Had a bad brew day but I recovered!

[fendersrule]

Making a Founder's Porter Clone using a mini mash. Also invited friends over so that they could learn how to make cider (similar to beer making, so I helped) and watch me make beer. Lots of alcohol brewing now!

Anyways, I had 4 mishaps today.

1) I started my mash in way too hot of water. It was about 180F when I dumped by oversized muslin socks in. I quickly, within 15 seconds, figured this out and removed them and lowered the temperature (they were about 50% submerged). Problem: My thermometer was not all the way in the kettle giving me a false reading. From what I understand, this won't harm/impact the fermentables much. I moved on, and had a home brew. Little did I know, that was going to be the start of my luck today.

2) My splarging pitcher (made of glass) broke right away when I added 170F water into it, spilling 1/2 gallon onto the counter. Problem: it's a vintage piece and was problem going to break anyways. I actually learned of a better way: Just take the 170F water from the stove in it's own pot and use a laddle to splarge! No need to transfer liquid twice! Duh.

3) After the boil, my counter flow wort chiller exploded at a seem, sending about a gallon of water onto the kitchen counter. Problem: It's a vintage piece and over 30 years old. I wasn't too upset, being that I will begin brewing outside soon and would rather have a in-kettle wort chiller. What chiller do you guys recommend for a 15 gallon kettle?

4) I woefully underestimated my boiling volume. I planned, or thought, I counted up to 6 gallons of boiling volume since I'm making a 5 gallon batch. The carboy only had 3.5 gallons in it, which was upsetting. I checked my hydrometer and I was 1.092 (after correcting for the super hot wort). I figured that I could bring this down some, so I added about .75 gallons of tap water. I then decided to improvise and add 1/2 lb of brown sugar (boiled first) to keep the ABV high, and topped it off with a 1/2 gallon of spring water to bring it to about 4.5-4.7 gallons. My final ABV is 1.082, which should put me around 8%.

So after all those mishaps, I was able to recover the day and no doubt I will have some good porter. Instead of "Founders Porter" it will be "Strong Founders Brown Shugga' Porter" and will be at a higher ABV.

I'm going to attempt to dump about 1.5 packages of yeast (or perhaps just 2) instead of just 1 package in this one.

 

[Todd_Sails]

Good Recovery(ies), now have another beer!

 

[RM-MN]

Making a Founder's Porter Clone using a mini mash. Also invited friends over so that they could learn how to make cider (similar to beer making, so I helped) and watch me make beer. Lots of alcohol brewing now!

Anyways, I had 4 mishaps today.

1) I started my mash in way too hot of water. It was about 180F when I dumped by oversized muslin socks in. I quickly, within 15 seconds, figured this out and removed them and lowered the temperature (they were about 50% submerged). Problem: My thermometer was not all the way in the kettle giving me a false reading. From what I understand, this won't harm/impact the fermentables much. I moved on, and had a home brew. Little did I know, that was going to be the start of my luck today.

2) My splarging pitcher (made of glass) broke right away when I added 170F water into it, spilling 1/2 gallon onto the counter. Problem: it's a vintage piece and was problem going to break anyways. I actually learned of a better way: Just take the 170F water from the stove in it's own pot and use a laddle to splarge! No need to transfer liquid twice! Duh.

3) After the boil, my counter flow wort chiller exploded at a seem, sending about a gallon of water onto the kitchen counter. Problem: It's a vintage piece and over 30 years old. I wasn't too upset, being that I will begin brewing outside soon and would rather have a in-kettle wort chiller. What chiller do you guys recommend for a 15 gallon kettle?

4) I woefully underestimated my boiling volume. I planned, or thought, I counted up to 6 gallons of boiling volume since I'm making a 5 gallon batch. The carboy only had 3.5 gallons in it, which was upsetting. I checked my hydrometer and I was 1.092 (after correcting for the super hot wort). I figured that I could bring this down some, so I added about .75 gallons of tap water. I then decided to improvise and add 1/2 lb of brown sugar (boiled first) to keep the ABV high, and topped it off with a 1/2 gallon of spring water to bring it to about 4.5-4.7 gallons. My final ABV is 1.082, which should put me around 8%.

So after all those mishaps, I was able to recover the day and no doubt I will have some good porter. Instead of "Founders Porter" it will be "Strong Founders Brown Shugga' Porter" and will be at a higher ABV.

I'm going to attempt to dump about 1.5 packages of yeast (or perhaps just 2) instead of just 1 package in this one.

You just found out that hot liquid into plain glass isn't a good plan as the thermal shock will destroy the glass. Now you need to learn that cool water for sparging does about the same thing as hot water and will avoid the potential for extracting tannins.

Your wort was concentrated by boiling off too much liquid. That liquid was simply water and it could have been added back at any time just as top off water is used often in extract brewing. You could have had a full 5.5 gallons into the fermenter if you had added the correct amount of water and ended up with the correct OG according to the recipe.