GoBrewers
Well-Known Member
After mooching off the great information on this site for the past year, I finally did my my first all grain batch / equipment fail / crisis aversion all in the same day.
Brewed a simple ESB with an 11# grain bill - it was all smooth sailing until it was time to collect the runoff from the mash tun. Apparently the holes in the copper manifold I had constructed were too small, because I had the ball valve opened fully and there was nothing coming out. So I dumped the mash into my bottling bucket and drilled larger holes into the manifold (which was hot as a mofo, by the way).
Mash back into the tun, opened it up, and still nothing. Lots of swear words, then I poured the mash back into the bucket, ripped out the manifold, screwed in a hose barb and strapped on a washing machine lint trap. I batch sparged 3 times, and crisis averted.
I probably lost a lot of heat back and forth between the bucket and MLT, but I had done a mashout, so that probably helped a bit. There were a few more grain husks swirling around in the boil than there probably should have been , too, but I hit my OG right on the nose (1.054), and she's bubbling away happily right now
So there it is - one all grain session, and one panicked near-catastrophe in the books.
Anyone else have any Macgyver moments to share? Please, put me in my place. I was way too proud of myself today.
Brewed a simple ESB with an 11# grain bill - it was all smooth sailing until it was time to collect the runoff from the mash tun. Apparently the holes in the copper manifold I had constructed were too small, because I had the ball valve opened fully and there was nothing coming out. So I dumped the mash into my bottling bucket and drilled larger holes into the manifold (which was hot as a mofo, by the way).
Mash back into the tun, opened it up, and still nothing. Lots of swear words, then I poured the mash back into the bucket, ripped out the manifold, screwed in a hose barb and strapped on a washing machine lint trap. I batch sparged 3 times, and crisis averted.
I probably lost a lot of heat back and forth between the bucket and MLT, but I had done a mashout, so that probably helped a bit. There were a few more grain husks swirling around in the boil than there probably should have been , too, but I hit my OG right on the nose (1.054), and she's bubbling away happily right now
So there it is - one all grain session, and one panicked near-catastrophe in the books.
Anyone else have any Macgyver moments to share? Please, put me in my place. I was way too proud of myself today.