We all have that "Murphy's Law" batch.. you know the one.. where NOTHING goes right?
I just had my first one since returning to brewing... not bad though, considering it took more than half a dozen batches to do it. Since I'm still dealing with so may variables in my process (although I am starting to lock it down) as well as equipment, sometimes things don't go *quite* as planned.
So about a month ago, I started my "Club Doze Black IPA". I'm a huge fan of Otter Creek's Alpine Black IPA, so I wanted to try my own. So I order the kit the MoreBeer, and when it came in, I planned my brew day.
Brew day came and I'm out in the garage. I've got some good electric blues cranking out of my stereo, and my mash water is coming to a boil. I did all my math up front, double-checked the answers and wrote them all down. I was ready.
First fail: mash water and grains didn't fit in my Igloo beverage cooler. I didn't figure that out until it was too late. I sent my g/f into the house with orders to SCRUB out the "big block" cooler (or whatever it's called) because my old rectangular mash tun was missing the spigot (which I'd removed to use on the round Igloo). Of course, the Big Block cooler was just at camp with us and still had ice in it...
She got the Big Block scrubbed in record time (just as I was moving the Igloo and contents into the kitchen... it was getting dark outside), so I plopped the bag of grains into it, dumped the sweet liquor already in the Igloo cooler, then dumped the rest of my mash water on top of it. Of course, by this time, the mash water temp had dropped to about 140F. I pulled a couple big pots out of the cabinet, filled them with water and put them on the stove to heat up. I also put the pot that came with my turkey fryer on the fryer, about half full of water and cranked it ALL the way up.
We quickly wrapped the Big Block cooler with towels and blankets to keep it as warm as we could. As the water on the stove and in the turkey fryer came to a boil, I just dumped it into the Big Block, opening the grain bag (which I had to tie a knot in because it's too small for the Big Block cooler) and giving it all a good stir before loosely knotting the bag and closing the lid then replacing all the blankets and towels.
By the time we got all the water into the Big Block, I'd managed to raise the mash temp to about 152F. That would have to be close enough.
Pretty much the rest of that process when fine. Of course, the adrenaline was pumping from the whole mash tun issue incident...
Fast forward a month... or, rather, three weeks. I'd been reading threads here on dry-hopping since I'd never done it before. Some folks had luck with just tossing the pellets in, others used a bag of some sort... about a 50/50 split. I decided to bag up the hops when the time came.
When the time *did* come, and for whatever reason, I dumped prolly 4-5 ounces of pellets directly into the fermenter, completely forgetting that I was going to use a bag. I didn't think of it again until last might it came time to bottle it.
"Wow, lots of floaties", the woman commented. Yup. That's because her dumbassed b/f forgot to bag up the pellets. So we gave it a try anyway.
I boiled my sugar and dumped that in, got my siphon primed with star san, with the tip of the siphon about halfway in the ferment, placed the plastic glass on the floor and gently touched the wand to the bottom of the glass to get it started, and start it did!
The wand then proceeded to get clogged up with hops bits.... not a "blocked it until there was a trickle, but plugged it up like concrete constipation. It took the better part of 20 minutes to finally get something set up so that I could back flush the wand and wash all the hops out of it. Many expletives were uttered.
Well this isn't gonna be a problem, I was thinking to myself. I got that new 1/2" auto siphon that I'll give a try, even though it had never really worked for me before in test runs. So I grabbend the pieces, went to the sink (one of which is full of oxyclean) and began washing the autosiphon.
I primed the siphon and pushed the "handle" back in and WHOOOOOSH! holy sh*t, lookit that thing go! Same when I sanitized it.. I sprayed star san all over the kitchen! There was much rejoicing.
So I connect the tube to it, drop it into the fermenter and primed it. Of course, it promptly clogged up. As in concrete constipation.
Frustrated, I threw the auto siphon into the sink, sprayed the hell out of the inside of the lid, snapped it back on the bucket and put it in the refrigerator. Screw it. Cold crash and revisit tomorrow.
So tomorrow turns into today, and I pull the bucket out of the fridge and gently open it. Sure enough, there were VERY few hops bits floating. In fact, there was about a dozen chunks. Sweet. It worked.
I re-cleaned and re-sanitized everything, boiled my BiaB bag and soaked it in star san, with the intention of putting it in my bottling bucket and using it to sieve out the bits and trub and whatnot... bag is now clamped into place, siphon is primed with star san, I place the siphon about halfway into the bucket, put the other end of the hose into the bottling bucket, and..... NOTHING.
I looked up and saw that the TUBE WAS CLOGGED.
So, gentle reader, I must admit that I was less than pleased and didn't really care at this point, because the brew was f*cked from the get-go, so I just dumped it into the bottle bucket, screaming expletives at it the whole time. I don't really give two craps about aeration or oxidation or martian anal probes at this point, I just want the f*cking beer in the f*cking bottle.
Once the beer was poured into the bottling bucket, I moved the top of the bag completely to one side, put the primed siphon in the bucket (all the way to the bottom, mind you!!) and started the flow. Once the star san was pushed out and it was flowing beer, I filled my hydrometer tube (oh yeah.. don't ask me about OG and FG, because I'm NOT going to tell you), took a reading, then took a sip out of the tube.
Holy SH*T good!
No kidding. Frigging YUMMY. I poured myself half a 12oz glass and proceeded to sip on it as I was bottling.
So.. assuming something I did last night or today didn't infect the beer, it's gonna be tasty. Great hops explosion in my mouth, perfectly balanced... I may have gotten myself a refill..
So anyway.. here I sit after what was the worst batch nightmare to date, rather hopeful that in a couple of weeks I'll have a good BIPA session beer.
