foscojo
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2020
- Messages
- 81
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Brew day involved way more stress than a "fun hobby" should entail. Oh, it started full of promise. I got up early and mowed the lawn to make the wife happy. Then started prepping to make MoreBeer's Pliny the Elder clone (LME, 5 gallon). I was so excited. And then...I started.
Well, what that got me was 5 gallons of 90F wort and no way quickly drop the last 20F short of dropping my immersion chiller into the bucket (in hindsight I should have tried that but didn't really think of it at the time). So I put it up on a filing cabinet in front of a window AC unit. It took 6 hours to get it down to 72F where it refused to go down any further. Pissed off by then I pitched the yeast and went to bed.
Now, I guess 2 degrees isn't that big of a deal. By morning the yeast was already rocking and have been creeping out of my bubbling airlock for 2 days now. So it seems like it is going to make it. Although the temperature went back up to 74F and is holding steady. Not really anything I can do about that though.
But I am curious about what this "high temperature pitching and fermenting" ordeal could mean at the end. Off flavors / aromas? A loaf of bread? Maybe a nice sourdough? Anyone know that the ramifications are?
- Well, turns out my gas grill's side burner was fine through the steep but just couldn't muster a full boil on 3 gallons.
- Oh, and never waste your time trying to tape a baking thermometer to the rim of a steaming boil pot. Don't bother.
- My backup, the glass top electric stove in the kitchen did it fine so long as the pot lid was at least halfway on
- which meant no hop spider (lucky I had a 10-pack of muslin bags handy).
- Of course, my kitchen sink is not threaded so back outside I go to hook up the immersion chiller...
- which leaked because some dumb@$$ bent the connector within the last 24 hours when I used it last.
- AUTO-SIPHONS SUUUUUUCK!! (and by that I mean that they do not suck for more that 3 seconds) This resulted in me grabbing the double-mesh strainer from the StarSan bucket and just dumping the entire pot of wort into it over the fermenter bucket.
- It goes without saying that the strainer completely clogged with hop-dust trub and Whirfloc gunk but I did it. It was finally in the fermenter.
Well, what that got me was 5 gallons of 90F wort and no way quickly drop the last 20F short of dropping my immersion chiller into the bucket (in hindsight I should have tried that but didn't really think of it at the time). So I put it up on a filing cabinet in front of a window AC unit. It took 6 hours to get it down to 72F where it refused to go down any further. Pissed off by then I pitched the yeast and went to bed.
Now, I guess 2 degrees isn't that big of a deal. By morning the yeast was already rocking and have been creeping out of my bubbling airlock for 2 days now. So it seems like it is going to make it. Although the temperature went back up to 74F and is holding steady. Not really anything I can do about that though.
But I am curious about what this "high temperature pitching and fermenting" ordeal could mean at the end. Off flavors / aromas? A loaf of bread? Maybe a nice sourdough? Anyone know that the ramifications are?