OK, I should have kept the airlock

I had a some wort overflow through my taped-off lid causing a big mess in my keezer. I'd like to clean out the freezer bottom now, but I can't move the brew-pot/fermenter out without first removing the attached temperature-controller probe. Removing the probe could dislodge some of the overflow crud into the beer, risking infection. I had a little more wort than usual, maybe 6 gallons in my 8.75 gallon brew pot instead of the usual 5.5 gallons. I had never seen a single bubble out of the air lock before. I'll have to drill another hole in the brew pot lid  for the temperature probe in the future.

Now the spilled wort is starting to smell, so I am leaving the keezer top open during the day since the house is heated to 68 degrees anyway and active fermentation is over. It'll be harder to clean once overflowed liquid dries but I want that bad smell away from the beer.

12/17/2011 Update

Well this beer was really bad, and I threw out the last gallon or so to make room for my next batch. It was barely drinkable. Normally, I'd rather drink my home brew than any commercial beer. The beer had a sherry-like, rotten crab apple off-flavor indicating oxidation. Serving it really cold helped a little. Among my mistakes:  too much wort (I had over 6 gallons and it got all over), a loose seal, no airlock, and a starter that was too old. The starter went for a little over 40 hours. The brewing gods say 24 to 36 hours.

I bought a 7.9 gallon fermenter, and my son bought one as well. We brewed two 5 gallon batches. Mine was the same recipe, and my son's was a Brrrr Winter Ale clone. I'm happy to report they taste really good, but they haven't fully carbonated in the corny kegs yet. The only snafu was that I got a little airlock water ( a tablespoon maybe) in the beer when I crash cooled it. Next time I'll use cheap vodka. I also had a little trouble hitting my mash temperature. I finally just dumped the mash into my brew pot, got it to temp for about 15 minutes more and then dumped it back into the cooler mash tun to sparge. Hey, it worked! Maybe I'll  just use my brew pot as the mash tun to begin with next time. I also used Maris Otter grain instead of American 2-row. I'm not sure if that makes any difference, but that's what the recipe for Sierra Nevada Torpedo actually calls for. I didn't do any fermentation temp control, I will have to think about it before I start cutting holes into the lid of my new fermenter.

Brew Day at the Pig Pail Abode

I've tried making stir plates with computer case fans, but they have proven unreliable. At some point during the night, as the yeast starts growing, the magnetic stir bar inevitably rattles off  its rotation. So I went back to my tried and true option: the old turntable. The problem is that even 45 RPM is to slow for a regular stir bar. So I concocted the Pig Pail stir bar. As you can see from the above video, I have used ordinary sanitized drinking straws to extend above the surface of the liquid to increase oxygenation. This weekend was the first time I used it, and the modified stir bar stayed on track for the full 36 hours without a hitch. I used the 33 RPM setting. And yes, that's an Infinity Black Widow tonearm on the turntable.

I am brewing directly in my brew pot. This saves the step of cleaning up the fermenter. Plus, it's a nice stainless steel environment. I previously drilled a hole in the lid for an airlock, however, the airlock has proven pretty useless since the cover is not air-tight. I decided to use the hole for the Johnson controller temperature probe and a thermometer. That way, I can hold the fermentation at 67-68 degrees in my chest freezer keezer conversion. Now that it's autumn and the house goes unheated at night, I added a lamp with a CFL bulb to keep the temperature from falling below 67 degrees. Should be a good IPA. I had a little trouble keeping the mash temp at 154 degrees where I wanted it in my cooler mash tun, but that's another story.

New CPVC Manifold for the Pig Pail Mash Tun

I had this brass faucet laying around that I had never used, so I made use of it for the flow control. I had to buy a brass extender to keep the handle from hitting the cooler when I turned it on or off. For the bulkhead, I just reused the cooler parts.

Inside, the manifold is snapped together with CPVC (don't use PVC!). This stuff is easy to cut with garden pruning shears.

Slots are cut into the bottoms of the long pipes with a jigsaw 1/2" apart and positioned downwards. The wort and sparge water gravity drains into the brew pot.

Can You Use Google Search Results to Find the Best Mash Temp?

I tried brewing my first all-grain beer batch the other day. I used an old cooler with some window screen material we had lying around. Using John Palmer's book, How to Brew, as a guide, I used 162 degree strike water. Even though I rinsed out the cooler with hot water first (OK it wasn't boiling like he said) the mash temp came out too low so I was forced to add lots of hotter water to get the temp up. I'm guessing it averaged about 151. I was shooting for 152. But the wort came out tasting nice and sweet so I should be OK, even though the grain bed was on the soggy side.

This all got me to thinking what the ideal mash temp should be. So I used Google searches for mash temps and counted the results. See the graph above. In the search labeled "mash temp" "great beer" I searched for a range of temperatures, the actual searches were "mash temp 151" "great beer", "mash temp 152" "great beer", etc and plotted the number of hits. You should only look at the relative popularity within a single category since the scaling between search terms is arbitrary.The blue line is just a search for "mash temp" with all the temperatures. There were way more results for that so I had to divide the number of hits by forty to scale it to fit the chart. Obviously, there is a lot of noise in the data.

So what does it all show? First, nobody uses odd temperatures. Second, the three most popular mash temperatures are 150, 152 and 154. If you want a great beer, use 152. For the best beer use 154. For a beer that is neither a "great beer" nor a "best beer," use 150. Then again, maybe it doesn't mean anything at all. You'll just have to try it out for yourself.

Good bye Beer, I hardly knew ya.

It was a great beer, sorry to see the keg run out. I tried out fermenting in my 35 quart brew pot. Fermenting in my brew pot saves me from having to clean out a fermenter. I drilled a 1/2" hole with a spade drill through the stainless lid for the air lock. After no activity, I guessed my lid was not air tight and got out my wife's stethoscope. Sure enough, the yeast was audibly fermenting away. I'll work on the seal for next time, but I suspect it doesn't really matter all that much. The beer was very close but not the same as the Sierra Nevada Torpedo IIPA. Not better or worse, just a bit different. Here are my notes. Good luck reading them:

"The iPod cannot be synced. A duplicate file name was specified."

I wasted a lot of time this morning fixing a problem with my generation 4 iPod shuffle. Apple's error message is pretty unhelpful:

"The iPod PIG'S SHUFF cannot be synched. A duplicate file name was specified."

Here is my solution:

In Windows Vista (with iPod attached to computer)  go to Start | Computer | Right-Click on iPod shuffle drive | Properties | Tools | Error Checking

Select both check boxes "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" and select the start button.

Problem solved.