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Powered Up Mack & Jack
Brewing up some of Bruguru's Mack & Jack a few days ago, I had a slight problem. 
My heat stick has had a stress crack since about six brews ago. With about twenty minutes left in the boil, suddenly my boil stopped. Turned off the power and pulled out my heat stick, only to discover that it had blown up. About a two inch section right below the crack had fried while in my beer..... Well, the orange peel was already in the wort, so I turned on the propane and finished the boil, cooled it to 70 degrees, and put it on top of a fresh Safeale-04 yeast cake. No off smell, and no foul taste precipitable as I moved the wort, and the ferment is going along normally. Is this one going to turn out like a "Vinyl Brown Ale" of fame, or do I stand a chance to get a reasonable beer out of it?
Have to be honest when I say that I dont know for sure but I would suspect that you're ok. I had my element on my oven blow up on me while cooking a Thanksgiving day turkey one year. I had about 20 people over all waiting on the bird when boom. It looked like the element had sprung a leak and molten material oozed from it in a little bubble. When the element cooled the 'bubble' cooled as well and stayed firmly attached to the element. Not sure if you had a similar experience but the bird was fine and no one died or got sick.
Well, the Mack and Jack that was in the brew-pot at the time the heat-stick blew, fermented up and I transfered it to kegs yesterday. It picked up a perceptible charcoal flavor that I suspect will still be there after it gets carbonated and dry hopped, but I just can't throw it out without at least trying to get it drinkable. As it happens, I have lots of last years hops to finish off before this years crop comes in, so I don't mind going a bit heavy on the dry hops. One other oddity, was the finish gravity. It's starting gravity was normal at 1.058, but it finished at 1.008. It was temp controlled around 65 to 68 and there is no detectable fusel alcohol taint, but it sure did finish low. I don't think that low finish was due to the heat-stick malfunction, so I don't what that's about. The charcoal taste I do understand. If I can't mask it better, the whole batch may be a gonner. Salvaging batches is not why I brew.
Crabnut wrote:
One other oddity, was the finish gravity. It's starting gravity was normal at 1.058, but it finished at 1.008
Perhaps you mashed lower than you think? Maybe next brew check your mash in several locations and several depths, 4-5 points lower mash temp could lead to 2-3 points lower in FG. A possibility?
It is, though I usually check a bunch of different locations in the mash. I find that no matter how well I mix, the mash temp will vary as much as four to five degrees, so I only trust an average temp across the entire mass. That said, it could have ended up a bit lower as my mash tun is not the best cooler around. I think maybe keeping better records could be part of my problem here. Don't believe I wrote anything down during the mash.
All right. I now have two almost full kegs worth of "Burnt Mack." The only off taste is the carbon taste, but if I cannot cure that, these are getting thrown out. I have never had to try and filter beer before, and was curious if the carbon taste can be stripped out using filtering. I don't have a filtering setup right now, but could set one up relatively easily with all my kegging equipment to use for the driving force and to keep the O2 out of the mix. I am thinking about running a glass or two worth through the Brita water filter as a test run if that would be equivalent. Anyone know what the micron rating on a Brita is?
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