Here's a new one (for me at least):
I fermented a pale ale for about two weeks, dry hopped for 5 days, then cold-crashed the tank down and held it there for another week or so. I do that with all of my beers and they usually turn out great. But when I went to transfer the beer from fermenter to serving tank today, I noticed that for some reason, I only transferred about 75% of the beer (it stopped flowing, so I turned off the pump and closed the valves). Had no idea why I would only end up with 75% of what I normally end up with, so I looked in the top of the fermenter and WOAH! There is a 2-3" block of frozen beer/water around the inside wall of the tank. What happened? I had the temperature controller set to 36 degrees F, which is what I always set it to. But it's almost as if the beer in-contact with the tank walls was frozen by the glycol in the jacket. FYI, the glycol temperature in the chiller is set to 24 degrees F. I'm running a 33% glycol solution. This has never happened before, through more than 120 batches.
What can I do to prevent this in the future, and what should I do now? Let the frozen stuff thaw-out and add it to the beer in the serving tank? Or just dump the whole batch? Or just serve what's in the serving tank?
What a weird situation...
I fermented a pale ale for about two weeks, dry hopped for 5 days, then cold-crashed the tank down and held it there for another week or so. I do that with all of my beers and they usually turn out great. But when I went to transfer the beer from fermenter to serving tank today, I noticed that for some reason, I only transferred about 75% of the beer (it stopped flowing, so I turned off the pump and closed the valves). Had no idea why I would only end up with 75% of what I normally end up with, so I looked in the top of the fermenter and WOAH! There is a 2-3" block of frozen beer/water around the inside wall of the tank. What happened? I had the temperature controller set to 36 degrees F, which is what I always set it to. But it's almost as if the beer in-contact with the tank walls was frozen by the glycol in the jacket. FYI, the glycol temperature in the chiller is set to 24 degrees F. I'm running a 33% glycol solution. This has never happened before, through more than 120 batches.
What can I do to prevent this in the future, and what should I do now? Let the frozen stuff thaw-out and add it to the beer in the serving tank? Or just dump the whole batch? Or just serve what's in the serving tank?
What a weird situation...
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