Brew Day Disaster

[bassbone]

So I had a little free time this morning before having to be at work this afternoon. Why not knock out that KBS clone I've been wanting to do?

I had previously brewed Orfy's Mild and had a cake of Nottingham waiting for the stout.

Mash/Sparge Boiling all were great. Hit 75% brewhouse eff which was a little higher that I was expecting given the high gravity.

And then I tried to chill it. I had (notice past tense) been using a homemade immersion chiller that was working quite well for me. And then when I had the beer down to 108 deg F the damn thing broke. Not nearly enough ice on hand and no time to go get ice or wait for the fridge to cool it down to pitching temp (had to leave for work in 30 min, and leaving the state for the weekend from work).

So I had to choose between (1) pitching onto the cake at 108 and hope that the coffee, chocolate and bourbon drown out the esters or (2) throw the fermenter into the fridge without yeast and hope that the 4 day head start for bugs doesn't come back to bite me in the a@#.

I went with choice 1 with a blowoff tube (and then cranked the fridge up to its coldest setting and threw the beer in there). By the time I left for work a half hour later the bubbling had already started.

So in a strong beer like this (that will hopefully be down to proper temp by morning) how likely does everybody think it is that I end up with bourbon barrel ester stout?

 

[Baron von BeeGee]

Wow, no idea, but report back with results! Also, we're all between brew day disasters for as long as we're brewing.

 

[str8wire]

So did you leave the state with the beer in the fridge at its coldest setting? True fridge cold, like 36, or fermintation fridge cold like 50?

 

[bassbone]

true cold (35 ish). I wanted to get it down to the proper temp as quickly as possible.

Someone has keys to my apartment and will be taking the fermenter out of the fridge tomorrow if it is at the right temp or turning the fridge temp up if it is not there yet.

 

[Docjowles]

I feel you man. I recently got screwed by my immersion chiller (ok in reality, I screwed it )

Put the thing in the kettle about 5 minutes before flameout and wandered off to sanitize my fermenter or whatever. Came back and the "water in" hose had fallen down directly on the burner. Needless to say it was a black, useless wreck. I found a replacement hose, quickly hooked it up and didn't think anything else of it.

...until I took my OG at pitching time. It was like 20 points low I eventually realized I hadn't tightened the hose enough and an extra gallon or two leaked into my wort. Was too late to do anything about it so I just pitched and said screw it. Hopefully it isn't too terrible.

 

[bassbone]

Update:
The carboy was taken out of the fridge when the beer got down to 65 degrees (8-10 hours after pitching the yeast). Within 48 hours it was already down to 1.030 (those threads about fermentation taking off like a rocket when you pitch onto a yeast cake are not lying!)

2 weeks later and it has hit 80% Attenuation and is still going very slowly (so far from 1.1 to 1.022). No detectible off flavors in the samples I have pulled for measuring gravity. I'm hoping it stops in the neighborhood of 1.018 -1.020.

Probably giving it another week to finish up before I add the borbon, Oak and second dose of coffee.

Smells pretty great....