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August 03, 2005
Home Brew Porter Disaster!
What do you get when you combine the yeast cake from a Dry English Ale batch, medium starting gravity robust porter wort, 75F pitching temperature, and a NO blow off tube???
A recipe for disaster!
My 3rd batch of beer was deep reddish brown, opaque, with a thick off-white head, and had quite the explosive flavor!Maybe that is how I should describe this tale of idiocy.
This home brew disaster is certainly a lesson learned the hard way. Although this robust porter explosion happened back in April 2004, the picture still gives me chills.
I had wanted to keep the fermenting temperature around 70F, so I tucked the batch in the corner of my kitchen. I inadvertently forgot that the back of a refridgerator gives off a lot of heat.
I awoke to my wife screaming at me to come in the kitchen. The top to the 6.5 gallon plastic bucket had hit the ceiling and a rained down a cascade of beer foam!
Needless to say, this mess took hours to clean up. I was certain that this incident had ruined the batch, but fortunately the massive krausen had kept out all the bacteria. I suppose this is incredibly good luck... so don't follow my example.
Posted by BrewChef at August 3, 2005 10:13 PM