Home Brew Forum

Well it had to happen sooner or later. 2 years into brewing and I have my first major problem during a brew.

All was running quite smoothly between running the missus around. Got sat down and having a drink after putting the chiller in. Half an hour later I nip down to transfer it to the FV and see my chiller has sprung a leak where the hose pipe connects to the copper pipe and was spilling into the boiler!!

I reckon I had about 15l more water in there than I should have! I ran off 23l into a fv anyway and it only seemed to be 5 points below what I was aiming for? I surely can't have been lucky enough for the water to have not mixed into the wort!?

I guess we'll find out in a week or so if it's infected then another 4 weeks to see how it tastes if not.

Here was my recipe anyway.

23l

2200g Pale Malt
2200g Lager Malt
200g Torrified Wheat

90mins 20g Admiral 12%
30mins 20g Fuggles 3.7%
15mins 50g Fuggles 3.7%
0mins 20g Fuggles 3.7%

Time will tell!

fingers crossed eh!!!

If you don't have it setup like this already, put a downwards bend in the chiller pipes so the connector between hose and chiller is outside and beneath the top edge of the boiler. If you get a leak then it'll dribble off onto the floor rather than into the brew. Of course, if the leak is actually spraying everywhere rather than dribbling, then you've really got more to worry about...

O eck - you'll probably get away with it!!!

Think yourself lucky your water was clean. This afternoon I will be pumping fish pond water through my chiller

Algae beer anyone?

Boiled Goldfish anyone????

I'd imagine it'll be okay - if the hose was clean then aside from not having de-chlorinated the water it'll be no worse than using unboiled water in kit brews.

But if it happens again you could always re-boil to make sure its sanitised and either wait for evaporation to reach the desired volume again or add some spray malt to regain the OG you wanted at the bigger volume.

Cheers
kev

I hope it works out ok. Highest amount of hops i've ever used in a brew too!

Didn't really fancy boiling off 15 litres of water.

Well it's fermenting!

Looking good so far