I’ve had bad days before. My birthday when I was nearly too hungover to move is probably the best example I have but other days after the pub and MUSA dinners can also lead to me being in a rough state. But this day took the cake.
It all started easily enough. The kettle was clean, they had just finished mashing in and all I could do was wait until the mash rest was done. I was the brewer for the night as Wallace was off and I was feeling pretty good.
The runoff started well and I managed to keep my bed steady and a good flow rate going. It was a 60 HL (6000 L) batch of Punk IPA. For a batch this size you need to collect about 62 HL so that you can boil some off to hit your final gravity (a lot of this probably seems like brewers code to you and that’s ok. It is.).
Once the runoff hit 58 HL you turn off your sparge and let the rest soak through. Just before the volume reached this mark the door started to drip as it always does. A few turns and tighten it up again. Then it starts to spray a fairly nice stream down so I go to clean a bucket to catch it and pour it back in. Maybe 30 seconds later the seal pops off and 85˚C wort is pouring from the door way. I sprint away to get shift leader. Fuck. I just dropped a few thousand pounds of ingredients all over the floor and the place was flooded.
After the clean up we finished the boil with the remaining 18 HL of wort and casted it in to a tank for yeast propogation. The rest was supposed to be going into a tank for fermentation as normal Punk but the pressure was too high in the tank. Letting the CIP pipe open to release pressure is what we always do so it is easier. CO2 fills the area around the tanks and makes it nearly impossible to breathe. Here’s the kicker, the fermentation was so rigorous that yeast starts to spray out. Fuck. Casting then proceeds to take a few hours for almost fuck all beer. What a night
And as we know bad things happen in 3’s so there had to be one more. As I was cleaning out the mash tun I took the bucket to empty it and hit a bump in the parking lot. Usually that would be ok but not today. The string that holds the bucket on snaps and malt is all over the ground. Now I have to re-shovel it. Fuck. I was very fed up by now and powered out a bucket from the mash tun in about 2.5 or3 minutes I think. I was getting my frustrations out.
What did I learn? We really do need new seals. Yeast is a crazy bitch (that I love). Strings break when they get old. My work is dangerous but never dull. Sometimes you need to live on the edge.
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