knappster
Well-Known Member
I was brewing midwest supply's copper ale yesterday afternoon and I was monitoring the temperature as I was bringing everything up to a boil (grains had been steeped and malt had been added). I was hoping to ease off the heat as I approached the boiling point because I was doing 2ish gallons and I was on an electric stove so I didn't want to have a boilover. In any case, I was stirring and noticed something scraping the bottom of the brewpot.
Lo and behold the glass around the thermometer broke, dropping broken glass, steel BBs and wax into my beer. I figured I had come this far, so I did my boil, cooled, and siphoned it into the fermenter, leaving about 1/2" of wort above the trub in the pot, hoping to keep glass and BBs on the bottom. I attempted to use a coffee filter over the bottom of the racking cane, but was unable to get a siphon started that way, so I just siphoned from the top as best I could.
The good news is that I found about 10 pieces of glass and a ton of BBs at the bottom of the kettle after carefully pouring out the rest of the wort and trub. The bad news is that 10 pieces of glass means that there were a lot of fractures. I am concerned of the unlikely event that a sliver of glass could have made its way through the siphon and will find its way into mine or worse yet, somebody else's digestive tract and wreak havoc.
I was just gonna let it ferment until I dump it to brew something else, but I'm starting to consider completing it and racking half into a bottling bucket, filtered through cheesecloth and then dumping the other half. Should I use something other than cheesecloth? Would I have to add more yeast for bottling if I filtered it through cheesecloth or something else?
Any other suggestions? I have read a lot of threads where people had this same issue and weren't sure whether to dump it or not, but nobody ever responded with what they did and how it turned out.
Lo and behold the glass around the thermometer broke, dropping broken glass, steel BBs and wax into my beer. I figured I had come this far, so I did my boil, cooled, and siphoned it into the fermenter, leaving about 1/2" of wort above the trub in the pot, hoping to keep glass and BBs on the bottom. I attempted to use a coffee filter over the bottom of the racking cane, but was unable to get a siphon started that way, so I just siphoned from the top as best I could.
The good news is that I found about 10 pieces of glass and a ton of BBs at the bottom of the kettle after carefully pouring out the rest of the wort and trub. The bad news is that 10 pieces of glass means that there were a lot of fractures. I am concerned of the unlikely event that a sliver of glass could have made its way through the siphon and will find its way into mine or worse yet, somebody else's digestive tract and wreak havoc.
I was just gonna let it ferment until I dump it to brew something else, but I'm starting to consider completing it and racking half into a bottling bucket, filtered through cheesecloth and then dumping the other half. Should I use something other than cheesecloth? Would I have to add more yeast for bottling if I filtered it through cheesecloth or something else?
Any other suggestions? I have read a lot of threads where people had this same issue and weren't sure whether to dump it or not, but nobody ever responded with what they did and how it turned out.