Well $#!+! Brewday whoopsy

[charliethebum]

Just got done brewing a batch of my favorite amber, everything was on point, no problems at all until I killed the flame, kicked on the faucet leading to the immersion chiller and noticed as I was stirring away that I had significantly more volume than I had a minute ago. Apparently my chiller decided to $#!+ the bed today and blasted about 5 gallons of hose water into my wort. It was still at about 150f when I got it shut down so I whirlpooled in an oz of cryo mosaic along with 3 lbs of dme to hopefully save this trainwreck. Wish me luck guys and gals I'm gonna need it. Got it chilling in the fermenter as we speak. Oh and there was about 4 gallons left over i decided to try to catch some wild yeast with so fingers crossed I guess....

 

[Jim R]

Sorry to hear that. I would be brewing again tomorrow.

 

[charliethebum]

Sorry to hear that. I would be brewing again tomorrow.

Might be building a cfc tomorrow...

 

[bkboiler]

Wowzers! 5 gallons! How big of batches do you brew?!?
Or how many beers had you had before knockout?
I took off the s***ty brass compression fittings on my SS immersion chiller and replaced them with SS compression fittings to NPT, and attached QD male fittings. This allows me to either connect hose water or recirculate ice water.
Most hose clamps have to be tightened occasionally, compression fittings don't suffer as badly from that issue.
Sorry you had to go through that... I had that issue in the past (at a much smaller scale) and it was a non-issue.

 

[GoodTruble]

It will still be beer. As long as noting bad made it in from the untreated water, it should be fine. I would have considered heating it back up or holding at 150-160 for 15-20 minutes, but it should still be fine. -And mediocre beers can just become Shandy's this time of year. =c)

 

[charliethebum]

Wowzers! 5 gallons! How big of batches do you brew?!?
Or how many beers had you had before knockout?
I took off the s***ty brass compression fittings on my SS immersion chiller and replaced them with SS compression fittings to NPT, and attached QD male fittings. This allows me to either connect hose water or recirculate ice water.
Most hose clamps have to be tightened occasionally, compression fittings don't suffer as badly from that issue.
Sorry you had to go through that... I had that issue in the past (at a much smaller scale) and it was a non-issue.

Haha the hose bib is on the other side of a fence from where I brew and the copper tubing got a huge split in the bottom coil so it took a minute to figure out what was happening and another little while to get it shut down. 1/2" id chiller moves alot of water pretty quick

 

[charliethebum]

It will still be beer. As long as noting bad made it in from the untreated water, it should be fine. I would have considered heating it back up or holding at 150-160 for 15-20 minutes, but it should still be fine. -And mediocre beers can just become Shandy's this time of year. =c)

I'm hoping there wasn't anything too nasty inside the hose or chiller, but it was in the boiling wort for 15 minutes before I turned the water on. Should've killed anything inside the copper tubing at least

 

[jrgtr42]

Haha the hose bib is on the other side of a fence from where I brew and the copper tubing got a huge split in the bottom coil so it took a minute to figure out what was happening and another little while to get it shut down. 1/2" id chiller moves alot of water pretty quick

Tht's a big reason why I put a valve on the intake hose when I built my chiller coil.
At the time the hose bib was 100' (well, almost, I needed a 100' hose for it and there wasn;'t much slack) and I figured I may need to shut it off in a hurry sometimes.
BUt 5 gallons extra is a lot - your gravity must have taken a big hit. You don't have extra fermenters you could have tosssed the extra from the kettle into?
But this is a sucky end to a long mash, boil etc.

 

[NGD]

Damn man, that sucks! Looks like a session ale was in the books for that day.

You don’t happen to sanitize your IC by immersing it in starsan prior putting it in the boil? I’ve read a read instances of copper IC developing holes after several starsan soaks.

 

[bkboiler]

I'm pretty sure the word "shandy" was a brewer working with his kid, Andrew.
And a whoops happened and he started to curse and stopped himself, " oh shhhh.........andy!"
He salvaged the weak beer by adding lemon to it...
Just kidding...

 

[charliethebum]

Damn man, that sucks! Looks like a session ale was in the books for that day.

You don’t happen to sanitize your IC by immersing it in starsan prior putting it in the boil? I’ve read a read instances of copper IC developing holes after several starsan soaks.

I always just use the hot wort to sanitize. I guess the cold water flowing through the hot copper found a weak spot and that's all she wrote

 

[charliethebum]

Tht's a big reason why I put a valve on the intake hose when I built my chiller coil.
At the time the hose bib was 100' (well, almost, I needed a 100' hose for it and there wasn;'t much slack) and I figured I may need to shut it off in a hurry sometimes.
BUt 5 gallons extra is a lot - your gravity must have taken a big hit. You don't have extra fermenters you could have tosssed the extra from the kettle into?
But this is a sucky end to a long mash, boil etc.

Yeah definitely integrating a ball valve into my next chiller. I hadn't gotten a gravity sample beforehand but it generally comes out around 1.055, was right at 1.03 after the blowout, wound up at 1.05 after the dme. My backup carboy is occupied with some cider so the leftover wort is sitting in a ss brewpot under a tree with a strainer bag over the top, praying for some spontaneous fermentation haha

 

[Dr_Jeff]

Did you happen to leave any water in the chiller over the winter that could have frozen and damaged/weakened the chiller?

 

[charliethebum]

Did you happen to leave any water in the chiller over the winter that could have frozen and damaged/weakened the chiller?

That was my first thought as it's been a while since I've brewed but I always leave it hanging upside down so it drains out.