cbpilot24
New Member
Well let me start off by saying long time reader first time poster. It all started friday night. My girlfriend came over and she was going to help be brew. So I was starting out cleaning everything and sanitizing everything. I was making the batches of solution and asked her to get me the hydrometer and airlock to put into the bucket. She picks up the package with the hydrometer not realizing the one end was open and hydrometer shattered into a million pieces. Seeing how I already had the grains steeping in the water at 160 degrees i figured i will just have to continue without knowing my alcohol %. Nearing the end of the 20 minutes i noticed a smell of something burning. Seeing how I have not added the LME i didn't think it was the wort until I saw black char flakes floating. (Yay for electric stove top). I added the LME and stirred like crazy making sure not to burn the rest of my brew. I figured a few black char flakes will hopefully not ruin the beer. Since I live in an apartment we have a giant ice machine, I had made one run to the machine to start getting a cold bath together. After the 60 minute boil I put the wort into the cold bath and the ice was melting rapidly. I went back to the ice machine to get some more ice but left my keys in my apartment(doors to hallways lock automatically). I was now locked out of my apartment with an open pot of wort sitting in my sink. About 30 minutes later I got someone to let me into my apartment. I then put the wort into the primary fermenting bucket and got the water out of the freezer that I was going to use to help cool the wort quickly. However about half of the 2.5 gallons of water was now frozen in the gallon jugs. So i poured in what I could and tried to melt the rest using some hot water in the sink. After about 20 minutes and having 4.5 gallons in the primary i decided I will just have some strong beer. I took a temperature reading and realized that my wort was now 54 degrees and pretty cold to pitch the yeast. I put the bucket with lid on top into the sink with hot water to raise the temperature. About 2 hours later and 4 water changes i got the temp up to 64 and pitched the yeast. Right now its day 2 post brewing and my air lock is going about a bubble a second and fermenting. However I am afraid that when all is said and done I will have 1. Possible Infection(right now smells like formaldehyde but could be from blueberry vodka in airlock, 2. Terrible tasting due to charred bottom of brew pot, 3. possibly very strong beer since only 4.5 gallons and not 5.
Anyone else with a bad 1st time experience? After doing this once I realize there are a lot of things I would have done differently and 2 a lot of things that were out of my control that happened. Anyone have any advice on what to do differently and what classic infection signs i should be looking for?
Anyone else with a bad 1st time experience? After doing this once I realize there are a lot of things I would have done differently and 2 a lot of things that were out of my control that happened. Anyone have any advice on what to do differently and what classic infection signs i should be looking for?