(Note: This is long. TLDR at the bottom.)
Labor Day Weekend is a pretty big deal for most of us homebrewers. A three day weekend is great because it lets us have a day to relax, a day to meet social social obligations (read: keep SWMBO happy), and a day to - what else? - brew some beer!
This brewday was particularly exciting for me because it's been 22 months since I brewed - life got in the way something fierce - and I have an all-new, all grain setup. Shiny new mash tun, mash paddle, PH meter and testing sachets, brew kettle, corded remote oven thermometer. I even have a new driveway to brew in! Gonna be sweeeeeeeeeet. :rockin:
I assembled my mash tun and kettle valve last week. Went pretty easily. There were some missing parts in the mash tun box from Midwest but it was just some clamps. I doubt it's a problem, the hose fits on really tight.
All my prep is done except:
And that's NBD. I'll even have some spare time during the 90 minute mash, so I can hit the gym while I wait and do the cleaning during the boil. This could be my tightest, most productive brewday yet!
Pizza, diet coke, brew kit. I'm ready to rock!
I measure in my specialty grains, and heat my mash water. Sun is beating down from overhead but I don't even care. I'm brewing again!
As I'm doughing in, I feel pretty good. There are some doughballs but nothing I can't handle. Wham! Pow! Fixed. I temp my mash and I'm a few degrees low, so I close the tun and boil a little water. That accomplished, I open 'er up and pour it in, stirring vigorously.
Wait. Why is there a piece of tubing floating in there? How did that even get in there, I am such a dummy. I fish it out and close the tun, and then it hits me.
My tun's valve is no longer connected to the false bottom!
****, ****, ****. No time to think about it, I pour my mash into the HLT and go about fixing the false bottom's connector. I don't have any clamps or nylon string, so all I can do is rinse the husks out from under the false bottom and reattach the tube. I won't be stirring the mash again so it's probably fine.
That accomplished I pour the mash back into my mash tun and re-temp it. Apparently I lost about fifteen degrees pouring it between the two vessels. That sounds high, but whatever. I heat up some more water and stir it in.
Again I seal the mash tun, and begin heating sparge water (and cleaning my poor, abused HLT.)
Mash ends and I begin vorlauf. I've never done it before, but it only takes me a little while to get the hang of it. Pour the cloudy wort back in gently, and only open the valve a little bit. My gravity sample goes well:
Corrected for temperature, my first runnings are 1.076. That's way higher than I expected! I have amazing efficiency! Excited, I heat up a few gallons of sparge water to 175 and mashout.
While I'm temp-correcting the second runnings gravity sample, I do a double take: it reads 130something until I blink, and now it's 140. I must have misread it the first time.
Even with topoff water, the gravity is much higher than expected after correction. I run the numbers to see if I can get correct bittering if I increase the batch size: unfortunately, I just don't have the hops. This is going to be an ESB, not an ordinary bitter?
I make a mental note to buy extra hops next time, and also to do the math before I mash out.
Beer comes to a boil and I begin the cleanup. I almost forgot to toss in a campden tablet, which I do. I've already got my PBW, carboy brush, starsan, scrubbies. Gonna be a piece of cake. My hose, however, is gone. The spool only has a single ten-foot section of hose and the spigot is seventy feet away. I call the local building supply store, but they're closed for labor day. **** **** **** ****. Obviously, I can't leave the burner on while I run to the store.
I ask SWMBO if she can watch the burner but she offers to hop on her bike and go buy hoses at Wal-Mart, two miles away. Gratefully I accept, but now I need to watch the kids and all they want to do is root through everything in the garage.
By the time SWMBO gets back all I've had time to do is hop additions. I kill the heat, toss in my flameout hops, hook up the hose and grab my wort chiller. Wow, looks gross. I - wait.
There is verdigris all. Over. My chiller.
Deep breath. I, oh, wow. I experimentally try to lift the kettle and burn my hands, because I'm an idiot. It's hot, but also really heavy and I don't think I'm going to get it up a flight of stairs to the bathtub. Actually, that bathtub is vinyl, so I'd need to get it up the stairs and through the house to the ceramic tub. An ice bath is therefore out of the question.
I decide all I can do is clean the chiller. Vinegar's supposed to be good for that. Except, uh, SWMBO seems to have locked me out.
Maybe she's mad that I made her bike across town? I don't have time to think about it, I just hightail it to the backdoor. She'd have to go out of her way to lock that one.
...And it's locked too. My flameout hops are cooking longer and longer as I hammer on the doors, shouting, slowly morphing into a deranged hellbeast. Sweat drenches me and at one point I may actually have said "Let me into my goddamn house, woman" - if SWMBO wasn't mad at me before, she is now that I've become the living embodiment of Springer Show Dad.
She finally lets me in ("I don't know how that door got locked") and I grab the vinegar and more scrubbies. Get back outside, but scrubbing verdigris off is slow work. It's forty minutes before I'm done, but I finally have it cleaned off and immersed. The beer is cooling.
