Piss poor brew day

[msa8967]

They say bad things come in threes. A rare day for the temperature to be over 50 F in mid December so I decided to brew 15 gallons of bourbon stout. Things were going just fine until time to cool things down with the wort chiller. I hooked everything up and was getting zero chilled water flow. Turns out there was something blocking water flow in my chiller (probably ice) and one of the coils in the chiller busted causing the chill water to mix with the 15 gallons of 1.075 SG stout.

$50 of grain, hops, propane and RO water lost.
$100 wort chiller busted
Packers give up a safety on their last possession of the game.

Just needed to vent about this. I can probably fix the chiller and from now on I will store it indoors instead of my attached garage. Losing a great brew day is just so dang frustrating.

 

[ol-hazza]

owch

 

[Braufessor]

Damn. That sucks (well, not the part about the packers, but the rest of it). I have had a few end in disaster over the years too, and it really is a downer - and the wasted day is a big part of it for sure. Sounds like your best bet at this point is to turn your attention to "quality control" and salvage some of the day. If you are in Decorah area some time, I will buy you a "condolences" beer

 

[brewbama]

That sux. I say ferment if possible. See what happens.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Qhrumphf]

Unless you know there's a major problem with the batch (or unless you've already dumped it) you might be ok at least letting the batch ride. Would obviously be under gravity but contamination from city water is unlikely, and if you skip the mashing part you might luck out with chlorophenols (at least not taste em) if there's chlorine/chloramine. May not be what you wanted, but might still end up drinkable. Won't help with the rest, but you can't please all the people all the time.

 

[Moose_MI]

OH NOOOO!!! Every part of me is SICK!! (except the Lions fan part...that part of me snickered a little)

 

[msa8967]

Damn. That sucks (well, not the part about the packers, but the rest of it). I have had a few end in disaster over the years too, and it really is a downer - and the wasted day is a big part of it for sure. Sounds like your best bet at this point is to turn your attention to "quality control" and salvage some of the day. If you are in Decorah area some time, I will buy you a "condolences" beer

Before I knew there was a problem I had 5-6 gallons of chill water mix in with the 16 gallons of wort causing massive issues since the chill water is extremely hard water. In 5 years of brewing I have never had this happen before and losing an entire day of work is the worst part. If I were up in Decorah I probably would spend the rest of the day at Toppling Goliath tasting room.

 

[Braufessor]

I had a hose leak once on my chiller (back when I had one of those little ones with the plastic tubing and clamps) and pretty soon I heard "water splashing"....... it was my boil kettle overflowing onto my floor from the water leaking out of the hose and into the kettle. Had to dump it all too.

 

[barleywhore69]

I had my worst brew day ever today too. I spilled wort all over my stove top. It burned on. Undershot my boil volume and had to ghetto-sparge the bag of grain. I realized I should have set up a pulley thing to hold the grain bag because it was really heavy and didn't drain quickly unless I suspended it. (2nd BIAB 5 gallon batch). I spilled wort all over the kitchen table and floor when i almost dropped a bowl i was trying to drain into. In the meantime, I racked a beer onto apples in a secondary and overflowed it all over the floor because I forgot to check the volume and stepped out of the room while it transferred. 5.5 gallons into a 5 gallon carboy doesn't work. Then i put an airlock on and it climbed through the airlock hours later, spilling onto the floor again. I tried to pour some off and oxygenated the crap out of it in the process. What I poured off tasted like chlorine. I remembered I hadn't treated the water for that batch. Had a commercial beer to relax and it tasted like crap, despite the rest of the six pack being fine. It was not my day.

 

[oogaboogachiefwalkingdeer]

Take a small hammer and tap the crack closed. Put a little bit of flux on it use lead free solder and fix the chiller. I would ferment the beer as is or re boil to reduce the volume you gained then ferment.

 

[Jhubbard9]

Ya reboil might work. That's copper for you though way too soft for my liking!

 

[ong]

Or just add a few lbs of malt extract boiled in a few cups of water to get close to your planned OG. You could even throw some hops in to salvage your planned IBUs.

 

[watermelon83]

Yeah crappy watered down porter is still beer. I'd would have pitched. Sorry about your day bud.

 

[bobeer]

that's a bummer man. I just had to dump 2 5 gallon batches myself due to bad water from moving into my new house... Wasted time and resources is the worst. Best thing you can do is get on the next batch.

Making your own immersion chiller is really easy. There's a lot of threads on here about how to do it. I think I built mine for about 40 bucks.

 

[bragona71]

If it makes you feel ant better I`m A Raider fan..But I did have a successful brew day watching them look like a horrible high school team..

My heart goes out to you, hope you salvage something out of it

 

[msa8967]

These 15 gallons of stout were to be made mainly for my wife who promised me some special appreciation time for making this happen. She is the main packer fan in the house so the rest of the day just didn't turn out as well as I was hoping. The main line water in our town is very hard and has a terrible taste. For a moment I considered trying to reboil and salvage something but staring at 20+ gallons of water down wort with a busted wort chiller told me that I had no way to cool this down even if I could reboil 20+ gallons. Just trying to lift this would have been way too much.

I will be sure to test the chiller multiple times after it has been fixed so this does not happen again.

 

[wilserbrewer]

Sorry to hear the death of your batch. I scorched 15 gallons once, could tell by the smell. Went ahead and pitched yeast cause I was ready to go. The burnt flavor was there, I could have drank it but it would have made me crazy pissed for several months one pint at a time, so I dumped it!

You can get most chillers to drain by inverting, then rolling horizontally a few times. Can also blow out with compressed air, even 2 lungpower would probably work. Storing inside is probably safest.

Here's to looking forward!