Brew day from hell !!

[Romex2121]

Just had my first brew day from hell yesterday, seemed like nothing went the way it was supposed to.
I had come across a recipe called Summer loving ale (blonde ale) had all my grains for 5.5 gal. crushed at store instead of doing it myself but crush looked great, had my yeast (wyeast 1056) and hops but when i plugged everything into BrewersFriend it was showing ABV way lower than recipe was showing so i added 12 oz of light DME in the last 10 min of boil to bring it up and im thinking this is where i went wrong, after it was all said and done my OG was at 1.060 instead of 1.048ish , i did add water trying to get OG where it needed to be but the color of the wort stayed a very dark brown and if that wasn't bad enough my yeast starter never really took off and i ran out of propane at the start of the boil .. Seemed like nothing went right the whole day, im giving the yeast starter a couple more days to see if it'll be ok but if it doesn't take im gonna dump everything and try again , I dont know about you guys but i find it very disappointing when you spend the biggest part of the day mashing , boiling , cleaning , listening to the wife complain all day and it was all for nothing.. I hope i never have another day like this one again......

 

[bracconiere]

1.060 isn't that high, giver you about 6.5% ABV i believe.....and i personally would have pitched the yeast anyway....just to see


still sorry to hear your day didn't go smooth

 

[Redpappy]

Sorry to hear about your day. Why not instead of dumping, if fermentation does not start pitch some dry yeast to see what happens?

 

[Mike_kever_kombi]

Keep hope alive.

My wife likes to drink the home brews too, so she often puts in her requests. The worst brew day I had was brewing one of her requests. She likes porters and stouts, where I like saison, singles and goldens.

Of course her request had to be an everything but kitchen sink breakfast stout. It had cocoa powder and cocoa nibs, vanilla beans, cold brewed coffee, some bourbon soaked oak chips....you get the idea. So not only did it take a lot of pregame activities to even get ready for brew day (oak Chips, coffee, vanilla beans), but brew day itself was a fun suck.

Tanks kept getting frozen as it was just above freezing, so it took twice as long to heat strike water, but then I got a stuck sparge. I used to use a rectangle cooler with copper manifold and somehow knocked it apart and forced grain in the valve. Had to dive elbow deep in hot mash to dig it out and reconnect.

Once I finally got everything transferred to kettle it started drizzling, which turned to freezing rain, which combined with the freezing tanks took forever to get to boil. The cocoa powder and nibs were added at end of boil, and ended up clogging my drain sock. I could knock it loose, but only to clog a few seconds later. So I couldn’t send it through the chiller (CFC) so I had to get the immersion chiller out. Which had not been used in a while so I had to clean it first, then bring the wort back to a boil so I could sanitize it.

After the additional 15 minute boil, which was about 1 hour real time because of rain and freezing tanks. Start the hose up for IC and it’s leaking, but I didn’t realize it for about 5-10 minutes, so who knows how much hose water actually made it to wort. With the addition of hose water I needed to boil for another 15 minutes. Now I’m thinking I need to add more aroma hops as the last addition now has 30 minutes of additional boil, so I go to weigh more hops. The batteries in scale are dead (of course they are) and we don’t have any spares. O well I just eye it.

IC is now leak free, but designed for 5 gallon batches. This is 15 gallons... you wouldn’t believe how long it takes to get wort to pitching temperature, even in near freezing conditions and rain, when you cannot use whirlpool because drain keeps clogging. Finally get it to temp, about 2 hours later, but now I have to use racking cane because of clogged valve. I am completely soaked, frozen, and angrier than I have ever been during a brew day. My poor wife heard some choice comments about her choice in beers.

Finally get it in the fermenter and go to add coffee, and the sack that the coarse ground beans were in breaks, and grounds and all make it in to the fermenter. Grrrr. What else could go wrong? How about throwing the vanilla beans in trash during clean up? Sure, at this point why not. Oh well that’s what vanilla extract is for.

