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Hey all, am making a stout this morning, finished my boil and turned on my immersion chiller. After a minute or so I noticed the beer level was quite a bit higher then when I finished my boil. I quickly pulled out my chiller and found this:
Anyone ever have this happen or hear of it happening??? Now I have a batch cooling that start out at 26L (pre-boil gravity 1.035) that was boiled to 21L and now is back up to 26 or 27L again... What should I do, just go with it? Or should I boil it again? I am worried about making it too bitter and I have no more finishing hops. My hop schedule was 2oz Willamette @ 60 min, 0.5oz EK Goldings + 0.5oz Willamette @ 20 and again @ 5 for a total of ~47 IBU's.

What do you think I should do??

Edit for spelling

Cooling it in a tub won't hurt it too much, you'll lose some aroma is all. Not sure if you should boil it down first though...

Its currently sitting in a snowbank while I try to figure out what to do with it... I guess I'll just finish cooling it off and get it going in two fermenters I am just worried about it being watery. Maybe I should get some DME and add that?

Ladd wrote:Its currently sitting in a snowbank while I try to figure out what to do with it... I guess I'll just finish cooling it off and get it going in two fermenters I am just worried about it being watery. Maybe I should get some DME and add that?

that could help to get your OG back up a bit closer to where you intended but of course your hopping will to all screwed up. Where its a stout it could very well be still very tasty. Worst case you could taste after fermentation and dry hop with something, (hops, vanilla, bourbon, coffee etc.) My apprehension would be potential contamination from the cooling water and off tastes assuming you used a rubber garden hose with it. You could possibly bring it back up to 160-175F for a short bit but you do run the possible tradeoff of DMS and further hop usage issues.

Ya I thought about contamination too. After cooling and measuring I have 32L at 1.022.... I have decided to gently boil it back down and pick up some more Willamette and EKG for dry hopping. Hopefully I don't mess it up too badly. Right now it tastes like roasted water...

Yeah I would definitely boil that off if you're only at 1.022.

This happened to us, and boiled the shit it of it until we were close to the original target volume/gravity. We were satisfied with those results.

chalmers wrote:This happened to us, and boiled the shit it of it until we were close to the original target volume/gravity. We were satisfied with those results.

That sucks.... What were you brewing when it happened? I don't understand how enough pressure could have built up to do that when one end of the chiller was open? Mine is 3/8" tubing as well! Hard to believe! There was some water in mine but normally it just comes out as steam as it heats up. For anyone else reading this, I guess the take home message is make sure that your chiller has NO water in it before adding it to your boil. Good excuse to upgrade to counter flow or plate chiller I guess.

I finished cooling mine and whirlpooled the shit out of it. Gave it about ten minutes and racked it carefully off the trub (left ~1L behind). I wanted to try to avoid getting any of the hops as I thought it would be best to leave them behind as much as possible, trying to avoid excess bitterness from them. I took my ~31L and boiled it with a fan roaring in on it to help evaporation but it took another 90 minutes to get it down to 22L. SG is now where it should have been at 1.056. At flame out I threw in my last oz of Willamette that I found in my freezer, stuffed my BK into a snowbank and stirred until it was down to 20°C (only took about 10 minutes!). Looks good, smells fantastic but is pretty bitter to the taste going into the fermenter. If the full bitterness of my original finishing hops comes out with the extra boil time, my IBU's will be around 66 Full boil time: 2.5 hours...

I was planing to secondary this with french oak chips soaked in whiskey to try to get that barrel age note. Anyone think this is still a good idea? Or should I not bother under the current conditions? If it does turn out too bitter, any suggestions to counter that, or will it mellow out with aging?

Man, surprises like this sure make for an interesting brew day!

Hope its drinkable!

The split in your chiller may have been caused by freezing water in the chiller. This is what happened to ours. We were brewing a porter at the time I do believe. The oak chips sounds like a good idea, i've used and oz in an esb with good results. The bitterness will fade with age. Glad to hear everything turned out.

cant say you're a home brewer until you've experienced at least one major homebrewing disaster!

sleepyjamie wrote:cant say you're a home brewer until you've experienced at least one major homebrewing disaster!

hahaha I guess its official then!

LiverDance, you are probably right, I had it in my unheated shop since the last brew. I brought it in to clean it up about 1/2 hour before needing it. Likely there was still some ice in there... The split wasn't there when I was cleaning it so it must have burst after putting in the boil. I didn't notice it though.