Well That Didnt Go To Plan

After all the hulaballoo of finally getting round to brewing Big Rons Mild and being as proud as punch for increasing the efficiency of the brew house it only takes a laps of concentration and a bit not thinking it through to make it all go a bit Pete Tong.

This brew was a first on a number of fronts, first new recipe of the year, first time trialing a new sparging technique (i.e. get Angela to hot foot it to the shops to buy a new thermometer cus the batteries in the usual one had run out.) And the first outing for the new fermzilla. I had great hopes, thinking if this works out well i can up production and look at other types of pressure fermenting and look at at kegging, not just bottles, oooh the sky was going to be the limit.

So sunday the yeast was pitched and the heat belt in place with its nice insualted overcoat and we were away. yeast pitched at the upper end of the pitching rate . (mistake 1) spunding valve set to 10 psi (mistake 2) and it was going great guns.

Got up monday morning and the graphs on Brewfather were looking spot on held good temerpature over night and the sg was falling nicely so yeah we had fermentation we were good.

Monday evening however went to show the beer some love and noticed that there was no pressure on the spunding valve so popped a bit of head pressure in to see if i could find a leak and sure enough found a pinched seal. sorted that and the punding valve began to vent. along with some nice foam to the floor so i though hah i dont want this to make my floor sticky I'll put a drain on it (mistake 3.) Drain lead to bucket and I went to bed knowing that I wasnt going to wake up to a flood.

what i did wake up to was a Brewfather saying the temperature in the beer fell like a stine over night and the Inkbird temperature flicking aroind like a flag in a gale. this is where the day job kicked in. I knew the fermenter was empty before i had even got the shed key off the rack.

I knew the heater belt was simply heating air and low and behold i was right.

A quick post mortem and a flick back through my GCSE physics conformed that i had over pitched the yeast so it went nuts and when the spunding valve vented it created a syphon into the bucket below. So once the beer had started to flow into the bucket below there was no stopping it.

On the up side I now have learned three leasson and i have 23 litres of really really clear sickly sweet, partially fermented 'beer' in a bucket in the shed waiting for me to clear up later.

Oh well onwards and upwards