Hello!
First time posting here but have been lurking on the forums for a while now. Mostly just some venting... And sorry for the super long post! Just trying to give as much background info as I can.
Was just about to finish my 4th all grain (BIAB) batch, an intended Grapefruit IPA. (Actually though just a refreshing ipa that I was planning on putting some grapefruit extract into at packaging...) when disaster struck!!!—
My wort chiller was leaking hose water into my wort for about 20min. NOOOOOOOO. haha. About 3 ltrs got in. And my tap water tastes horrible! -which is why, including this time, I always use RO and add salts...- which again makes this even more sad! Also it was the first time I really nailed the mash so even more disappointment there.
Initially I was devastated, but then, after tasting the infected wort and determining that the tap water that went in didn't seem too pronounced, I got on with it to try and salvage the situation.
The thing that complicated this more was that I was already off my OG target because my boil rate was wayyy less that usual, and I didn't realize it until maybe 50 min into the boil, having already introduced my 20min and 10 min hop additions. I use a big low density 3kw element in my brew kettle. It's a great yoke and I find it very reliable, but because it was a lovely day and I decided to change it up and brew outside, I had to use an extension cable to get to a plug(which I checked the rating on it (3.2kw) so assumed that would be ok). But I suspect that the full 3kw capacity wasn't being reached. Am I misunderstanding how this works? I did some brief research on this and it seems that voltage loss is definitely a thing and that I may need something with higher gauge if I'm to do this again -not sure really and need to do more poking around.
Anyway the outcome was that I was about 3 ltrs off my post boil volume already, but to be honest at that point I was just going to go with it and take the lower OG as it wasn't that bad.
But then when the feckin wort chiller leaked and another 3ltrs got in it was way too low-about 10 points lower than my intended(which was 1052 - came out at 1042.)
So I siphoned it into a bucket(it had already gotten down to about 30deg C during chilling), left probably about 90% of the hops in the pot(along with some precious wort unfortunately - although I did filter some of that out later). Then rinsed the pot, siphoned the wort back in and got it boiling again, bringing my OG back up.
Also, as this was intended to be a super hoppy IPA that had loads of late additions and no bittering hops, I was concerned that, because of the extra boil(even with 90% of them removed) the aroma that I wanted would be gone. So I threw in my hops I was intending to use for dry hopping at flame out of this boil to try and compensate. (I've already reordered more for the actual dry hop..)
After tasting the twice boiled wort before and after adding the flame out addition it was definitely significantly more bitter, messing up my intended profile (not that big a deal really) although after adding my aroma hops again it did round it out a good deal. But this time I may have tasted some of my crappy chlorine water as it was more concentrated -- although this very well could've just been in my head as I was really looking for it.
Anyway what do people think? Anyone ever reboiled a wort before like this? Any really horrible consequences? The likelihood that this will turn out just fine and taste like beer is high, but still really curious. I'm more concerned about my tap water coming through than whatever other unintended consequences happen because of my double boil! But couldn't have done anything about that I suppose.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read this!
First time posting here but have been lurking on the forums for a while now. Mostly just some venting... And sorry for the super long post! Just trying to give as much background info as I can.
Was just about to finish my 4th all grain (BIAB) batch, an intended Grapefruit IPA. (Actually though just a refreshing ipa that I was planning on putting some grapefruit extract into at packaging...) when disaster struck!!!—
My wort chiller was leaking hose water into my wort for about 20min. NOOOOOOOO. haha. About 3 ltrs got in. And my tap water tastes horrible! -which is why, including this time, I always use RO and add salts...- which again makes this even more sad! Also it was the first time I really nailed the mash so even more disappointment there.
Initially I was devastated, but then, after tasting the infected wort and determining that the tap water that went in didn't seem too pronounced, I got on with it to try and salvage the situation.
The thing that complicated this more was that I was already off my OG target because my boil rate was wayyy less that usual, and I didn't realize it until maybe 50 min into the boil, having already introduced my 20min and 10 min hop additions. I use a big low density 3kw element in my brew kettle. It's a great yoke and I find it very reliable, but because it was a lovely day and I decided to change it up and brew outside, I had to use an extension cable to get to a plug(which I checked the rating on it (3.2kw) so assumed that would be ok). But I suspect that the full 3kw capacity wasn't being reached. Am I misunderstanding how this works? I did some brief research on this and it seems that voltage loss is definitely a thing and that I may need something with higher gauge if I'm to do this again -not sure really and need to do more poking around.
Anyway the outcome was that I was about 3 ltrs off my post boil volume already, but to be honest at that point I was just going to go with it and take the lower OG as it wasn't that bad.
But then when the feckin wort chiller leaked and another 3ltrs got in it was way too low-about 10 points lower than my intended(which was 1052 - came out at 1042.)
So I siphoned it into a bucket(it had already gotten down to about 30deg C during chilling), left probably about 90% of the hops in the pot(along with some precious wort unfortunately - although I did filter some of that out later). Then rinsed the pot, siphoned the wort back in and got it boiling again, bringing my OG back up.
Also, as this was intended to be a super hoppy IPA that had loads of late additions and no bittering hops, I was concerned that, because of the extra boil(even with 90% of them removed) the aroma that I wanted would be gone. So I threw in my hops I was intending to use for dry hopping at flame out of this boil to try and compensate. (I've already reordered more for the actual dry hop..)
After tasting the twice boiled wort before and after adding the flame out addition it was definitely significantly more bitter, messing up my intended profile (not that big a deal really) although after adding my aroma hops again it did round it out a good deal. But this time I may have tasted some of my crappy chlorine water as it was more concentrated -- although this very well could've just been in my head as I was really looking for it.
Anyway what do people think? Anyone ever reboiled a wort before like this? Any really horrible consequences? The likelihood that this will turn out just fine and taste like beer is high, but still really curious. I'm more concerned about my tap water coming through than whatever other unintended consequences happen because of my double boil! But couldn't have done anything about that I suppose.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read this!
