Brew days gone bad !!!

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Permalink Reply by Martin Bridges on June 17, 2009 at 11:03pm

Enjoy whatever you get from that brew. You earned it!

I had one brew where I had a major boilover in the kitchen while I was down in the study checking my calculations. Heard the wife's scream, came running into the kitchen, slipped on the spilt wort and landed on my back on the wife's foot.

Beer was beautiful.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Neilson on June 18, 2009 at 7:00am

I feel your pain bud!! 2 Weekends ago I broke 2 23L Carboys, Ironic thing is I just bought 2 that week!! my wallet is very sore!!

I have now learnt my lesson!!

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Permalink Reply by warra48 on June 18, 2009 at 4:56pm

Had a brew day last October, and also a visitor to admire my skills as a brewer.
The plan was to do a dunkelweizenbock, and aim to get about 22 litres of 1070 beer into the fermenter.
First issue was my extreme optimism in thinking I could mash 7 kg of grain in a 25 litre mash tun. Take it from me, you can't do it, or at least, I can't.
Went OK first up, doing a protein rest with just the wheat. Then added the rest of the grist.
Second issue was I underestimated the temperature needed for the additional water to get the whole lot up to temperature, and ended up well short of my saccharification temperature . Added a kettle of boiling water, and still ended up about 3ºC short at 61ºC, but of course, no more space in the mash tun. Undeterred, and ever inventive, I decided to pull a very thin decoction. Tried it through the tap first, no chance. Ended up having to take it out of the top. After bringing it to the boil, and adding it back in, I thought I was looking good, and had it on exactly 64ºC as planned.
Third issue, and one hour later, open the tap to start the vorlauf, and ended up with nothing more than a dribble. Stirred it all up, and tried again. Same result.
Decided in the end there was no other option but to pull half the mash out of the tun into the larger of my decoction pots, and to drain and sparge it in two lots. 1½ hours later, and we had the planned 32 litres into the kettle. Amazingly, I still managed to pull 77% efficiency into the kettle.
Fourth issue, after boiling it for 1½ hours, I didn't lose anywhere near what I thought I would in evaporation.
It's now in the fermenter, 25 litres at 1063, on the yeast cake of an hefeweizen
This one had better be worth all the effort. At least we had lots of good beers during the day.
Did we have fun? You betcha.
I'm still drinking the batch, and they've mature rather nicely.

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Permalink Reply by Riggwelted on June 18, 2009 at 10:09pm

Brewing - it's like having children, they always seem to play up when you have people round!

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