Brew Day Workthroughs

[D_Rabbit]

Well, this happened about a month ago when I brewed up my Frozen Pipe Saison, which is how I came up with the name, but have been swamped lately so haven't been on much to discuss.

I'm sure others have had some issues happen to their brew day and had to think of creative work arounds to get the brew day completed. Here is my tale:

This beer was a 15 gallon saison to be split 3 ways. We brewed it up at a club members house, whom I thought was well organized and had his sh*t together. Apparently I was wrong. Got there around 830am to nothing set up.... at all! Typically, if I am hosting, I make sure the water is in the pot and almost ready for mashing when people arrive. No one wants to sit around on their thumb waiting for this. What i didn't realize was that he didn't really have a set up and that he was just shy of being a hoarder. This guy has 20-25 taps at his house and makes it all on a single pot and single burner set up. Figured he had something a little more organized with how much beer he makes. The prior few days VA had seen several days of below freezing temps. We only get about 3 weeks of that during the winter months, combined. This happened to be several days of it. Got the burner and pot set up and went to unwind the hose and he forgot to drain the hose of water which now meant the hose was frozen solid. Luckily I was 5 minutes from home and went home and picked up my hose for the brew day. Got back and we couldn't get the hose detached from the faucet.... frozen to it. Had to spend about 20 minutes pouring hot water on the hose bib in order to get that detached. Turned the faucet on..... no water! The pipe had frozen too! This is what happens to Northern VA people because they don't ever drain their hoses when it is supposed to be below freezing. We spent another 20 minutes pouring hot water on the brick veneer in hopes to unfreeze the pipe. That did not work! The homeowner had a brilliant idea. He lit the burner and held the burner up to the brick veneer in hopes to heat up the pipe and melt the ice. I figured he was about to burn his house down. Miracle!!! It worked. After about 5 minutes we had running water and were about to get our brew day started....... sort of. He uses a filter to run the water through first. Can anyone guess how long it takes to fill a 15 gallon bucket when you have to run the water through a filter at a near trickle? Correct..... FOREVER!!!

Long story not as long, we were able to get the day going and I am now drinking "Frozen Pipe Saison" and it is delicious.

Another lesson from the story.... drain your pipes if it is going to be below freezing people!! The following day his sprinkler system froze and burst on the main level of his home. He is having his main level and basement remodelled right now via insurance.

[LouieMacGoo]

Glad it finally worked out and you were able to get beer out of it. Thanks for sharing.

I just finished listening to the Basic Brewing podcast Brewing Disasters, you should send this story in to them.

[Beer-lord]

Yikes, talk about a brew story.
When we get deep freezes, we let our faucets run. Silly I know but there's really no way for many of us to drain our pipes and guarantee that all the water gets out.I had an office building that was very old and we thought we did a great job draining pipes....even blew tons of air thru the pipes but nope......all it takes is one area to freeze and you get an instant mess when the water comes back on.