I have a large kettle in which I can boil about 4.5 gallons of wort. After boiling the wort and chilling it, I dumped it into my carboy. My carboy has a mark on it to indicate 5 gallons. After dumping the wort in, the liquid level was about a half-gallon OVER the mark!!!!
I spent several minutes trying to figure out how I had made a gallon of liquid out of nothing. Maybe I had somehow acquired divine abilities. Sweet. What should I do first with my powers?
After thinking for a few minutes I realize what has happened. I didn't create matter. I forgot to dump the sanitizing solution out of the carboy.
Stupid.
9 comments:
Wow. That's almost as bad as running a column with DMSO instead of DCM and wondering why you can't rotovap the solvent off.
I wouldn't do something like that, though. I read the labels.
I've not quite done anything that bad, but I once did something similar while bottling. I like to leave sanitizing solution in the bottles until the last minute, so I was experimenting with a "dump a bottle of sanitizer, fill it with beer," rinse, repeat. Except I forgot to "dump" the first ten bottles or so, leaving me with half-beer, half-sanitizer bottles.
Matt- Watching first year grad students try to rotovap DMSO was always entertaining.
Daniel- I call it Oxy Clean Ale. mmmmmm, yummy
So, should I assume it cleans you out as well as cheap draft beer?
I would go with the idea that you created matter. Much more intriguing on the resume :-)
Just found your blog. Cool. I still recall my grandfather's many attempts to make his own brew back in the 60s. He did it in a large, plastic garbage can (a new one, I should stress) then bottled it. I can still remember the exploding bottles, and broken glass & beer everywhere on several runs. He never did perfect any good beer, although the military were interested in the potential for new WMD (weapons of mess destruction).
What sanitizer do you use? Thats one joy of StarSan, you would have just added in a gallon of yeast nutrient. Beer would have been thinner, but would have fermented like CRAZY!
I just found your blog, I'm excited to follow. I'm a chemist, and a physicist, and an avid brewer! Perfect combo!
Scott,
It wasn't Star San. It was one step. Great stuff, unless you add it to the beer. Ugh
Very nice blog you haave here
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