The Curse of the Stout

[Bigbre04]

I swear...it's always the darkest, stickiest stuff that causes trouble. Just yesterday I had to steep some dark grain for my split-batch amber and I'll be damned if I didn't slop and spill a bunch on the stove. Not even anything remotely complicated...just moving a pot from one burner to the next.

without fail. I was pulling a sample off the tank(full of stout) and a coworker walked past me so i rearranged where i was standing and pulled the cup away. knocking it completely out of my hand and all over my shoes... its always the black beers.

 

[Dave Y]

So many beers ago, i was pulling a barrel aged imperial stout out of the whiskey barrel. We use essentially a long ss tube with ports on it and a screw in Bung to hold pressure. Needless to say, the barrel got a little higher pressure than intended/the bung was not tightened enough. the "spear" blew out. and black imperial stout covered my coworker and i head to toe. there was black beer raining down all over us...so sticky. there was black beer on the white ceiling bats of the warehouse (30ft) for a very very long time.

Head to toe black beer shower...first for everything i guess.

Long ago, in a data center far, far away, I was working on laser printers, which were served by 1) about 6 packages x 500 pages of notebook paper and 2) 2.5 gallons ink jugs. I had this guy working... if you can call it that, in the back, Manesh. He was lazy as all get out. When I started, I was warned to never, ever spill the ink on your clothes as it would never come out. The sage woman who headed up the print room was a no nonsense woman who did not suffer fools or tolerate laziness - like a Drill Sergeant, so I took her word as fact. I had moved on a year or so when I’m working outside the data center. I was getting up to go check on why the printers had stopped; all of them. I didn’t make more than 3 steps when I saw a human figure leaving the data center completely black from head to toe, excepting their eyes and I guess their teeth. They were trailing a cloud of black ink behind them and every step left black footprints.

It turned out to be Manesh, but nobody could tell because again, covered from heat to toe in printer ink. I went in back to survey the area, sure enough he dropped an ink jug, it had burst and sent ink powder in every direction. It was like a cross between the Peanuts “Pig pen” and Wile E. Coyote after igniting an acme bomb.

I’ve definitely never had a brew day that bad.

 

[Bigbre04]

Long ago, in a data center far, far away, I was working on laser printers, which were served by 1) about 6 packages x 500 pages of notebook paper and 2) 2.5 gallons ink jugs. I had this guy working... if you can call it that, in the back, Manesh. He was lazy as all get out. When I started, I was warned to never, ever spill the ink on your clothes as it would never come out. The sage woman who headed up the print room was a no nonsense woman who did not suffer fools or tolerate laziness - like a Drill Sergeant, so I took her word as fact. I had moved on a year or so when I’m working outside the data center. I was getting up to go check on why the printers had stopped; all of them. I didn’t make more than 3 steps when I saw a human figure leaving the data center completely black from head to toe, excepting their eyes and I guess their teeth. They were trailing a cloud of black ink behind them and every step left black footprints.

It turned out to be Manesh, but nobody could tell because again, covered from heat to toe in printer ink. I went in back to survey the area, sure enough he dropped an ink jug, it had burst and sent ink powder in every direction. It was like a cross between the Peanuts “Pig pen” and Wile E. Coyote after igniting an acme bomb.

I’ve definitely never had a brew day that bad.

toner is a HUGE mess even from the small amount that can spill from a normal home laser printer. i cant imagine a gallon jug...jesus.

 

[BarbarianBrewer]

...We use essentially a long ss tube with ports on it and a screw in Bung to hold pressure. Needless to say, the barrel got a little higher pressure than intended/the bung was not tightened enough. the "spear" blew out....

@Bigbre04, the way this story started I was expecting a much darker* ending.

* I really tried, but couldn't, resist the pun

 

[Dave Y]

toner is a HUGE mess even from the small amount that can spill from a normal home laser printer. i cant imagine a gallon jug...jesus.

2.5 gallon jug ! in the data center, there was an obvious impact point and the ‘black’ spread out a little uneven because he dropped it between 2 printers. Both printers were mostly covered, that whole row of tiles, the area behind the printers, one printer console and keyboard (this was a long time ago!)

Fun times. “Why are we behind on the invoices? Come take a look. No, you really, really have to see this for yourself."

 

[Craigerrr]

There is a thread for this sort of thing!

https://www.brewersfriend.com/forum/threads/you-know-you-did-it-wrong-when.3339/

 

[Sandy Feet]

And, Jack Handey? LOL

 

[J A]

Okay...I don't want to tempt fate but I got through a big batch of stout without major mishap!!
The only slight negative was the result of a pretty major positive. For whatever reason, my efficiency was way up (91%!!) and my pre-boil gravity was substantially higher than my projected OG. I had to decide whether to take the win for a different style, i.e. a stronger stout, or dilute to get to the proper ABV. Either way I needed to adjust my hop schedule, which I often do once I get an accurate reading of the pre-boil gravity. I decided that it would be better to have 3 kegs of the Irish Stout than 2 kegs of a substantially stronger beer. Adjusting the hops was a simple matter of throwing an ounce of Phoenix hops in near the end of the boil and I topped up the kettle by a couple of gallons and then added another couple of gallons to the fermenter. The only disadvantage to doing that was that my color shifted a little so it won't be the mid-30s SRM that I usually get and will end up around 25 or 26. Samples tasted plenty roasty and hoppy.

Not sure why the efficiency on this one was so good. I don't count on that with a substantial amount of flaked and roasted barley. I ran things differently than I usually do, packing my new 10-gallon infusion tun to the gills and running the RIMS tube that I set up for it. I let it run at 150 to 152-ish for an hour or more before adding the roasted barley and then letting that run for at least a half-hour while I raised the temp to 158 and then to mash-out. There was literally no more room in the tun and I had to run a pretty high-volume sparge nice and slow to keep things from overflowing. I did it that way because I had brewed earlier in the day with my "small batch" system and didn't want to reset with the bigger tun. It worked out extremely well and I'll be interested to try it again on a big lager batch.

 

[Craigerrr]

So a happy Stout accident this time!

 

[Megary]

Can never have enough kegs of stout.

 

[J A]

Can never have enough kegs of stout.

I had assumed that this batch would get me through the holidays and I'd have to brew again for our big winter party at the end of January. Having the extra should guarantee that I'll get by without brewing again.