Hi everyone,
I had one of those brew-days the other day where everything seemed to go wrong. I thought I’d share my bad decisions in case anyone else can learn from them (although the main bad decision is something that is pretty obvious in hindsight!).
For this brew-day I tried out a new whirlpool setup I’d just added to my BIAB Buffalo boiler. The setup comprised of a pump, which looked like an OEM version of Keg Kingdom’s brew pump 3000, a whirlpool arm from angel home-brew, plus some tubing (more on this later) and a cam-lock to connect it all up. This all worked great in testing with cold water and no hops (happy to share photos and parts of anyone wants to replicate).
On the day a couple of things went wrong:
- I decided to keep using my metal hop spider and place the whirlpool arm inside it, because I was worried about hops going around the pump. Initially this worked great (for last 20 mins of boil) with a nice whirlpool in the spider keeping the hops moving (my aim). Things went wrong when I put in the flameout additions, as the pressure difference in-out caused the hops to clog the mesh allowing nothing in or out. When I drained the wort into the fermenter, the hop spider was left full (the mesh got so well clogged that after the brew the spider was able to almost hold water like a bucket, with just a few pin hole leaks!). The result, I assume, is very little impact from the flameout hops on the brew! Lesson learned, don’t use a hop spider with a whirlpool arm. I’m going to dump the hops straight in next time unfiltered.
- After moving the whirlpool arm out of the hop spider to prevent overflow, things then got worse. It turns out (probably obvious to everyone here!) that your standard b&q clear 1/2 tubing doesn’t work for boiling water. The tubes went soft, started to give off a plasticky smell, and collapsed about 2/3 mins into the whirlpool, choking the pump. I was able to re-start the pump later on once the chiller had got the temperature down. Another lesson learned, I’m going to get some food safe silicone tubing for next time!
I’m now considering whether to keep or dump the batch, which seems to be fermenting nicely after a very slow start (in the panic above I pulled the thermometer out and left it hanging above, rather than in, the wort during cooling. This resulted in a 10c pitch temp for US-05 doh!).
I’m not so worried about the lack of effective flameout hops, which I’m sure can be remedied a little bit with a massive dry hop charge. However, I am a bit worried about the flavour and health effects of having the (potentially non-food safe) tubing at such a high temperature. I’ve yet to taste a sample, but will of course dump if it tastes like plastic. However, if not I’m still considering it. I’ve since read that some plastics can leach nasty things into your brew at high temperatures - and don’t want to drink 19L of something poisonous! I can’t seem to find the tubing on the b and a website — but It’s properties seem to match Vinyl, PVC (clear, flexible), which sounds like nasty stuff when melted. Any chemists on here or anyone now the health risks of this stuff? Am I being silly, or is dumping this one a wise decision?
I hope this anatomy of a failure has been useful for some. Maybe with a bit of a redesign things will work better next time!
I had one of those brew-days the other day where everything seemed to go wrong. I thought I’d share my bad decisions in case anyone else can learn from them (although the main bad decision is something that is pretty obvious in hindsight!).
For this brew-day I tried out a new whirlpool setup I’d just added to my BIAB Buffalo boiler. The setup comprised of a pump, which looked like an OEM version of Keg Kingdom’s brew pump 3000, a whirlpool arm from angel home-brew, plus some tubing (more on this later) and a cam-lock to connect it all up. This all worked great in testing with cold water and no hops (happy to share photos and parts of anyone wants to replicate).
On the day a couple of things went wrong:
- I decided to keep using my metal hop spider and place the whirlpool arm inside it, because I was worried about hops going around the pump. Initially this worked great (for last 20 mins of boil) with a nice whirlpool in the spider keeping the hops moving (my aim). Things went wrong when I put in the flameout additions, as the pressure difference in-out caused the hops to clog the mesh allowing nothing in or out. When I drained the wort into the fermenter, the hop spider was left full (the mesh got so well clogged that after the brew the spider was able to almost hold water like a bucket, with just a few pin hole leaks!). The result, I assume, is very little impact from the flameout hops on the brew! Lesson learned, don’t use a hop spider with a whirlpool arm. I’m going to dump the hops straight in next time unfiltered.
- After moving the whirlpool arm out of the hop spider to prevent overflow, things then got worse. It turns out (probably obvious to everyone here!) that your standard b&q clear 1/2 tubing doesn’t work for boiling water. The tubes went soft, started to give off a plasticky smell, and collapsed about 2/3 mins into the whirlpool, choking the pump. I was able to re-start the pump later on once the chiller had got the temperature down. Another lesson learned, I’m going to get some food safe silicone tubing for next time!
I’m now considering whether to keep or dump the batch, which seems to be fermenting nicely after a very slow start (in the panic above I pulled the thermometer out and left it hanging above, rather than in, the wort during cooling. This resulted in a 10c pitch temp for US-05 doh!).
I’m not so worried about the lack of effective flameout hops, which I’m sure can be remedied a little bit with a massive dry hop charge. However, I am a bit worried about the flavour and health effects of having the (potentially non-food safe) tubing at such a high temperature. I’ve yet to taste a sample, but will of course dump if it tastes like plastic. However, if not I’m still considering it. I’ve since read that some plastics can leach nasty things into your brew at high temperatures - and don’t want to drink 19L of something poisonous! I can’t seem to find the tubing on the b and a website — but It’s properties seem to match Vinyl, PVC (clear, flexible), which sounds like nasty stuff when melted. Any chemists on here or anyone now the health risks of this stuff? Am I being silly, or is dumping this one a wise decision?
I hope this anatomy of a failure has been useful for some. Maybe with a bit of a redesign things will work better next time!
