Nearly every time I brew BVIP I cannot seem to get it right. This time I was under the target OG by about 10 points and I’m pretty sure that I didn’t empty out the StarSan (about 2qts) from the fermenter before adding the wort. I really feel plagued by errors lately, I cannot hit my numbers, I make stupid mistakes like the star san thing. My beer comes out OK, it’s just really annoying. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with having kids at home, but if I try to wait for a time that I can brew with zero distractions, then I will never get anything brewed!
I am with you on the never be able to brew w/o distractions part. Alot of my brewing starts at about 9pm when the last kid is put to bed. Needless to say it is alway early hours of the morning that I am cleaning and finishing up… but i still love it.
other end of the day for. I got up at 6:30am to start brewing. Dough-in was around 6:45, start of boil was 8:30, had to get the kids up a little after 9, finish up the brew day around 10:45
I don’t think I would drink that beer if there is 2qts of starsan in it.
I’m not going to dump it right away, I have the fermenter available, so I will see how it tastes when fermentation is done. StarSan is fine to drink at it’s working dilution, so diluting it even further with 5 gallons of beer should be fine as far as safety goes.
1 oz StarSan in 5 gallons of water, then 2 qts diluted in 5 gallons comes out to about 0.015% StarSan, I’m not too worried.
Maybe get a brewing partner? That way at least one of you can keep an eye on things when distractions pop up.
We all get that “sometimers” thing occasionally.
BTW, your star san beer should be fine. Star san is mostly phosphoric acid which your yeast will eat.
I think I’m just going to change when I brew. I’ve been brewing on my days off when I’m home alone with the kids (4months and 20 months) while my wife is at work. I start early in the morning before the kids are up with the goal of being at the chill stage when I get them up. I just haven’t brewed in quite a while, so I’m a little out of practice and don’t have my recipes and equipment settings dialed back in. I guess today my efficiency expectations were higher than what I actually got (recipe set at 65%, I got about 55% for a 1.090 beer) and the starsan thing was just being distracted.
