cvstrat
Well-Known Member
This is probably my 14th or so AG batch and really other than some volume issues I've never really had anything go wrong. I suppose yesterday was my day.
I had made an American stout that I was interested in recreating but with a few changes. I ordered the ingredients for 2 6-gallon batches. The idea was to make them exactly the same but to add 1.2lbs of roasted barley to one in an effort to step it up a bit.
The first mistake I made was leaving the ball valve on my mash tun open and having it located directly above my foot when pouring in my strike water. 168 degrees cuts right through your shoe and melts skin clean off your body
I managed to dough in and hit temps so that was good. During the hour rest I went to CVS for some burn spray. Got back and started sparging, 3.5 gal into the kettle to start warming, sparging off the next 4 gallons. About 2.5 gallons in I manage to tip over the bucket spilling hot wort all over the deck. Luckily none got on me, but what a downer. I managed to end up with 5.5 gallons in the pot instead of 7.5 that I was aiming for.
I decided to attempt to save the beer so I went into promash, locked the ingredients to batch size and bumped down to 4.5gal. I added the hops accordingly. Boiled super gently to maintain as much as possible. Racked over to the carboy and pitched yeast only to realize I never sanitized the carboy. It was clean, but not sanitized. My guess is that it will be fine but still that's something I've never done.
I wasn't drinking. I decided as the sun was going down however that my brew day couldn't end this way. I fired up the strike water for batch 2 and brewed up the second batch w/barley and it went much much better. So now I don't really have a control to compare the barley batch to since the first one was so f'd up, and I wasn't done until about midnight, but I did end up with about 10.5 gallons of American stout, and that's def worth it
I had made an American stout that I was interested in recreating but with a few changes. I ordered the ingredients for 2 6-gallon batches. The idea was to make them exactly the same but to add 1.2lbs of roasted barley to one in an effort to step it up a bit.
The first mistake I made was leaving the ball valve on my mash tun open and having it located directly above my foot when pouring in my strike water. 168 degrees cuts right through your shoe and melts skin clean off your body
I managed to dough in and hit temps so that was good. During the hour rest I went to CVS for some burn spray. Got back and started sparging, 3.5 gal into the kettle to start warming, sparging off the next 4 gallons. About 2.5 gallons in I manage to tip over the bucket spilling hot wort all over the deck. Luckily none got on me, but what a downer. I managed to end up with 5.5 gallons in the pot instead of 7.5 that I was aiming for.
I decided to attempt to save the beer so I went into promash, locked the ingredients to batch size and bumped down to 4.5gal. I added the hops accordingly. Boiled super gently to maintain as much as possible. Racked over to the carboy and pitched yeast only to realize I never sanitized the carboy. It was clean, but not sanitized. My guess is that it will be fine but still that's something I've never done.
I wasn't drinking. I decided as the sun was going down however that my brew day couldn't end this way. I fired up the strike water for batch 2 and brewed up the second batch w/barley and it went much much better. So now I don't really have a control to compare the barley batch to since the first one was so f'd up, and I wasn't done until about midnight, but I did end up with about 10.5 gallons of American stout, and that's def worth it
