Problems, more problems...

When reading other homebrewing blogs, one thing that I notice right away is that everybody seems to have problems of one sort or another. Almost all the time. I just read about somebody forgetting to hook up his mash tun manifold, the ultimate consequence of which caused him to mash too low. He also lost his carboy brush, realized it and the fact that his carboys were dirty in the middle of the boil. He had to rush off to a friend's house to borrow one, causing his boil to go long. Does it ever go completely smoothly?

So I mentioned that I made a side batch of ale during my Johann Sebastian Bock, which is already fermenting quite nicely. For the ale, I pitched some American Ale yeast slurry that I had saved from a previous batch. It was sitting in the fridge, and I just let it warm up to room temperature and pitched it. No starter, but I wasn't concerned. Well it's about 30 hours later and there's no activity in the fermenter. Slight positive pressure in the airlock, but no bubbles, no yeasty foam, nothing. I'm going to wait until tomorrow and if it still looks dead, pitch it over the yeast cake of the superbowl stout I brewed on New Year's day. That's one problem.

If you read the title of this post carefully, which I know you did, you know there's more. I also wrote in a previous post about a leaky faucet problem I was having. Well when attempting to fix that, I cranked hard on the faucet ring to really try to seal it off. Today, I was attempting to take the faucet off to see if I could try another gasket in there. My faucet wrench kept slipping. I took a look at it, and as you can see from the photo below, I must have bent it "real good" when I was swearing and tightening. New shopping list:

faucet wrench