Brew 60 batches a year for 5 years, take 3 weeks off, and it is like I am a beginner again. Been sick as can be for the last couple weeks, so yesterday was my first brew day in 3 weeks.
*Ran off too much wort into my kettle… adding boil time and decreasing my intended gravity.
*Was dry hopping a Saison with some Citra (While I was brewing my german pilsner). As I was throwing my 10 minute addition of german hops in the kettle, I smelled them, and thought: “Huh, that smells really strong… like Citra”… as they went into the kettle. Looked over my shoulder and realized my sense of smell was correct.
Dumped my yeast in my fermenter, started running the wort off. Was getting my oxygen canister ready, I looked back and realized the spigot of my fermenter was open and wort/yeast was pouring out onto the floor. Probably lost a half gallon or so (and obviously some proportion of my yeast.)
So… I now have a 1.042 gravity “german” pilsner, with a 1 ounce addition of Citra at 10 minutes, that may or may not have an adequate amount of yeast in it. Currently fermenting (I hope) away at 50 degrees.
Nothing catastrophic, and I am actually kind of curious how the beer will come out. Crazy how fast you can get out of the routine and make stupid mistakes.
I have another German Pilsner on deck to brew today - so, hopefully I have the bugs worked out.
I had a similar brew day to that a while ago. I did a pilsner and a pale ale. Missed the volumes, left a valve open, screwed up some hops, but got through the two batches and then walked down to the basement to put the yeast in and poured the US05 into the pilsner. At that point I was just like ‘screw it’, it was all wrong anyway so I put the lager yeast in the pale ale and ran with it.
They ended up being ok to drink, definitely not what I was going for. Since that day I don’t double batch (never mind triple batch).
Man, tough brew days for both you guys. I stopped double-batching a long time ago due to one batch always suffering. I get so pissed off when I screw up a brew day (like two batches ago when I didn’t fully clean off all the machine oils on my brand new SS chiller and my foam in the boil kettle was bright purple!!!).
We’ve ALL been there, guys. I had a couple years so smooth I got over confident. The last six months have been rocky, partly from using new methods and partly from just dumba$$ mistakes. It gets better.
I’ll be there. Took the winter off (and posting too) and it’s warming up enough to brew. Plenty of warm days I coulda brewed in but was sick, thanks to my 4YO bringing every cold in preschool.
Any new simplified LO stuff? The LO thread looks SOS except for a Dead Kennedy’s reference. I’ve been hearing DK tunes in my head ever since…
Just brewed my 3rd batch with the process and from start to finish only 5 hrs 15 min. That included chilling to 44F, and preboiling strike water. Really not that much different than my old style brewing times.
I make a detailed check list customized for every brew which helps, but nothing is perfect.
The last batch I brewed was a pecan brown ale. I had planned to toast the pecans while mashing and then add them at the end of the boil.
I didn’t get that detail on my list, and didn’t realize my error until well into the boil. Guess who has pecans in the secondary now which is delaying bottling?