Had one of those nasty unrecoverable brew day events today. Ended up putting about 12 gallons of wort down the utility sink drain late this afternoon.
I was gonna do my first parti-gyle today with an English IPA followed by an English Bitter. So I mashed in with 28 lbs of grain in my herms system. Here is where things went astray. I just about always adjust my water as Seattle has very soft water. I figure out my salt profile I'm going to use and measure them out in one of those little plastic cups like you get with a side of salad dressing or mayo in a restaurant. So I had measured my salts out, which were more than normal as I was mashing in with 10 gallons of water for the first run.
A bit of flashback is necessary here. The week before the plastic baggie I keep my baking soda in was getting low so I asked my G/F if she could bring me some more down. So she went up and filled up one of those little plastic cups with baking soda, put a lid on it and brought it down and I put it in the container with all my other salts which are in baggies.
So anyway, today I mash in, turn around to get my cup of pre-mixed salts, and dump them in. Stir, stir, stir, recirculate and go tap a beer while the herms pumps away. I drain my first runnings, fire up the boil kettle and add sparge water to my grains. After a bit my kettle is just coming up to boil and I am skimming some of the hot break off the top. That's when I look over and see my little cup of pre-mixed salt additions. What da??? It took me a few minutes of thinking to realize I had dumped the entire little cup of baking soda into the mash instead of my pre-mixed salts.
Ahhhh sh*t. Maybe it's not so bad. So I figure from past useage that the cup most of the way full probably holds at least 30 grams. So I punch that into my spreadsheet with 10 gallons and it says I got about 230ppm of sodium and all kinds of bad alkalinity and PH. I taste the wort. Yup, tastes sort of minerally with a definite mild sodium presence to it. This was going to be a beer for entering in the NHC first round and no judge is gonna miss that off taste. I turned it around in my head several times, tasted the wort again....yick. Then drained the mash tun, cooled and drained the boil kettle, and down the utility sink drain with it. There was no saving it, no covering up that backround mineral sodium taste. At least I caught it before the hops or yeast fell victim.
I was gonna do my first parti-gyle today with an English IPA followed by an English Bitter. So I mashed in with 28 lbs of grain in my herms system. Here is where things went astray. I just about always adjust my water as Seattle has very soft water. I figure out my salt profile I'm going to use and measure them out in one of those little plastic cups like you get with a side of salad dressing or mayo in a restaurant. So I had measured my salts out, which were more than normal as I was mashing in with 10 gallons of water for the first run.
A bit of flashback is necessary here. The week before the plastic baggie I keep my baking soda in was getting low so I asked my G/F if she could bring me some more down. So she went up and filled up one of those little plastic cups with baking soda, put a lid on it and brought it down and I put it in the container with all my other salts which are in baggies.
So anyway, today I mash in, turn around to get my cup of pre-mixed salts, and dump them in. Stir, stir, stir, recirculate and go tap a beer while the herms pumps away. I drain my first runnings, fire up the boil kettle and add sparge water to my grains. After a bit my kettle is just coming up to boil and I am skimming some of the hot break off the top. That's when I look over and see my little cup of pre-mixed salt additions. What da??? It took me a few minutes of thinking to realize I had dumped the entire little cup of baking soda into the mash instead of my pre-mixed salts.
Ahhhh sh*t. Maybe it's not so bad. So I figure from past useage that the cup most of the way full probably holds at least 30 grams. So I punch that into my spreadsheet with 10 gallons and it says I got about 230ppm of sodium and all kinds of bad alkalinity and PH. I taste the wort. Yup, tastes sort of minerally with a definite mild sodium presence to it. This was going to be a beer for entering in the NHC first round and no judge is gonna miss that off taste. I turned it around in my head several times, tasted the wort again....yick. Then drained the mash tun, cooled and drained the boil kettle, and down the utility sink drain with it. There was no saving it, no covering up that backround mineral sodium taste. At least I caught it before the hops or yeast fell victim.
