Halbe's Homebrew Heaven: The Good....and the Bad....Back to Back Brew Sessions

12.27.10 began the nightmare of the Drunken Uncle Dunkelweizen. Sure, I thought it would be easy. I made a yeast starter Christmas night and was set up for an easy morning sanitation and simple dark wheat brew session. So I thought at least. I should have realized almost immediately that this was going to be bad. I hooked up the hose to start washing down my system when it froze almost instantly. No worries though, I disconnected the hoze and hooked it up where my washer connects to the water supply.

The overall brew session went fine in the first half of the day. We hit our strike in temps, held our mash temps, and properly stepped up our mash. It was when we sparged that we noticed a great deal of grain passing through the silicone tubing. I've noticed it before when doing batches so I didn't think much of it. The false bottoms help to keep grain out, help being the key word. We would later realize that about 2 gallons of volume was due to grain occupying the boil kettle.

Needless to say, we couldn't tell how much grain was in the boil kettle until we drained the cool wort out, but cooling the wort turned out to be a 3 hour fiasco. Grains got through the 3-piece ball valve, but clogged in the therminator (lead chill plate system).

Initially we weren't sure of where the clog was coming from so we tested all avenues of possibility. We confirmed that flow was passing through the 3-piece drain valve, through the pumps and back up through the outlet side of the pump, but not the therminator. We put the keg in a pile of snow but the snow was not match for the volume of hot wort. It was at that point we decided to drain out the wort into the fermenters, cap it with an airlock to prevent contamination, and let it sit over night to chill before pitching the yeast.

While it was fun in the beginning, it quickly became a brewer's nightmare and put a damper on the day. The good news is that we were sitting at 1.059 OG and pulled a quick fermentation time. The bad news is that we were supposed to extract 11.00 gallons of wort and ended up with 9+ gallons.

Here's the Drunken Uncle Dunkel fermenting through.

She'll pull through nicely I'm sure with that spicy, phenolic Weihenstephan Yeast, though I don't think I've ever had a true DunkelWeizen. First time for everything.

A Restless Evening

After that horrible brew session, I determined myself to remedy the situation. http://www.homebrewtalk.com/ was the source for some good answers. Here's what I came up with:

A False Bottom is not enough by itself to stop trub and grain from getting through.
A Hopbag adds protection
A kettle screen (bazooka screen) supplements the grain bag and keeps everything out
A whirlpool helps to keep trub to sides of kettle when draining.

I moved ahead with a few of these options. I bought a kettle screen and constructed a hopbag solely from homedepot parts. The hopbag was nothing more than 4 10" bolts, a 5" PVC connector pipe , a 5 gallon nylon paint strainer bag, and an adjustable clamp.

The hopbag is exactly what it says, but also more. When I transfer wort from the mash tun into the boil kettle, I let it pass through the hopbag to collect any loose grains, etc. I can then remove any loose grains collected and achieve my boil volume. Then, when I boil and add hops, some of the trub will remain in the hopbag, but unfortunately not all. The kettle screen adds to the equation by blocking any particles from passing through the drain valve. Marvelous!

Today I put the modifications to the test, and let me tell you was I pleased. I brewed up 10 gallons of Orange Pale Ale and ended up with 10 gallons in the fermenter. Here are some pics and videos of todays solo brew session.

The Hopbag I built for about $7.