NoNothing
Well-Known Member
Well, everyone has a bad brew day, today was mine. (scroll down if you dont want to know how my entire day went)
I wanted this brew to be one of my best (though..I wish they all were) as I am taking this one to family for thanksgiving. I was making a Bavarian Hefeweizen all grain from Northern Brewer with WPL300 yeast.
I used a stir plate, started that up more than 24 hours before the brew. Come today, it had little bubbles on top of the stir and all was well. I should note I didnt crash chill this thing as I now read I should have, I hope it doesnt mess with my beer too much, I just used a light DME for the wort in it. Anyway, back to today. So I get all my equipment nice and clean and sanitary, I boil my water, I NAIL my mash temp and 50 mins later I bring it up to 170, perfect. 10 mins later I vorlauf, all goes well, I pull 2qts off and its starting to clear up so I start my drain and sparge. Everything went well from here, no stuck sparge, nothing, it was beautiful, and the wort was fairly clear (of particles, it was cloudy and dark pale yellow). I ended up with 7 gallons in my boil pot and I planned on boiling off 1.5 gals in the hour so that was perfect. I didnt calculate my efficiency, I did take some notes so Ill go calc that and toss it up here, but the wort was sweet and delicious.
So now I start up my boil, hit 212 and I have a rolling boil, so I toss in some hops, I just kind of sit back, play some GRID on 360 and wait an hour for this sucker to finish. I get back to my pot with 10 mins left on the boil, all is well. I get my hose all hooked up to run through my IC and grab my sanitised IC, still, all is well. My phone starts to go off letting me know I hit the hour mark, so I check how much liquid is in the boil pot, and I nailed it again, 5.5 gallons, I thought this day was going to be awesome. I drop my IC in and things are going well at first, I start moving some equipment to the tub to clean/dry after Im done and grab my sanitized carboy. I get back out and it was at 100, pretty good so far (my ground water is 40*, Im fairly lucky). But then things start to go wrong.
After I saw it at 80 I noticed my IC was leaking a bit of water into my boilpot, straight from the hose, so I quickly remove the IC and call 78 pitchable. At this point I have no clue how much got into the batch but Im sure it couldent have been too much as it was a small leak. So I get my autosyphon and get ready to get this all in the carboy and I notice how much **** is just floating around in the beer, hops all over and just...bleh. So I did some quick thinking, I have no strainer here, no method of filtering, so I grabbed some muslin bags and put 1 inside another, and put those on the out end of my syphon and a little bit in my fermenter and one around the base of my autosyphon to keep **** out of my fermenter and leave only tiny particles in it. Looking back I realize I should have at LEAST dunked the bags in sanitized water, but I cant change the past now, they had been in a plastic bag for 2 months and who knows how long they sat around before then.
I start my syphon, things are going OK, but then the syphon starts to slow down a ton, I figure out it is the damn bag on the in end of the syphon, so I take that sucker off and leave just the 2 on the out to collect all the crud. They are doing a fine job, not much is getting in, but this is when I realize just how stupid I was to be running this tasty brew through these bags while they are probably far from sterile. I figure screw it, Ive already dropped 2.5 gallons in the carboy, Ill just do the rest and leave the large peices of crud out so I dont have to deal with it. Oh, I also poured in my non crashed starter into the batch halfway though the syphon.
I finish syphoning all but .3 gallons from the brew pot that was mostly hop peices and I notice my fermenter is fairly empty, by eyeballing it it looks to be 4 or 4.5 gallons, which is fairly depressing, but I cant verywell get anymore into it without brewing again.
So I get my carboy down in the basement where its a steady 68* always, rock the crap out of it to get it some more air, not that I really think the yeast would need it, and put on the blow off tube (Im going to pick up a new stopper tomorrow, my old one got destroyed so I have to blow off tube it for a day). And now I am writing this post, sad that I ran ALL of my tasty brew through those muslin bags and possibly ruined my batch. The only thing that makes it all better is that Apfelwein right next to the Hefe.
I do have a smack pack of WYeast German Wheat 3333, so if there are any issues that arise, like my yeast dying or anything I could smack that sucker and pitch it in to try to save the day.
