Waylander87
Active Member
Happy new year all!
If this post belongs somewhere else then sorry, please move it and a thousand pardons.
So, whilst I don't have a great many brews to my name, today's brew has to rank pretty highly in brewing fails. It could only have gotten worse if I'd ended up in A&E!
One of my New Years resolutions was to get better at brewing; hitting target gravity etc. Today was to be the first step towards that goal when I decided to fit a sight tube to my boiler to get a better grip on losses etc.
I measured the diameter of the corner bend bit which would go into the side of my boiler, but lacking a 13mm drill bit I thought "hey, no worries, why not drill multiple small holes close together and then file it into a neat circle?".
What I ended up with was some very sharp, Swiss cheese looking steel with a broken drill bit sticking out the side. To make matters worse I'd not really drilled them close enough together and was now struggling to cut between the holes... Bugger. :pray:
A quick dash to the local DIY shop proved a nightmare in itself as the local council had closed many roads for roads works and the local football team was playing at home meaning every scarf wearing looney was also using the roads. Eventually I got there and back home, armed now with some rotary files which soon un-botched my HLT. Only leaks a little bit... :whistle:
Later, as the boil is proceeding nicely, I'm enjoying a beer on the sofa and congratulating myself over a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, when suddenly I find myself in the dark.
Seems SWIMBO had snuck into the garage and put the tumble dryer on, despite repeated warnings that the garage electrics aren't great and probably won't work with my brewing AND the tumbler on.
Luckily I could isolate the garage from the house, so turning the garage part of the circuit off allowed the house to work, and through cunning use of an extension cable the boil was able to continue by the light of a bedside lamp...
I then started dashing around trying to get the garage working again, fiddling around in the fuse box in the dim light...which of course led to me tripping over the extension cable and breaking the lamp, nearly pulling the HLT off the work top as well! :electric:
Also forgot to boil-sterilise my chiller due to all the electrical tinkering, so the resulting beer is having to cool naturally. :?
Long story short, garage got fixed, brew got done. Though after all of that I only got 16ltrs rather than the aimed for 23... BeerSmith and I are not friends.
Oh! And I also just discovered that I'm allergic to wheat beer after drinking a pint of the stuff I made for Christmas from a Pitsy recipe... So there's most of a keg of that to re home amongst friends now :cry:
If this post belongs somewhere else then sorry, please move it and a thousand pardons.
So, whilst I don't have a great many brews to my name, today's brew has to rank pretty highly in brewing fails. It could only have gotten worse if I'd ended up in A&E!
One of my New Years resolutions was to get better at brewing; hitting target gravity etc. Today was to be the first step towards that goal when I decided to fit a sight tube to my boiler to get a better grip on losses etc.
I measured the diameter of the corner bend bit which would go into the side of my boiler, but lacking a 13mm drill bit I thought "hey, no worries, why not drill multiple small holes close together and then file it into a neat circle?".
What I ended up with was some very sharp, Swiss cheese looking steel with a broken drill bit sticking out the side. To make matters worse I'd not really drilled them close enough together and was now struggling to cut between the holes... Bugger. :pray:
A quick dash to the local DIY shop proved a nightmare in itself as the local council had closed many roads for roads works and the local football team was playing at home meaning every scarf wearing looney was also using the roads. Eventually I got there and back home, armed now with some rotary files which soon un-botched my HLT. Only leaks a little bit... :whistle:
Later, as the boil is proceeding nicely, I'm enjoying a beer on the sofa and congratulating myself over a victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, when suddenly I find myself in the dark.
Seems SWIMBO had snuck into the garage and put the tumble dryer on, despite repeated warnings that the garage electrics aren't great and probably won't work with my brewing AND the tumbler on.
Luckily I could isolate the garage from the house, so turning the garage part of the circuit off allowed the house to work, and through cunning use of an extension cable the boil was able to continue by the light of a bedside lamp...
I then started dashing around trying to get the garage working again, fiddling around in the fuse box in the dim light...which of course led to me tripping over the extension cable and breaking the lamp, nearly pulling the HLT off the work top as well! :electric:
Also forgot to boil-sterilise my chiller due to all the electrical tinkering, so the resulting beer is having to cool naturally. :?
Long story short, garage got fixed, brew got done. Though after all of that I only got 16ltrs rather than the aimed for 23... BeerSmith and I are not friends.
Oh! And I also just discovered that I'm allergic to wheat beer after drinking a pint of the stuff I made for Christmas from a Pitsy recipe... So there's most of a keg of that to re home amongst friends now :cry:
