What would you have done?

[Whattawort]

Yesterday's brew session was plagued by the infamous Murphy and his annoyingly ominpresent law. My volumes were off, the grind was a little too fine, my pot developed a slow leak etc. But my breaking point was when the screeen came off my mlt during a notoriously stubborn sparge. I had maybe 2 gallons of wort in my pot and the rest was staring and laughing at me from the mlt. I was not about to be mocked by something I will consume, so I did what any dedicated and enraged brewer would do and grabbed the collander from the kitchen and started dumping grain in it over my pot. I eventually got about 7 gallons into my pot, but that wasn't going to be enough for a 5.5gal batch post boil. So what did I do? Glad you asked. It just so happened by buddy was brewing a porter at the same time and had some runnings left, so I used what was there. Still not enough for my target boil volume, but at that point I didn't give a rat's arse. I set the flame and went to deal justice to the screeen and mlt.

How would you have handled it?

 

[unionrdr]

I usually try to sparge up to my partial boil volume of at least 3.5 gallons. no matter what.

 

[Arrheinous]

Had an MLT manifold pop out on me and I had to scoop the grain bed through a strainer/funnel to do my first runnings. Then I could reset it.

If it came down to your situation, I'd probably top it off to the pre-boil volume anyway and make something a bit more sessionable.

 

[Bobbybob]

Shoot it behind the chemical shed.

 

[JustLooking]

RDWHAHB!

I'd been happy with 4 (or whatever) gallons to the fermenter and not stressed myself out.

 

[Whattawort]

Shoot it behind the chemical shed.

My MLT had bruises at the end of the night and the braided hose will probably never be found. I think the only reason I got really stressed about it was because I was showing some extract brewers what AG is all about. While this is going to happen from time to time, it just wasn't something I wanted to deal with. Oh yeah, the pump also crapped out last night. I think I've angered the beer gods.

 

[bethebrew]

My MLT had bruises at the end of the night and the braided hose will probably never be found. I think the only reason I got really stressed about it was because I was showing some extract brewers what AG is all about. While this is going to happen from time to time, it just wasn't something I wanted to deal with. Oh yeah, the pump also crapped out last night. I think I've angered the beer gods.

I use one single 18" long braided hose in the mash tun. Then I let gravity do it's work. Zero stuck mashes.

Yet, when I visit fellow brewers at the club, literally every other time they brew they end up with some kind of stuck mash with the false bottoms and recirculation pumps. Obviously that approach may gain a few points efficiency, but at what expense of money and time screwing with it.