Comment from Ingrate
Time: October 22, 2007, 5:34 pm

So, it went well enough. Although “easier than a five gallon” batch only holds if you use your five gallon batch brew pot and don’t decide “hell, my original pot will work today!”.

I only spilled over a bit.

Although, who the hell knows what it is going to be like.
1. I found out at an impossible time to do anything about it that I lacked a grain bag. I boiled about 5 ounces of grain for the entire time. Which erik later told me was a not good thing.

2. I lacked any way to measure anything other than by eyeball division. (At 3 gallons, the 44 ounce bag of dry malt wasn’t exactly sized to order).

3. I might…might…have introduced something that might…might…cause the whole thing to become infected. After pitching, while setting up my primary fermenter, I somehow created just a hint of a reverse siphon or suction and slurps about a handful of water from my burp bucket up the blow tube and into the fermenter. Now, the odds are low because it was fresh, clean water, but…if it picked up something off the side of the burp bucket that didn’t get caught by a less than stellar cleaning from the last batch…

We’ll see.

Oh…and here is a question: I used all of the yeast from my smack pack…this 3 gallon thing…is it possible to used *too* much yeast?

Other than that…I think I am going to buy some milk tonight and just eat the pound of crushed “aromatic malt” I have left as cereal.

Comment from barbecuesteve
Time: October 22, 2007, 5:52 pm

1. It’s possible to use too much yeast, but not at our levels. You’ll be fine.

2. Boiling the grains isn’t an altogether horrible thing either, but yeah, it’s not awesome. You could always use a cotton sock… well maybe not one of YOUR cotton socks… Next time you hit the homebrew store buy about 20 of those muslin sacks. Get a couple nylon bags and plan on using them, but keep the muslin sacks around for a pinch (they’re like $.75 ea)

3. Use 1-Step in the burp bucket and you’ll never again worry. If you pitched a lot of yeast (like you think you did) the yeast’ll overwhelm any infection before it has much chance to get started…. you’ll probably be ok.

Comment from Erik
Time: October 22, 2007, 6:03 pm

It is possible to use too much yeast, but not in any way shape or form with a smack pack. It’d have to be like 1/3 of your batch.

I will happily buy that aromatic malt off of you.

Comment from Erik
Time: October 22, 2007, 6:04 pm

And I totally agree with steve.