I take another hydro sample to check post-boil/starting gravity. Huh, that's so much darker than I expected. Why did I extract so much color this time? I know my efficiency was really high but
smash
hahaha that's fine hahaha haha **** **** ass **** i'll calculate the approximate gravity by taking the pre-boil and reducing the volume to the post-boil quantity and
I'm temping the wort as it chills, but the meter says it's 115 degrees. The sides of my kettle are ice cold. I experimentally move the probe around, but no: it's just plain wrong.
Son of a *****.
It is at this point that I crack open a beer. A Smuttynose IPA, by brewers more competent than me. I had been brewing sober to minimize errors, but that doesn't matter now. None of this matters now.
I pull out my thermometer and it continues to insist that the world is a blazing inferno, measuring the shade temperature at 105 degrees. I'm through the Smuttynose in no time so I move on to a Dark Penance and then a 603 Rye Pale Ale.
Bafflingly, my wort is still ***ked, even after two high gravity beers. Drunkenly, I review the facts:
The hydro sample tastes a little metallic and astringent, though it could easily be my imagination. Not knowing what else to do, I Star San the carboy and put the beer in it. The kettle valve makes this absurdly easy, and somewhere in my drunken, wrathful mind I reflect that's a nice thing.
I go over to the minifridge. STC-1000 temp controller is dead and I can't figure out why. Swearing again, I take it apart. Twenty minutes later I don't know why it doesn't work, but when I plug it in to test with a multimeter it works now. Fine, **** it, who cares.
I open the fridge and it's a disaster. I think back, and vaguely recall I used it as a kegerator for the housewarming party, and that I left my brother in charge of beer. Son of a *****. No, I don't care. Won't hurt the beer. I pour the yeast in, go to tape the thermoprobe but the tape's gone. Of course it's gone. One of the kids popped the spool of tape out of the dispenser when I was babysitting them, back when my wife was buying the hose.
I sheetrock tape the electrode to the carboy inside my filthy ****ing fermentation fridge and close the Goddamn door. I hear something rattle, I open the door again and the sheetrock tape isn't holding. **** it, I close the door and walk away, I don't even care anymore.
TL;DR, broken thermometer, broken hydrometer, corroded chiller. Too much campden may have left my wort inhospitable to yeast.
Labor Day Weekend is a pretty big deal for most of us homebrewers. A three day weekend is great because it lets us have a day to relax, a day to meet social social obligations (read: keep SWMBO happy), and a day to - what else? - brew some beer!
This brewday was particularly exciting for me because it's been 22 months since I brewed - life got in the way something fierce - and I have an all-new, all grain setup. Shiny new mash tun, mash paddle, PH meter and testing sachets, brew kettle, corded remote oven thermometer. I even have a new driveway to brew in! Gonna be sweeeeeeeeeet. :rockin:
I assembled my mash tun and kettle valve last week. Went pretty easily. There were some missing parts in the mash tun box from Midwest but it was just some clamps. I doubt it's a problem, the hose fits on really tight.
All my prep is done except:
- Cleaning a carboy
- Cleaning the fermenter fridge
- Cleaning the wort chiller, which has been in one garage or another since my last brew in November '13
And that's NBD. I'll even have some spare time during the 90 minute mash, so I can hit the gym while I wait and do the cleaning during the boil. This could be my tightest, most productive brewday yet!
Pizza, diet coke, brew kit. I'm ready to rock!
I measure in my specialty grains, and heat my mash water. Sun is beating down from overhead but I don't even care. I'm brewing again!
As I'm doughing in, I feel pretty good. There are some doughballs but nothing I can't handle. Wham! Pow! Fixed. I temp my mash and I'm a few degrees low, so I close the tun and boil a little water. That accomplished, I open 'er up and pour it in, stirring vigorously.
Wait. Why is there a piece of tubing floating in there? How did that even get in there, I am such a dummy. I fish it out and close the tun, and then it hits me.
My tun's valve is no longer connected to the false bottom!
****, ****, ****. No time to think about it, I pour my mash into the HLT and go about fixing the false bottom's connector. I don't have any clamps or nylon string, so all I can do is rinse the husks out from under the false bottom and reattach the tube. I won't be stirring the mash again so it's probably fine.
That accomplished I pour the mash back into my mash tun and re-temp it. Apparently I lost about fifteen degrees pouring it between the two vessels. That sounds high, but whatever. I heat up some more water and stir it in.
Again I seal the mash tun, and begin heating sparge water (and cleaning my poor, abused HLT.)
Mash ends and I begin vorlauf. I've never done it before, but it only takes me a little while to get the hang of it. Pour the cloudy wort back in gently, and only open the valve a little bit. My gravity sample goes well:
Corrected for temperature, my first runnings are 1.076. That's way higher than I expected! I have amazing efficiency! Excited, I heat up a few gallons of sparge water to 175 and mashout.
