When Brewing Sessions Go Wild!

Howdy all, Thought I'd take a few days off work and do a brew on my newly upgraded brewrig. This sounded like a good idea but when put into practice I went a little something like this..

Brew Day, James Squire Golden Ale Clone.
Get up at 3am (when son wakes us up) settle him and turn the HLT. Testing out the new 2400watt element newly installed into the kettle. This works fine no drama or anthing.

Get up and start to MASH in around 7am, tip the grain in the MLT, the crush looks a little different so i double check that it is crushed.. Yup it is but maybe my mill was on the wrong settle.. too late now!...
to the HERMS pot on and get upto the 65.5c required for this recipe.. underlet 22lt into the MLT from the HLT, everything is going great guns at the moment... Its been awhile since i've brewed but after the water hits the grain you get a hit of that smell.. OHHHH i remember this smell! loving it at the moment..

Connect up the hoses to the pump/herms/mlt and kick it off.. The second update to my brewrig was putting the probe for the HEMRS directly on the out from the HERMS pot instead of the inlet return on the MLT.. this seem to have been a create adition.. I can now hold the grain at the correct temp without over/under shooting the mash..(all good so far)

I do two rounds of batch sparging (MLT not huge so when doing doubles requires a few rounds) into my new kettle (third upgrade) with 2 x 2200watt elements and a pickup and false bottom configuration to not get the hops drawn into my plate chiller (fourth upgrade).

Once the kettle is full with the required wort level i turn on the elements one at a time.. First.. yup kicks on and is running sweet, second... yup that seems to have turned on and is working.. GREAT!! While waiting for my wort to hit a rolling boil I thought I'd better measure my hop additions.. I go into the kitchen to get the scales... ohh yeah I broke them.... hmm Ok no drama i'll use the scales I used to measure the grain, hmm ok well those increments dont really help me.. Ok well.. umm. my worts about to start boiling and I have a 60min addition on a 60min boil so I need theses hops measured quickly.. Ahhhh bugger it im going to call this brew (That'll do Golden Ale) so I just pour some hops on the scale and try and read inbetween the lines..

Kettle finally starts a rolling boil, addition one goes in.. Ahhh the smell of hops.. Excellent im brewing again!! Do a nother "measurement" of hops.. so the boil goes fine... now we get to testing the plate chiller.

I connect all the hoses up to the plater chiller and start to pump the wort through and back to the kettle for a whirlpool, this is working fine.. I go out and turn the water tap on come back in and theres all this hissing coming from my plate chiller.... It looks like something Doc Brown has stuffed up and is going pear... I go out to turn the water off and hear a BANG!! oh crap.. walk into the shed and the hose has flown off taking a SS clamp with it.. Oh lucky its not a show stopper.. Reconnect all the hoses found a kink in the hose, undid that and we're off!!! woah the plate chiller is working wonders! great!..

I put my spoon in the help the whirlpool a little and I hear a Dink! on the bottom of the kettle.. Ahh she'll be right I think theres only elements and a falsebottom down there... I touch the return hose and it is cooler but I thought I'd open this puppy up and full open the kettle tap.. MISTAKE! because.... .that dink I heard was the false bottom coming off and now the hops get sucked straight up into the plate chiller and clog it.. OHH CRAP!

So now im here standing in a puddle of hot water from the plate chiller and now I have to clear this plate chiller, I take off some hoses (Hops and wort are going everywhere) so now im standing in that too.. I put the hose in my mouth that goes to the inlet and blow!! and yup! Hops and crap fly out of the Platechiller.. Excellent I though until I looked down and saw my shoe covered in water/wort and now hops.. hmm this is going great!..

Hook it all back up and we're off agian.. WOOHOO its working.. hmm whats that I can hear like running water... OH CRAP the other hose for the outlet i put in a little tank to capture the water is now over flowing.. Ok bucket time! run out take some water out and start watering the plants.. woah! safe.. go back in the shed check the disaster and start to clean up...... hmm whats that I can hear that sounds like runn......... OH crap again..

By this time i've had it... I thought I wonder how hot the wort is coming out of the plate chiller, I find its only 22c and I could have done a single pass into the fermenter anyway.. So I whip out the hose and slap it in the fermenter... AHHHHHHHHHH... im nearly there.. now to take care of this water issue... turn off the tap and empty the buckets.. walk back in the shed.. AHHHH!! fermenter tap is OPEN!!! beer is flowing out on the gorund.. so now theres water/wort/hops and more wort on the ground.. this is tops!!!

Ok beer in fermenter, fermenter in fridge, temp control on, yeast pitched, 39lt instead of 40lt which is ok with all my spills. Now to clean up.. I will not bore you with that but it was long and annoying..

So what have I learnt out of this?? dont upgrade to much stuff on your rig at a time, dont rush, check and recheck.. and plan plan plan..

and for your fun, some pictures..

start of the day when everyhing is going fine..

What do you mean my tap is open?

Now to start cleaning..



EDIT : Sampled the Beer and it seems to be OK!!! phew! lets hope he stays that way..