I just had my first one since returning to brewing... not bad though, considering it took more than half a dozen batches to do it. Since I'm still dealing with so may variables in my process (although I am starting to lock it down) as well as equipment, sometimes things don't go *quite* as planned.
So about a month ago, I started my "Club Doze Black IPA". I'm a huge fan of Otter Creek's Alpine Black IPA, so I wanted to try my own. So I order the kit the MoreBeer, and when it came in, I planned my brew day.
Brew day came and I'm out in the garage. I've got some good electric blues cranking out of my stereo, and my mash water is coming to a boil. I did all my math up front, double-checked the answers and wrote them all down. I was ready.
First fail: mash water and grains didn't fit in my Igloo beverage cooler. I didn't figure that out until it was too late. I sent my g/f into the house with orders to SCRUB out the "big block" cooler (or whatever it's called) because my old rectangular mash tun was missing the spigot (which I'd removed to use on the round Igloo). Of course, the Big Block cooler was just at camp with us and still had ice in it...
She got the Big Block scrubbed in record time (just as I was moving the Igloo and contents into the kitchen... it was getting dark outside), so I plopped the bag of grains into it, dumped the sweet liquor already in the Igloo cooler, then dumped the rest of my mash water on top of it. Of course, by this time, the mash water temp had dropped to about 140F. I pulled a couple big pots out of the cabinet, filled them with water and put them on the stove to heat up. I also put the pot that came with my turkey fryer on the fryer, about half full of water and cranked it ALL the way up.
We quickly wrapped the Big Block cooler with towels and blankets to keep it as warm as we could. As the water on the stove and in the turkey fryer came to a boil, I just dumped it into the Big Block, opening the grain bag (which I had to tie a knot in because it's too small for the Big Block cooler) and giving it all a good stir before loosely knotting the bag and closing the lid then replacing all the blankets and towels.
By the time we got all the water into the Big Block, I'd managed to raise the mash temp to about 152F. That would have to be close enough.
Pretty much the rest of that process when fine. Of course, the adrenaline was pumping from the whole mash tun issue incident...
Fast forward a month... or, rather, three weeks. I'd been reading threads here on dry-hopping since I'd never done it before. Some folks had luck with just tossing the pellets in, others used a bag of some sort... about a 50/50 split. I decided to bag up the hops when the time came.
When the time *did* come, and for whatever reason, I dumped prolly 4-5 ounces of pellets directly into the fermenter, completely forgetting that I was going to use a bag. I didn't think of it again until last might it came time to bottle it.
"Wow, lots of floaties", the woman commented. Yup. That's because her dumbassed b/f forgot to bag up the pellets. So we gave it a try anyway.
I boiled my sugar and dumped that in, got my siphon primed with star san, with the tip of the siphon about halfway in the ferment, placed the plastic glass on the floor and gently touched the wand to the bottom of the glass to get it started, and start it did!
The wand then proceeded to get clogged up with hops bits.... not a "blocked it until there was a trickle, but plugged it up like concrete constipation. It took the better part of 20 minutes to finally get something set up so that I could back flush the wand and wash all the hops out of it. Many expletives were uttered.
Well this isn't gonna be a problem, I was thinking to myself. I got that new 1/2" auto siphon that I'll give a try, even though it had never really worked for me before in test runs. So I grabbend the pieces, went to the sink (one of which is full of oxyclean) and began washing the autosiphon.
I primed the siphon and pushed the "handle" back in and WHOOOOOSH! holy sh*t, lookit that thing go! Same when I sanitized it.. I sprayed star san all over the kitchen! There was much rejoicing.
So I connect the tube to it, drop it into the fermenter and primed it. Of course, it promptly clogged up. As in concrete constipation.
Frustrated, I threw the auto siphon into the sink, sprayed the hell out of the inside of the lid, snapped it back on the bucket and put it in the refrigerator. Screw it. Cold crash and revisit tomorrow.
So tomorrow turns into today, and I pull the bucket out of the fridge and gently open it. Sure enough, there were VERY few hops bits floating. In fact, there was about a dozen chunks. Sweet. It worked.
I re-cleaned and re-sanitized everything, boiled my BiaB bag and soaked it in star san, with the intention of putting it in my bottling bucket and using it to sieve out the bits and trub and whatnot... bag is now clamped into place, siphon is primed with star san, I place the siphon about halfway into the bucket, put the other end of the hose into the bottling bucket, and..... NOTHING.
I looked up and saw that the TUBE WAS CLOGGED.
So, gentle reader, I must admit that I was less than pleased and didn't really care at this point, because the brew was f*cked from the get-go, so I just dumped it into the bottle bucket, screaming expletives at it the whole time. I don't really give two craps about aeration or oxidation or martian anal probes at this point, I just want the f*cking beer in the f*cking bottle.
Once the beer was poured into the bottling bucket, I moved the top of the bag completely to one side, put the primed siphon in the bucket (all the way to the bottom, mind you!!) and started the flow. Once the star san was pushed out and it was flowing beer, I filled my hydrometer tube (oh yeah.. don't ask me about OG and FG, because I'm NOT going to tell you), took a reading, then took a sip out of the tube.
Holy SH*T good!
No kidding. Frigging YUMMY. I poured myself half a 12oz glass and proceeded to sip on it as I was bottling.
So.. assuming something I did last night or today didn't infect the beer, it's gonna be tasty. Great hops explosion in my mouth, perfectly balanced... I may have gotten myself a refill..
So anyway.. here I sit after what was the worst batch nightmare to date, rather hopeful that in a couple of weeks I'll have a good BIPA session beer.
