Large Starter Mishap

[John G]

I was growing up some Belgian yeast to a 5L starter last night. I had my Erlenmeyer flask on a trivet on the stovetop for about 1 minute on medium heat when the bottom popped off and 4.5L of cool wort drained all over our kitchen stove, down on the floor, and down to the basement. A big mess. The flask was pyrex and made of borosilicate glass, but it must have had a weak spot in it from knocking it or something during storage.

I tore the stove apart to try and clean and dry out all the electrical connections and it appears to be working ok this morning, but the insulation in around the oven compartment is soaked. It's really going to smell nice when I fire up the oven tonight for pizza! My wife was not too concerned (she wants a new stove). What a mess. I should have put the thing on my hotplate stirrer in the basement like I was intending on doing but thought it would be more "convenient" to do it in the kitchen while I was doing other stuff upstairs.

The good news is my yeast wasn't involved in the whole mess. The bad news is I spent most of the night mopping up sticky wort.

I'm not sure what the lesson is in all this. I don't know how I could have avoided it other than not boiling that much wort on a stovetop in a glass vessel, trivet or not.

[mr x]

Fuck, that bites. I cracked a heavy walled giant sized pyrex vessel with eight litres once. I was lucky it didn't separate. If you plan to order a new flask somewhere, i think there is some group buy interest here, lol...

[ratchet]

You, my friend, need a bunsen burner

[John G]

Yes, the sad thing is that I have a hotplate stirrer that is meant for that kind of work. It doesn't do me much good if I don't use it though!

[McGruff]

I toss my flask in a pot of water and boil water in it. I wish I had one of those weight rings to put over the top though.