I wanted this brew to be one of my best (though..I wish they all were) as I am taking this one to family for thanksgiving. I was making a Bavarian Hefeweizen all grain from Northern Brewer with WPL300 yeast.
I used a stir plate, started that up more than 24 hours before the brew. Come today, it had little bubbles on top of the stir and all was well. I should note I didnt crash chill this thing as I now read I should have, I hope it doesnt mess with my beer too much, I just used a light DME for the wort in it. Anyway, back to today. So I get all my equipment nice and clean and sanitary, I boil my water, I NAIL my mash temp and 50 mins later I bring it up to 170, perfect. 10 mins later I vorlauf, all goes well, I pull 2qts off and its starting to clear up so I start my drain and sparge. Everything went well from here, no stuck sparge, nothing, it was beautiful, and the wort was fairly clear (of particles, it was cloudy and dark pale yellow). I ended up with 7 gallons in my boil pot and I planned on boiling off 1.5 gals in the hour so that was perfect. I didnt calculate my efficiency, I did take some notes so Ill go calc that and toss it up here, but the wort was sweet and delicious.
So now I start up my boil, hit 212 and I have a rolling boil, so I toss in some hops, I just kind of sit back, play some GRID on 360 and wait an hour for this sucker to finish. I get back to my pot with 10 mins left on the boil, all is well. I get my hose all hooked up to run through my IC and grab my sanitised IC, still, all is well. My phone starts to go off letting me know I hit the hour mark, so I check how much liquid is in the boil pot, and I nailed it again, 5.5 gallons, I thought this day was going to be awesome. I drop my IC in and things are going well at first, I start moving some equipment to the tub to clean/dry after Im done and grab my sanitized carboy. I get back out and it was at 100, pretty good so far (my ground water is 40*, Im fairly lucky). But then things start to go wrong.
After I saw it at 80 I noticed my IC was leaking a bit of water into my boilpot, straight from the hose, so I quickly remove the IC and call 78 pitchable. At this point I have no clue how much got into the batch but Im sure it couldent have been too much as it was a small leak. So I get my autosyphon and get ready to get this all in the carboy and I notice how much **** is just floating around in the beer, hops all over and just...bleh. So I did some quick thinking, I have no strainer here, no method of filtering, so I grabbed some muslin bags and put 1 inside another, and put those on the out end of my syphon and a little bit in my fermenter and one around the base of my autosyphon to keep **** out of my fermenter and leave only tiny particles in it. Looking back I realize I should have at LEAST dunked the bags in sanitized water, but I cant change the past now, they had been in a plastic bag for 2 months and who knows how long they sat around before then.
I start my syphon, things are going OK, but then the syphon starts to slow down a ton, I figure out it is the damn bag on the in end of the syphon, so I take that sucker off and leave just the 2 on the out to collect all the crud. They are doing a fine job, not much is getting in, but this is when I realize just how stupid I was to be running this tasty brew through these bags while they are probably far from sterile. I figure screw it, Ive already dropped 2.5 gallons in the carboy, Ill just do the rest and leave the large peices of crud out so I dont have to deal with it. Oh, I also poured in my non crashed starter into the batch halfway though the syphon.
I finish syphoning all but .3 gallons from the brew pot that was mostly hop peices and I notice my fermenter is fairly empty, by eyeballing it it looks to be 4 or 4.5 gallons, which is fairly depressing, but I cant verywell get anymore into it without brewing again.
So I get my carboy down in the basement where its a steady 68* always, rock the crap out of it to get it some more air, not that I really think the yeast would need it, and put on the blow off tube (Im going to pick up a new stopper tomorrow, my old one got destroyed so I have to blow off tube it for a day). And now I am writing this post, sad that I ran ALL of my tasty brew through those muslin bags and possibly ruined my batch. The only thing that makes it all better is that Apfelwein right next to the Hefe.
I do have a smack pack of WYeast German Wheat 3333, so if there are any issues that arise, like my yeast dying or anything I could smack that sucker and pitch it in to try to save the day.