While I'm temp-correcting the second runnings gravity sample, I do a double take: it reads 130something until I blink, and now it's 140. I must have misread it the first time.
Even with topoff water, the gravity is much higher than expected after correction. I run the numbers to see if I can get correct bittering if I increase the batch size: unfortunately, I just don't have the hops. This is going to be an ESB, not an ordinary bitter?
I make a mental note to buy extra hops next time, and also to do the math before I mash out.
Beer comes to a boil and I begin the cleanup. I almost forgot to toss in a campden tablet, which I do. I've already got my PBW, carboy brush, starsan, scrubbies. Gonna be a piece of cake. My hose, however, is gone. The spool only has a single ten-foot section of hose and the spigot is seventy feet away. I call the local building supply store, but they're closed for labor day. **** **** **** ****. Obviously, I can't leave the burner on while I run to the store.
I ask SWMBO if she can watch the burner but she offers to hop on her bike and go buy hoses at Wal-Mart, two miles away. Gratefully I accept, but now I need to watch the kids and all they want to do is root through everything in the garage.
By the time SWMBO gets back all I've had time to do is hop additions. I kill the heat, toss in my flameout hops, hook up the hose and grab my wort chiller. Wow, looks gross. I - wait.
There is verdigris all. Over. My chiller.
Deep breath. I, oh, wow. I experimentally try to lift the kettle and burn my hands, because I'm an idiot. It's hot, but also really heavy and I don't think I'm going to get it up a flight of stairs to the bathtub. Actually, that bathtub is vinyl, so I'd need to get it up the stairs and through the house to the ceramic tub. An ice bath is therefore out of the question.
I decide all I can do is clean the chiller. Vinegar's supposed to be good for that. Except, uh, SWMBO seems to have locked me out.
Maybe she's mad that I made her bike across town? I don't have time to think about it, I just hightail it to the backdoor. She'd have to go out of her way to lock that one.
...And it's locked too. My flameout hops are cooking longer and longer as I hammer on the doors, shouting, slowly morphing into a deranged hellbeast. Sweat drenches me and at one point I may actually have said "Let me into my goddamn house, woman" - if SWMBO wasn't mad at me before, she is now that I've become the living embodiment of Springer Show Dad.
She finally lets me in ("I don't know how that door got locked") and I grab the vinegar and more scrubbies. Get back outside, but scrubbing verdigris off is slow work. It's forty minutes before I'm done, but I finally have it cleaned off and immersed. The beer is cooling.
I take another hydro sample to check post-boil/starting gravity. Huh, that's so much darker than I expected. Why did I extract so much color this time? I know my efficiency was really high but
smash
hahaha that's fine hahaha haha **** **** ass **** i'll calculate the approximate gravity by taking the pre-boil and reducing the volume to the post-boil quantity and
I'm temping the wort as it chills, but the meter says it's 115 degrees. The sides of my kettle are ice cold. I experimentally move the probe around, but no: it's just plain wrong.
Son of a *****.
It is at this point that I crack open a beer. A Smuttynose IPA, by brewers more competent than me. I had been brewing sober to minimize errors, but that doesn't matter now. None of this matters now.
I pull out my thermometer and it continues to insist that the world is a blazing inferno, measuring the shade temperature at 105 degrees. I'm through the Smuttynose in no time so I move on to a Dark Penance and then a 603 Rye Pale Ale.
Bafflingly, my wort is still ***ked, even after two high gravity beers. Drunkenly, I review the facts:
- I have no idea what my actual gravity readings were at any point
- I have no idea what my actual mash temperature was
- I shouldn't have used an entire campden tablet for a nine-gallon boil
The hydro sample tastes a little metallic and astringent, though it could easily be my imagination. Not knowing what else to do, I Star San the carboy and put the beer in it. The kettle valve makes this absurdly easy, and somewhere in my drunken, wrathful mind I reflect that's a nice thing.
I go over to the minifridge. STC-1000 temp controller is dead and I can't figure out why. Swearing again, I take it apart. Twenty minutes later I don't know why it doesn't work, but when I plug it in to test with a multimeter it works now. Fine, **** it, who cares.
I open the fridge and it's a disaster. I think back, and vaguely recall I used it as a kegerator for the housewarming party, and that I left my brother in charge of beer. Son of a *****. No, I don't care. Won't hurt the beer. I pour the yeast in, go to tape the thermoprobe but the tape's gone. Of course it's gone. One of the kids popped the spool of tape out of the dispenser when I was babysitting them, back when my wife was buying the hose.
I sheetrock tape the electrode to the carboy inside my filthy ****ing fermentation fridge and close the Goddamn door. I hear something rattle, I open the door again and the sheetrock tape isn't holding. **** it, I close the door and walk away, I don't even care anymore.
TL;DR, broken thermometer, broken hydrometer, corroded chiller. Too much campden may have left my wort inhospitable to yeast.
