which brought the temp down nicely. This second time around we just had a huge dump of snow and I thought, what the heck, I'd read about using a snow bank in John Palmer's 'how to brew' guide so I thought I'd give it a try. Definately inferior to the above mentioned method.

Ah well, experience is an excellent teacher.

 

[dfc]

Just made the wort for my second batch today, a nice wheat ale, and had a few unexpected surprises:

1. A tiny tiny fly flew into my covered fermentor where my 2 gallons of water were cooling. Didn’t notice until right before adding my yeast.
2. Thermometer shattered while sanitizing (and fortunately not while checking my wort)
3. Heat reflected from the bottom of my very large pot seems to have scorched my stove top surface (wife hasn’t noticed this – yet)
4. Decided to try cooling wort in a snow bank outside my house – 40 minutes later I’m still at 115 degrees…
5. Lifted the lid to measure the temp and a bunch of snow fell in the wort.

All in all I’d have to say my first effort at brewing went a lot more smoothly! Ah well… hopefully it’ll all come out tasting ok in the end – some people add citrus rind, others season with tiny dead flies.

Anyone else ever have brewing sessions like this?

Sure have. My second batch caused me to go buy a propane burner because I ended up having to build a fire in my grill and boiling my wort over an open fire.

 

[gunner65]

Well I found out yesterday that the little packs of dried orange peel put pump clogging particles into your system at the most critical of times. My beer will be fine as yours will too.