Near disaster brew day with home grown hops

[rtracer]

Yesterday was the big day, I finally was going to brew a batch with my first ever home grown hops. First brew with whole hops of any kind.
I made up my recipe with LOTS of hops, like 8 OZ 10 mins and below.

The mistake happened when I simply added my whole hops like I usually do with pellets. Just toss em in and let them be free. After my massive flameout addition I quickly realized my wort had become a wort stew. That amount of hops in whole form are massive.

When my wort was chilled to 70*, I tried to whirlpool, but the wort was so thick with hops I had no success. Ok, just open the damn valve and rack to the carboy. Open valve and....trickle...Damn. Grab sanitized spoon and try to move hops away from side pickup, get a little flow then nothing. Try rocking wort back and hops away from pickup, nothing....try to clear with spoon again....nothing. ARG.
Tell my buddy we need to just siphon, and realize my siphon is not an auto siphon, its the kind with a sanitary filter you need to blow to build pressure. Impossible.
Ok, lets just fill a hose with sanitizer, and start a siphon the old fashioned way. So here I am trying to sanitize my hands in the sani bucket(not sure if this even works to sanitize your hands) and doing the unthinkable....placing my hand directly in the chilled wort to start a siphon. Now mind you this is very difficult as I brew in a keggle and there is a long way up, over and out the keggle side. We get a start then we lose the siphon. After three tries(three times dunking my bacteria laden hands in my wort we give up.
We decide we cant just pour the wort into a funnel because I use a stupid keggle and and there is no way that would work.

Next we decide to rock the wort back, remove the thermometer from the \bung and pour from there. So here I am manhandling the extremely heavy keggle full of wort to pour out of the bung. My buddy is sitting there with a small length of tubing pushing it in an out of the bung to keep clearing the hops that are clogging.

At the end of the day we were able to rack about 6 gallons to the carboy, but I am thinking this may end up being my first infected beer.

Only thing going for this batch is I made a massive starter from a harvested yeast slurry and I had signs of fermentation in 8 hours.
Hoping lots of yeast with a very quick start can overtake any nasties we introduced.

Anyways, sorry for the long winded post, but I just had to tell someone, even if its just me thats reads this

 

[jekeane]

Tough day.... thanks for the laugh though!

 

[Whatsgoodmiley]

It's never fun to have to put your hands in your sanitary wort, but it's great that you sanitized your hands. I'm pretty sure some people crush fruit with their (sanitized) hands before adding it to a fermenter, so it's not too much to cringe over. That, and the fact that it's already fermentor, mean that you are probably good to go and have nothing to worry about. Anytime I find myself worrying about some small mistake that may have compromised the sanitation of my wort, I remind myself that beer has been brewed for millennia, long before StarSan had been made or yeast or bacteria had been discovered.

 

[Calypso]

I've had to stick my hands into cooled wort. I washed my hands and sanitized with StarSan just like you, and didn't end up with an infection. So there is hope!

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

Add me to the list of people who had to put their hands in the wort.

 

[schatzke]

I was elbow deep in a keggle a week ago. My problem was like you I was brewing with whole hops that a buddy grew for me. I blew into the ball valve to clear the hops and then kept a finger partially over the end of the dip tube to prevent whole cones from getting sucked up. I was very surprised when it fermented out fine and the gravity sample yesterday tasted good. Sometimes **** just happens and you have to roll with it. And hopefully learn from it. I know whole cones will be going in a hop sack in the future.

 

[kev211]

Add me in as well. No infection from said hand dunking

 

[oceanic_brew]

We need some sort of warning here for that, and a million other things haha. Happens to the best of us.

Pellet hop in the kettle unless you've got a bag
Whole hop in the keg
You still need a bag!!!

It even rhymes

 

[GPP33]

I dred the day I need to put a hand in my cooled wort, glad to know there's hope!

I did a whole hop a few weeks ago, no hop bag, just tossed em in. When I started to drain I got a few ounces then nothing.....,my heart sank, some leaves shot though, and the remainder was the clearest wort I had ever put in a carboy.

Here's to hoping it's the best beer you have ever made.