Took me like 12 hours that day, and all the cuss words I know to get that beer finished. I swore to her I would never brew that beer again. I didn’t even clean my equipment up that night. I left it out in the freezing rain. I didn’t care. I had been defeated.

It was far and away her favorite beer I ever brewed for her. That was about 5 years ago. Still have not brewed that beer again. I had put a 12 pack in deep storage, that we forgot about. We found it a couple months ago straightening up the beer area of basement. We cracked a few bottles and relived that brew day while drinking, and laughing. It aged very well and was still very tasty. I told her I would give it another go on my new system.

Time heals all wounds.

 

[Steven Barrett]

Is there a beer you can pivot this to? Sour beer, coffee beer, dry hopping, fruit beer, mash some dark grains and turn it into a brown/stout/porter?

 

[eric19312]

I'd second @Redpappy and suggest keeping a couple packs of reliable dry yeast on hand for such situations. I like US-05 which is quite similar to 1056. Dry yeast stored in the fridge has a shelf life of something like 3 years.

 

[OG-wan Kenobi]

How do you know it was for nothing? You didn't even taste the beer yet and if you don't like it let it sit on 4 ounces of whole coffee beans for a day or 2 and you have a whole new beer.

Unexpected things happen for example I fell asleep this weekend brewing a brown ale because I had 40 minutes between hop additions and the couch was feeling nice and well now it seems I will have a 70+ IBU brown ale on hand and I have 0 intention of dumping it just because it's different. Another pointer it's always good to keep a few packs of US-05 in the fridge just to have. Remember there is no such thing as bad beer only better beer

 

[RM-MN]

Seemed like nothing went right the whole day, im giving the yeast starter a couple more days to see if it'll be ok but if it doesn't take im gonna dump everything and try again ,

Yeast starters are not necessary. Aerate your wort and dump your yeast starter into the wort. It will make way better beer than you will get from wort you dumped.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Sorry to hear about your day. Why not instead of dumping, if fermentation does not start pitch some dry yeast to see what happens?

When I'm working with liquid yeast, I always buy a backup dry yeast to have on hand in case things don't go as planned. There's not much option for local purchase of yeast and the stock they have is rarely fresh, so I usually order my yeast online. That can be risky depending on the weather, so a back up plan is just a good idea.

 

[Jag75]

If your in a pinch for time look into the shakin not stirred starter . Those are ready to pitch 18 hrs later

 

[Romex2121]

Sorry to hear about your day. Why not instead of dumping, if fermentation does not start pitch some dry yeast to see what happens?

I just pulled out a pack of US-05 early this morning to get to room temp but i also checked on my starter and there's a 1/2" of yeast on the bottom of the gal. jug , im a little surprised (shaken every couple hrs.) cause the whole time it never really showed any activity , a few little bubbles but no krausen or anything else that would make you think it was doing what it should ..
Im gonna go ahead and pitch the liquid yeast and see what happens but still not liking the dark color of the wort

 

[bleme]

Did you turn off your flame until after your DME was thoroughly mixed in? That color sounds like it scorched on bottom.

 

[Romex2121]

Did you turn off your flame until after your DME was thoroughly mixed in? That color sounds like it scorched on bottom.

Thats probly what happened now that i think about it, I stirred in the DME in the last 10 min. Of the boil but got busy and over boiled by 10 min. So it was in there a total of 20 min. and i didn't turn the flame down ,,
i bet your right , it got scorched.
I guarantee i wont walk away on the next one .

 

[rburrelli]

Thats probly what happened now that i think about it, I stirred in the DME in the last 10 min. Of the boil but got busy and over boiled by 10 min. So it was in there a total of 20 min. and i didn't turn the flame down ,,
i bet your right , it got scorched.
I guarantee i wont walk away on the next one .

You should take the heat off when adding DME late in the boil. Let it dissolve and then heat on again.