One effect of having basic brewing equipment around the house is that seemingly I can no longer tolerate the sight of unoccupied carboys. And since there is never a problem ever to give away surplus beer I decided it was time for yet another batch of Hobo's Delight([1], [2], [3]). Just the basic recipe this time and no experiments; I just wanted to settle into a routine to build on before setting out for new adventure.
Boy was I wrong about that routine part! Because in me, familiarity does cause complacency, and in this case, near disaster as well. My mixture of water, malt and sugar was slowly heating up, slow as always to get to the boiling point. A minimum of ten minutes to go I figured and so I went for a quick two minute trip to fetch something from my car out in the parking lot. OK, it might have been a little more than two minutes that I was gone but what I did not expect was to return to an eruption of boiling wort out of my brew kettle, creating a mega mess not only on the stove top but on the sides and the floor before as well.
So what to do first? Turn off that stove, of course, then grab that kettle and set it into the sink. Next? Silence that stupid smoke detector that suddenly also had caught on the the fact that something was not quite right. Yes, and then open all windows as wide as possible. And with the most immediate crisis taken care I finally had the time to stop for a minute and actually plan my next moves.
Of course I was not to abandon my wort. That's $25 which I was just going to dump down the drain. On the other hand, there was no way I could just continue my cooking like this. With all the spilled wort everywhere that smoke alarm would have triggered again almost immediately. Not to speak of the fact that it was not a good idea to pretty much bake permanent stains into everything the spilled wort had gotten onto and into. Obviously, I had to cool down the burner quickly and clean up first.
It was a major operation. Burned wort is second only to burned milk in the damage it does. And it is second only on account of not smelling quite that bad, in terms of the mess it is right up there. For beginners, when sugars get too got, like when they get on the heating stove burner, will disintegrate into layers and bubble of carbon and lots of smoke. The carbon will create a tough layer of crust on everything it gets on, the smoke will only set of smoke detectors. Any wort that had not turned into a bubbly sheet of carbon still had most of the water evaporated out of it and become something resembling sticky glue.
It is amazing how many parts stoves suddenly have when they are given the opportunity to get gummed up wort all over them. There is the heating coil of the burner of course, and there is the pan underneath. There is the stove top itself, which can also be flipped up to reveal some of the innards of the stove. Luckily the mess did not extend any farther than that. But there still was the door to the oven, a little that had somehow made it into the oven, and the floor in front of the oven. And all heavy scrubbing; this was not stuff you simply wipe off. I got it all clean in the end except for the burner pan. I might try some sand paper on it some day but I am afraid it has been discolored permanently.
The brew kettle needed some major help as well. There was no black layer on it but it needed special handling because I did not want any of my cleaners in the wort. Besides, that kettle was still hot. But compared to the surgery I had done on the stove it was easy. While I was working on that stove for over half an hour the kettle got clean in something like ten minutes. And after reassembling my stove I was finally ready to resume boiling my wort.
Would I add any extra malt or sugar to make up for the loss? I decided against it. Just as with milk, a little boiled over wort has the potential for big damage. Hence I was hoping that even though the mess had been big the actual loss may have been minor. Besides, I would have only been guessing at how much replacement was needed anyway. Better to make an assessment from the finished beer and have a better idea if it ever happens again. OK then, keep boiling, go on like nothing ever happened.
It goes without saying that I stood right next to my kettle up the point I reached the boiling point once again. I am also glad to report there were no strange odors through out the remaining cooking process, so I must have done a pretty decent job cleaning up and removing the spill that had not yet turned to carbon. The entire remaining cooking went through entirely unremarkable, and I was rather grateful for that.
All this happened yesterday. As I transferred the wort into the carboy it became clear that indeed I had not lost too much of it, probably no more than a pint. As long as I did not introduce any contaminants into the wort during the cleanup the beer will be fine. It started fermenting within the usual six hours after pitching the yeast and that's a good sign. I will get a better picture next week when this beer is hopefully ready for its bottling.
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