Equipment Failure Brew Day Fiasco

[jaybagley]

First off let me start off by saying that this Brew Day was our 5th beer, 3rd all-grain and first 10 gallon batch.

We started off the day setting up to bottle our last beer, an American Wheat Ale, and realized that the spigot on our bottling bucket was broken. We had to make a run to the LBHS for a new spigot. This set our day back at least an hour, more like 1.5.

Next up I setup the equipment on the new brew bench and started heating my strike water. When it was time to mash, I realized that my mash tun had been too close to the burner and had started to melt. Luckily it was only some cosmetic damage, but it still ticked me off that I was dumb enough to not think that it would be a problem.

I wanted to mash at 152, so I had my digital thermometer in while I was stirring. It was reading 153 for awhile and then skipped 152 altogether and jumped down to 151. I figured, close enough, but once again it pissed me off that first my spigot failed, then my mash tun was damaged, now my thermometer had screwed me.

I took the pre-boil gravity and it was 1.030 at 152 degrees which gave me 1.050 after temperature correction.

Now to the boil, this was the second time using my keggle, so I am still working on tuning my equipment setup in BeerSmith. I decided to forego my hop spider and just put the hops in the boil. I wasn't paying attention and we had a boil over after the 10 minute hop addition. With the boil done we chilled down to 70 degrees and started the whirlpool. We let it sit for about 25 minutes before starting to drain.

My OG reading though was only 1.054!?!?! I was supposed to be at 1.060. How do I boil for an hour and only get .004 difference? Did my hydrometer fail me too?

Final disaster of the day was transferring the wort to the fermenters. I had planned on getting 11 gallons of fermentable wort, but the hop sludge at the bottom of my keggle ate I'm guessing about 1.5-2 gallons and I only wound up with 9-9.5 gallons. I haven't been able to get that cone of trub at the bottom of my keggle. I'm wondering if I am whirlpooling correctly. How do I mess that up? I stir and stir until the wort is spinning. I don't actually get a vortex, should I?

So at the end of the day, I have questionable equipment, a possibly inaccurate OG reading and less beer than I wanted.

Any thoughts, tips, etc.?

 

[adiochiro3]

Sugar extraction and conversion are done before Boiling, aren't they? Sounds like that part went OK -- just a hair shy of your goal. Isn't that missed goal a function of mash efficiency? Efficiency should improve with practice.

 

[kombat]

I wanted to mash at 152, so I had my digital thermometer in while I was stirring. It was reading 153 for awhile and then skipped 152 altogether and jumped down to 151. I figured, close enough, but once again it pissed me off that first my spigot failed, then my mash tun was damaged, now my thermometer had screwed me.

I took the pre-boil gravity and it was 1.030 at 152 degrees which gave me 1.050 after temperature correction.

Wait ... I thought you said you mashed at 151 and "skipped" 152? How did your wort come out at 152 into the boil? Did you somehow GAIN a degree during mashing?

With the boil done we chilled down to 70 degrees and started the whirlpool.

I thought you're supposed to whirlpool, THEN chill? Though I guess now that I think about it, that might be hard to do with an immersion chiller, since it's much more effective if you stir the wort while chilling, and I would imagine that the chiller sitting in the wort would create turbulence that precludes the formation of a tidy cone in the center.

Sounds like it was a rough day, I hope the rest of the process works out smoothly!

 

[jaybagley]

Wait ... I thought you said you mashed at 151 and "skipped" 152? How did your wort come out at 152 into the boil? Did you somehow GAIN a degree during mashing?

The extra degree came from my sparge water. Mash at 151, sparge at 168.

I thought you're supposed to whirlpool, THEN chill? Though I guess now that I think about it, that might be hard to do with an immersion chiller, since it's much more effective if you stir the wort while chilling, and I would imagine that the chiller sitting in the wort would create turbulence that precludes the formation of a tidy cone in the center.

Sounds like it was a rough day, I hope the rest of the process works out smoothly!

It is hard to do with an immersion chiller. I'd whirlpool before chilling, but I'd worry that moving the chiller would disrupt the cone. I chill and remove the immersion chiller and then whirlpool. How do other people do it?

 

[jaybagley]

Sugar extraction and conversion are done before Boiling, aren't they? Sounds like that part went OK -- just a hair shy of your goal. Isn't that missed goal a function of mash efficiency? Efficiency should improve with practice.

I'm not sure. If my pre-boil gravity was on, why wasn't post-boil. The only thing I can think of is that either my hydrometer was off, or my thermometer was off and that made my gravity temperature conversion off. When taking a pre-boil reading, should I let it chill?

 

[daksin]

Even with temperature correction, hydrometers are pretty much useless above 100 degrees or so. You should cool it down some more next time to get a more accurate reading.

 

[isleofman]

Even with temperature correction, hydrometers are pretty much useless above 100 degrees or so. You should cool it down some more next time to get a more accurate reading.

Or just get a refractometer and forget about temp altogether :rockin: