CentralNJBrew
Member
During my last brewday, I had an extremely tough fight with boilover.
It did the normal boilover routine at the start of boiling, and I dealt with it accordingly with my spray bottle.
However, at around the 30 min mark of a planned 60 min boil, it started flaring up again. And it wouldn't stop!
This has never happened to me before.
The facts
I sparged BK up to my normal volume, just like any other brew day I had.
This was my first stout. I just used 2-Row and Roasted Malt to keep it simple.
My burner I believe is 65K BTU. I call it my jet engine. I've never used it full blast, and this brew day was no different. I tried lowering it a bit during this boilover ordeal, but to no avail.
This happened as I was readying my hops, so it started before I added them.
I had to nix the spray bottle, and switch to a hose spray setting to hold it back because it was rising so fast. It would recede, then flare right back up after a few seconds. It actually overflowed a few times. Not horribly, but still overflowed. It didn't help that the hose water spray was filling the BK gradually higher. I'm very aware I did not do myself any favors by doing this, but I felt I had no choice at this time due to Mt. Vesuvius rising.
I was forced to literally bail out my brew kettle a few times with a pitcher before the level got too high. I don't even want to think about how that warped my Gravity.
Question
Anybody have any idea what might have happened?
I'm hoping it's just "the burner may have been too high and I didn't realize it" situation.
But could there be anything else that could have caused this? Like grain bill and corresponding proteins/enzymes, sparge temps/timing (I sparged way to fast this round), or some kind of chemical/microbiological situation?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
It did the normal boilover routine at the start of boiling, and I dealt with it accordingly with my spray bottle.
However, at around the 30 min mark of a planned 60 min boil, it started flaring up again. And it wouldn't stop!
This has never happened to me before.
The facts
I sparged BK up to my normal volume, just like any other brew day I had.
This was my first stout. I just used 2-Row and Roasted Malt to keep it simple.
My burner I believe is 65K BTU. I call it my jet engine. I've never used it full blast, and this brew day was no different. I tried lowering it a bit during this boilover ordeal, but to no avail.
This happened as I was readying my hops, so it started before I added them.
I had to nix the spray bottle, and switch to a hose spray setting to hold it back because it was rising so fast. It would recede, then flare right back up after a few seconds. It actually overflowed a few times. Not horribly, but still overflowed. It didn't help that the hose water spray was filling the BK gradually higher. I'm very aware I did not do myself any favors by doing this, but I felt I had no choice at this time due to Mt. Vesuvius rising.
I was forced to literally bail out my brew kettle a few times with a pitcher before the level got too high. I don't even want to think about how that warped my Gravity.
Question
Anybody have any idea what might have happened?
I'm hoping it's just "the burner may have been too high and I didn't realize it" situation.
But could there be anything else that could have caused this? Like grain bill and corresponding proteins/enzymes, sparge temps/timing (I sparged way to fast this round), or some kind of chemical/microbiological situation?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.