I'm Tired and I Want To Go To Bed

So its 2:30 in the morning and my brew day just ended. It was supposed to be done two and a half hours ago...

I was really excited for today. I had just finished upgrading my set up to use Death Brewer's stove top all grain method (with a few upgrades) and the plan was to take on the Pink Elephant DT clone. :rockin:



So I got everything set up and started my mash. Too bad i decided to forget how to read...Mash at 125 for 10 minutes then heat to 144 for 45 minutes read as mash at 125 for 45 minutes then heat to 144. So I mashed in, set the timer for 45 and walked away. Rereading my schedule 40 minutes in I realize my mistake. That was 45 minutes lost and I was a bit annoyed.

With the mash over it was time to pull the bag and let it drain. While holding 12 lbs of grain soaked in water over the pot (arms getting tired), the bag begins to rip...I do not have an extra. So on to a combination of a colander and a few pots and pans to collect the sweet liquid. More time lost and i still have to sparge. So I stiched up the bag quickly and sparged drained and started my boil.

Since the set up is new I never figured out my boil off and had too much water in the pot. My 90 minute boil turned into 120. Not to mention that I totally forgot to the the candi sugar and didnt have enough cane sugar for the recipe. I tossed in what I had and will have to toss some more into the carboy later on. Now its late and im a bit pissed off but i cooled, transferred to the carboy, aerated and pitched the yeast. All that is left now is the clean up.

In my tired mind dumping the hops into the garbage disposal seemed like an easy and convenient way to get rid of them...I was very wrong The hops won that battle and I spent 30 minutes scooping them out and plunging to get any water to drain.

With all the mistakes and mishaps I can at least say that I hit my target OG (adjusted for the lack of sugar) and everything seemed to turn out just fine in the end So now its almost 3 am and I will finally be going to bed. I needed to vent a bit and hope you enjoyed my reading about my pain.

 

ooh, I hope your stove looked like that before you brewed or you cleaned up before your wife saw it... I would be on the couch for days if I didn't clean up the stove.

Also, the mash was really only at 145? Isn't that low for conversion?
I am too afraid to brew in the evening for exactly this reason. Like last Saturday when I got an early morning start to the brewing but realized just as I was getting setup that my mash paddle and star san were 45min away. Had to take a 1.5 hour round trip to go collect them.

At least in the end you have a beer fermenting!

 

There is no wife at home to complain about the stove so no worries there! I could have cleaned it but I figured I'd wait till I finished this batch. No sense in risking another mess . Turned out there was another one...

There was another step of up to 158 for another 30 minutes that i managed to pull off with no problems. Now im hopeing to get home from work to a happily bubbling fermenter

Ive done all my brewing at night after work because my weekends are usually too hectic and the girlfriend might kill me I was brewing instead of spending time with her!

 

Did you have a little drink about an hour ago? Did it go right to your head?

Sorry, I had to. I've been there. I started brewing a big IIPA in the evening thinking it wouldn't take too long and I ended up pulling the wort chiller out at 1:30am.

 

​

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like ol' squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got...lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces.

Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He's a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

 

Lack of sleep + beer + frustration = ramblings

 

No he's not married.................

 

Yep just got the reference...I guess I need some more sleep. i'm a bit slower than usual today

 

That monologue was a spectacular piece of acting by an excellent actor.