Buck_Dooley
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- Oct 2, 2011
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Skip to end for TL;DR
I woke up last Thursday about twenty minutes off schedule. I only woke up because those danged robins kept chirping outside of my window. I opened the shades and looked out at a beautiful blue bird morning; no clouds and temperature in the middle twenties. "Perfect day to pull a Ferris Bueller," I thought.
I got around to taking care of the three esses (shower and shave being the last two) and got all the kids roused and out of bed. I let the missus sleep in and took the two oldest kids to school. By the time I had gotten back the temperature had risen to about 40 degrees and the missus was out of bed. I took the dog for a nice long walk; this worked up a real mean thirst.
Being thirsty makes me think of pretty much one thing. Beer. If I were going to get home after walking the dog and have a beer, well then, I should get some brewing done too! And that is just what I did . sort of.
I decided on an IPA. The weather is warming up and this brew would be ready in a few weeks when the sun is out, so why not? I weighed out the grains and milled them with only minor mess. Not bad. I fired up the burner and heated up the strike water, still no problems. Add the water to the grains in the 5 gallon Igloo cooler without spilling a burning myself and I even manage to hit my mash temp of 152 spot on (what a great freaking day!). This should have been a clue of what was to come, though.
While mashing I made some sandwiches and ate, finished the cleaning of the rest of my brewing gear and got ready to sparge by heating up my water. I vorlauf for a little bit until the runnings are clear enough by my standards and proceed to drain the cooler. It is not running too quickly, but I am not concerned. By the end of the sparging process it is barely a trickle. I figure, "I will just readjust the grain bed when I put the sparge water in, no big deal." I dump in the water, put in the mash paddle and . TINK!. Well what the hell was that? Nothing, I am sure everything is fine. Let's try the vorlauf again .. nothing. Nada. Zilch. No flow what so ever.
Crap.
I had knocked the filter off of the drain line and the grain bed immediately settled into the line blocking the flow. After futzing around for about thirty minutes I come to the conclusion that there is no way I can drain the dang thing. What about a siphon? Sure, why not .. nope. I finally realize that I can line the boil kettle with some voile and dump the grains in and sort of do a BIAB thing. Only problem is I don't have any. Well a quick trip to the local fabric shop and I am the proud owner of a couple of yards of voile.
I line the kettle with the voile which of course now has a gallon or two of the wort already in it from the first sparge; no big deal. I'll just heave this 15 pounds of grain swollen with a couple gallons of water plus the five gallon sparge up and over and .. wort and grains everywhere! Most of the grains did end up like I wanted, though, and I sallied forth. I picked up the grain laden voile bag and let the runnings drip into the kettle. What I did not notice was the three inch slit in the middle of the improvised grain bag allowing the grains to plop right into the kettle. Awesome
I have come this far, I am not about to give up now! Using the same technique I rinse the grains in the bag in another kettle of hot water, trying to get as much as possible out of my effort. I strained this into my boil kettle and only got a cup or two of spent grains. This made me feel a little bit better, mayber there was not as much spent grains in the kettle as I thought. Either way it was time to start the boil (finally).
Of course by now I am no longer at 150 degrees; I was lucky if i were even at 60 by this time. No problem, it will just take longer to get to the boil. I just filled the propane tank on Tuesday, it'll be fine. It would have been fine had I remembered to turn it off four hours ago when I heated my sparge water . I did not realize this unitl the first simmerings began. That is exaclty when I ran out of gas. Again, awesome
After a wonderful volley of swearing and stomping around the yard I drain the kettle into a 10 gallon carboy and toss it in the fridge. I figured it was basically pasteurized, what could go wrong with keeping it a couple of days until I could refill my tanks. I finally got around to the boil on Sunday morning with no real setbacks.
TL;DR: The worst day of brewing still beats the best day of work.
I woke up last Thursday about twenty minutes off schedule. I only woke up because those danged robins kept chirping outside of my window. I opened the shades and looked out at a beautiful blue bird morning; no clouds and temperature in the middle twenties. "Perfect day to pull a Ferris Bueller," I thought.
I got around to taking care of the three esses (shower and shave being the last two) and got all the kids roused and out of bed. I let the missus sleep in and took the two oldest kids to school. By the time I had gotten back the temperature had risen to about 40 degrees and the missus was out of bed. I took the dog for a nice long walk; this worked up a real mean thirst.
Being thirsty makes me think of pretty much one thing. Beer. If I were going to get home after walking the dog and have a beer, well then, I should get some brewing done too! And that is just what I did . sort of.
I decided on an IPA. The weather is warming up and this brew would be ready in a few weeks when the sun is out, so why not? I weighed out the grains and milled them with only minor mess. Not bad. I fired up the burner and heated up the strike water, still no problems. Add the water to the grains in the 5 gallon Igloo cooler without spilling a burning myself and I even manage to hit my mash temp of 152 spot on (what a great freaking day!). This should have been a clue of what was to come, though.
While mashing I made some sandwiches and ate, finished the cleaning of the rest of my brewing gear and got ready to sparge by heating up my water. I vorlauf for a little bit until the runnings are clear enough by my standards and proceed to drain the cooler. It is not running too quickly, but I am not concerned. By the end of the sparging process it is barely a trickle. I figure, "I will just readjust the grain bed when I put the sparge water in, no big deal." I dump in the water, put in the mash paddle and . TINK!. Well what the hell was that? Nothing, I am sure everything is fine. Let's try the vorlauf again .. nothing. Nada. Zilch. No flow what so ever.
Crap.
I had knocked the filter off of the drain line and the grain bed immediately settled into the line blocking the flow. After futzing around for about thirty minutes I come to the conclusion that there is no way I can drain the dang thing. What about a siphon? Sure, why not .. nope. I finally realize that I can line the boil kettle with some voile and dump the grains in and sort of do a BIAB thing. Only problem is I don't have any. Well a quick trip to the local fabric shop and I am the proud owner of a couple of yards of voile.
I line the kettle with the voile which of course now has a gallon or two of the wort already in it from the first sparge; no big deal. I'll just heave this 15 pounds of grain swollen with a couple gallons of water plus the five gallon sparge up and over and .. wort and grains everywhere! Most of the grains did end up like I wanted, though, and I sallied forth. I picked up the grain laden voile bag and let the runnings drip into the kettle. What I did not notice was the three inch slit in the middle of the improvised grain bag allowing the grains to plop right into the kettle. Awesome
I have come this far, I am not about to give up now! Using the same technique I rinse the grains in the bag in another kettle of hot water, trying to get as much as possible out of my effort. I strained this into my boil kettle and only got a cup or two of spent grains. This made me feel a little bit better, mayber there was not as much spent grains in the kettle as I thought. Either way it was time to start the boil (finally).
Of course by now I am no longer at 150 degrees; I was lucky if i were even at 60 by this time. No problem, it will just take longer to get to the boil. I just filled the propane tank on Tuesday, it'll be fine. It would have been fine had I remembered to turn it off four hours ago when I heated my sparge water . I did not realize this unitl the first simmerings began. That is exaclty when I ran out of gas. Again, awesome
After a wonderful volley of swearing and stomping around the yard I drain the kettle into a 10 gallon carboy and toss it in the fridge. I figured it was basically pasteurized, what could go wrong with keeping it a couple of days until I could refill my tanks. I finally got around to the boil on Sunday morning with no real setbacks.
TL;DR: The worst day of brewing still beats the best day of work.
