Returning to brewing, heating water and check to see it all works...

[kenmcchord]

Hey there,
Took three years away as I was moving and getting set up in our new digs. I have plans for a full electric brewery, but as I prepare the garage I decided to get back to brewing right away, so here's my temporary brew cart. Found a cool design here on a pump and chiller stand alone rig, so I built one of those as well.

First brew day ought to be early next week, heading out to Hearts Homebrew Supply here in Orlando tomorrow to get supplies. wish me luck!

 

[Greytop83]

Looks great. Welcome back. I also took a couple year break due to you know life... haha cheers.

 

[kenmcchord]

Yep, life can get in the way, ain't that the truth!

Got to brew 3 days ago, and it was the first time my wife joined me! We had a blast and everything seemed to turn out well. Funny, I remember being a bit confused about a few processes the last time I brewed, including both water adjustment and mash Ph. This time non of that seemed very difficult at all, which I guess is no surprise. I've experienced that sort of phenomenon before, whether it was taking a few years away from playing guitar or woodworking. Seems your mind is always working on things you found difficult, sort of in the back ground. When you return to something, other than the initial dusting off the cobwebs, some of those things you thought were hard really may not be so tough anymore.

Anyway we've got a Mosaic IIPA in the fermenter bubbling away nicely, and today I just order more supplies for the next two brews. It sure was a nice day!

 

[kenmcchord]

Well I screwed that up nicely...

Long story short, I decided to cold crash the brew but in hindsight didn't have a good way to prevent O2 intrusion. Once I did cold crash I was surprised to learn how much air it was sucking in, and I ended bailing on the fermentation. So it was 9 days in the fermenter before the cold crash and only a day before I bailed on that entirely. From there I kegged the beer and carbonated.

Today my brother and I were sampling it and he said "I taste butter or butterscotch" which tells me I have high levels of diacetyl and that I transferred off the yeast before the yeast had a chance to clear it up. Lesson learned, I now have a cold crash guardian to protect the brew when I cold crash, and next time I'll be careful to give it a full two weeks in primary before I do anything.

 

[BigJay13]

Oh yeah been there done that. The bruhlosophy guys did a very good episode about reducing oxidation and one of the big ones was don’t cold crash unless you can do it without any oxygen ingress.

 

[Genuine]

I learned last year to wait till day 11 or 12 before kegging. Last February, I made two different beers....Resilience IPA and an Irish Blonde Ale. Both were kegged at day 9....hydrometer sample showed no off flavors whatsoever. They tasted great! Once carbed however, BOTH had that flavor of diacetyl. It was overbearingly noticeable even after 3 weeks in the keezer. I had to leave the kegs out at room temp for a week for the diacetyl to clear up and return to normal.