Yesterday while recirculating the wort in the chilling cycle it began to foam up. A great deal. Not sure what caused this since I’m fairly sure the outlet was submerged so as to not agitate the wort.
I was at least a gallon over in my volume and with so much thick clingy foam left over I ended up missing my TG by 10 points. Additionally my grain was weevil infested.
A multitude of factors here?
A bonus is that ferment took off like crazy with just dry yeast- well within 12 hours.
I chill the same way. You probably had a small air leak between the ball valve and pump inlet. I’ve seen pictures of it but it has not happened to me.
If so, wouldn’t that leak be detected by evidence of fluid leaking when the March pump is off and the ball valves maintained in the opened position?
Not necessarily. With the pump off you have a positive pressure on the connectors from the weight of the water. With the pump on, you have a negative pressure (that sucks!) that is much stronger. On the bright side, you are aerating the crap out of the wort.
Thanks for the replies. I’ll look for a leak in the ball-valve/barb connection. Might have been a few small drips from there. Will have to bust out the teflon…
Certainly don’t want this to happen again aerated wort or not. A real PITA.