DarkUncle
Well-Known Member
Heya guys,
Well, I brewed my 6g all grain batch of Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale yesterday and into the night unfortunately. I must make a mental note to start much earlier when brewing a pumpkin ale. A few more steps and slow sparge tacks on a few hours.
Anyway, here's the problems I encountered with this batch. As drunken Oden as my witness, one day I will have a smooth problem free brew day. But once again this was not it.
Problem 1. I put my immersion chiller into my boiling wort for the last 10 or 15 minutes to sanitize. While the chiller was heating up, some water started literally shooting out of the open ends of it. Some of the water making into my wort. This was old water from the last time I used the chiller so while it shouldn't cause any infections because the wort was still boiling I hope it didn't impart any nasty flavors. Water sitting inside of my immersion chiller for 2 months in a hot garage probably wouldn't taste too good drinking it straight up. Mental note. Next time remember to blow the water out when finished and not let it sit in there until the next use. The temp change when immersed in boiling wort causes some weird pressure phenomenons to occur.
Next. Normally I just throw the pellet hops into my kettle but this time I wanted to keep as much sludge contained as possible just because I wanted to deal with less mess in the fermenter. I used a binder clip and clipped on the mesh hop bag to the side of the kettle for the duration of the boil (60 min.) as I've seen done by others. Well, after the boil was done I unclipped the binderclip and some black burnt hop bag flaked off into my hot wort. I had about a 3/4" hole in the bag. Well that sucked. Wonder what it will do to the flavor profile I thought as I saw a small black pool form momentarily before being sucked down into my poor sweet pumpkin wort. :-(
So, a squirt of 2 month old warm hose water and a dash of crusty burnt hop bag in my wort. Do you think I may develop some off flavors?
Next problem.
Well, I brewed my 6g all grain batch of Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale yesterday and into the night unfortunately. I must make a mental note to start much earlier when brewing a pumpkin ale. A few more steps and slow sparge tacks on a few hours.
Anyway, here's the problems I encountered with this batch. As drunken Oden as my witness, one day I will have a smooth problem free brew day. But once again this was not it.
Problem 1. I put my immersion chiller into my boiling wort for the last 10 or 15 minutes to sanitize. While the chiller was heating up, some water started literally shooting out of the open ends of it. Some of the water making into my wort. This was old water from the last time I used the chiller so while it shouldn't cause any infections because the wort was still boiling I hope it didn't impart any nasty flavors. Water sitting inside of my immersion chiller for 2 months in a hot garage probably wouldn't taste too good drinking it straight up. Mental note. Next time remember to blow the water out when finished and not let it sit in there until the next use. The temp change when immersed in boiling wort causes some weird pressure phenomenons to occur.
Next. Normally I just throw the pellet hops into my kettle but this time I wanted to keep as much sludge contained as possible just because I wanted to deal with less mess in the fermenter. I used a binder clip and clipped on the mesh hop bag to the side of the kettle for the duration of the boil (60 min.) as I've seen done by others. Well, after the boil was done I unclipped the binderclip and some black burnt hop bag flaked off into my hot wort. I had about a 3/4" hole in the bag. Well that sucked. Wonder what it will do to the flavor profile I thought as I saw a small black pool form momentarily before being sucked down into my poor sweet pumpkin wort. :-(
So, a squirt of 2 month old warm hose water and a dash of crusty burnt hop bag in my wort. Do you think I may develop some off flavors?
Next problem.
