The whole thing was a cockup from start to spectacular finish. I did the water treatment the night before, but forgot to check it afterward, so I've no idea if it was OK or not. Anyway, on with the brew day. Obligatory grain shot:
Traditional brewday lunch while the water heated - ludicrous toasted sandwich. This time it was cheddar, mozerella, onion, tomato, potato and lashings of tomato sauce:
The liquor was about 3C above the strike temperature, so I used the large lump of copper of my fermenter chiller to cool it, dipping it in the hot liquor until it was too hot to hold, then cooling it in the cold sparge water. Each time I did this the temperature dropped by 1C, so I was able to correct it pretty quickly.
The mash went OK, except I forgot to take a PH reading, so I've still no idea if the water treatment was OK. It only dropped about 1C over the 1 3/4 hours it ended up in there for. It got a bit stuck on the first sparge and I had to prod it with a spoon. Here are some bubbles from the second sparge:
To my delight, I found I had spot on 29L in the boiler. Shame I forgot to put the hop filter in though. Swear... drain... fit... refill. I then left it until the evening to do the boil, once the kids were in bed.
Much screaming, tantrums and shouting later (and the kids were even worse), I got the boil on and tried a spot of first wort hopping by lobbing the first Fuggles in as it heated up:
I noticed that the tap was sagging slightly (the plastic goes a little bendy when boiling), which would raise the hop filter off the bottom of the boiler, so I propped it up with a couple of bits of skanky pallet wood from the kindling pile. Amazingly, I remembered the Whirfloc and 10 minute hops (Fuggles).
At flameout (more Fuggles) I tried increasing the flow through the IC this time, and found that the wort cooled quicker and was down to 24C in about 45 minutes. I started filling the FV, lots of splashing and aerating.
It was almost to the 23L level - I'd got the quantity spot on, and I was just thinking about how it had all come together, despite some cockups, when the two bits of manky pallet wood that were propping up the tap dropped into the wort with a plop that turned my heart to stone. I desperately pulled them out and scraped the dead spiders, sawdust and filth from the wort as best I could.
So much for spending all that time steralising everything. I might as well have wiped my arse on the stirring spoon. God knows what sort of horrible things are in there now. This wasn't nicely planed wood for shelves that I infused my wort with, it was dirty, crusty, filthy stuff that was destined for burning and had been sitting outside for months.
I had rehydrated the yeast already, so I pitched it and put the lid on. Is there a slim chance that a large batch of healthy yeast can beat up and eat whatever vile bugs I've put in there? If not then at least I get to experience what an infected batch is like. This morning I found that the yeast are certainly going for it and are erupting out of the airlock. It smells OK too. I don't dare hope though. For what it's worth, this is what I ended up with (along with all the dust and spider poo) - at 1.049, a gnats over the 1.048 it should have been:
The next opportunity I've got for a brew day is in 3 weeks time. Good lord, I'll have almost run out of beer by the time it's ready. Eek!
