Hi All,
Thought I'd share some excerpts from my wonderful brew day yesterday, see if anyone gets a chuckle. To cut down on bulk, I'll only mention the things that went wrong.
-Get distracted mid way through filtering some water, and walk away until the water has overflowed the bucket for at least 10 minutes (thankfully into a sink).
-Go downstairs to mill grain. Check gap with feeler gauge, then use some sacraficial two row to clear any oil on rollers (new guage). Load up the hopper and start milling. Realize after milling the entire bucket that I just milled my base stock of 2 row, not my recipe (13 lbs of milled 2 row - guess I'm brewing next week too).
-Start milling my recipe, since the special grains are already mixed in. Battery dies on my good drill. Since my MLT is cooling to dough in temp quickly, I franticly seaching for corded drill. Scream through remainder of grain. Crappy drill has 2 settings: stalled and way to fast.
-Realize after sealing up my mash tun that I forgot to add brewing salts and PH5.2. Quickly measured, added, and stirred. Only lost 1 degree.
-Mash and most of the boil went ok. Hit my temp and held. Good preboil volume. Good hot break.
-With 10 minutes left in the boil, add my immersion chiller. Accidentally bump the hop spider, and the whole thing falls in. Scald myself getting it out. Swear profusely.
-Finish my boil. Pull everything inside for a whirlpool. After pulling out hop bag any immersion chiller, I realize I boiled off a little more than usual. I'm limited by a 7.5 gallon kettle, so I normally have to top up a little. Confirmed a high OG - I'm five points high of my target OG: 1.051. Add previously boiled water to bring it down to the target OG.... and miss.. by 3 points! Now I'm at 1.048. Swear again.
-Rack to 6.5 Gallon carboy. Realize the extra water put me all the way up to the shoulder. This thing is going to blow off for sure. Oh well, put on blow off tube and hope for the best.
-Start cleaning. Get water everywhere. Stay up way too late restoring order to keep SWMBO approval rating.
That's about it. I'm sure the beer will be good, but a 12 hour brew day sure takes it out of you. And I'm pretty much commited to another one next weekend to use up the accidentally milled 2 row.
Thought I'd share some excerpts from my wonderful brew day yesterday, see if anyone gets a chuckle. To cut down on bulk, I'll only mention the things that went wrong.
-Get distracted mid way through filtering some water, and walk away until the water has overflowed the bucket for at least 10 minutes (thankfully into a sink).
-Go downstairs to mill grain. Check gap with feeler gauge, then use some sacraficial two row to clear any oil on rollers (new guage). Load up the hopper and start milling. Realize after milling the entire bucket that I just milled my base stock of 2 row, not my recipe (13 lbs of milled 2 row - guess I'm brewing next week too).
-Start milling my recipe, since the special grains are already mixed in. Battery dies on my good drill. Since my MLT is cooling to dough in temp quickly, I franticly seaching for corded drill. Scream through remainder of grain. Crappy drill has 2 settings: stalled and way to fast.
-Realize after sealing up my mash tun that I forgot to add brewing salts and PH5.2. Quickly measured, added, and stirred. Only lost 1 degree.
-Mash and most of the boil went ok. Hit my temp and held. Good preboil volume. Good hot break.
-With 10 minutes left in the boil, add my immersion chiller. Accidentally bump the hop spider, and the whole thing falls in. Scald myself getting it out. Swear profusely.
-Finish my boil. Pull everything inside for a whirlpool. After pulling out hop bag any immersion chiller, I realize I boiled off a little more than usual. I'm limited by a 7.5 gallon kettle, so I normally have to top up a little. Confirmed a high OG - I'm five points high of my target OG: 1.051. Add previously boiled water to bring it down to the target OG.... and miss.. by 3 points! Now I'm at 1.048. Swear again.
-Rack to 6.5 Gallon carboy. Realize the extra water put me all the way up to the shoulder. This thing is going to blow off for sure. Oh well, put on blow off tube and hope for the best.
-Start cleaning. Get water everywhere. Stay up way too late restoring order to keep SWMBO approval rating.
That's about it. I'm sure the beer will be good, but a 12 hour brew day sure takes it out of you. And I'm pretty much commited to another one next weekend to use up the accidentally milled 2 row.
