IMG_5348I thought I’d write this both as a warning to others and as a reminder to myself.

So I bought a triple to brew from Brewer’s Best at the Brew ‘n Grow in Chicago – the only home brew shop in all of Chicago proper. I needed to pick up a new Thermometer, for those not keeping up, which broke before my first brew. I also wanted to get a new brew pot, because fuck waiting a full hour for water to boil, a nice long spoon for stirring.

Side note: the brew pot wasn’t exactly what I wanted (see: flat bottom) so I went to a restaurant supply and picked up a ridiculously nice stainless steel 5gal pot on the cheap. If you have this at your disposal, buy a pot there not online or a specialty shop.

So, this is where I learn from doing. For some stupid ass reason I kept the thermometer in my pot during the entire process. Yeah, sure it’s needed for reaching the correct temp for steeping specialty grains and making sure the wort is cool enough to pitch yeast – other than that if the damn thing is boiling, it’s boiling. So this leads me to the lesson – stop touching shit. Leave it alone. Don’t have anything in the brew pot you don’t need. Piss off the thermometer.

I was quite far into my boil, as in seconds before tossing in the aroma hops, and I checked the temp of the boil. Yeah. Surprise  the stick was unbelievably hot, shocking because it was only just sitting in boiling water for the past hour. I dropped the thermometer and it smacked against my fancy flat bottom pot emptying all it’s wax, metal shot, and the bottom bulb of red alcohol.

For those who don’t know, I’m a pretty big cry baby. So I pouted for a second dumped all the shit, knocked the pots around when cleaning up, and laid in bed for about an hour. Hind sight – I should have just filtered it thought some cheese cloth and pitched the yeast anyway.

After I sucked it up and went back to the LHBS to get another kit. That post coming soon (tomorrow, maybe).

4 Comments
  1. cbd says:

    Ah, brewing disasters are no fun. We all have ’em, though.

    Get a metal thermometer. The simple kitchen type will do. You don’t need anything terribly accurate unless you’re gonna start mashing.

  2. cbd says:

    Most of the all-grain brewers I know do that.

  3. […] 3, a Witbier started off on the Sunday after my brew fail. I picked up the kit at the only homebrew store in Chicago (Brew and Grow), along with a new […]

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Beer 2 Day 1 – Brew failure

Posted on

February 9th, 2011

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do-it-myself

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