Escaped boil

[gwizard]

So decided to do a batch of DWG yesterday.

Preheated water to boil, stirred in sugar and wheat germ, set timer for 90m and walked away. There was 16L in the boiler (35L capacity).
After an hour I come back and see an awful mess all around with pieces of wheat germ and sticky caramel all around. I have no idea why this little quantity managed to escape, and I did spent an hour pondering that while trying to scrub off caramelized sugar off everything.

Lesson learned, don't leave it alone and set temp for 97 instead of rolling boil.

[Deplorable]

You learned a valuable lesson. One I learned years ago making beer from LME. That protein break will sneek up on ya when you turn your back on the boiler.
Stick mess is right.

[gwizard]

In this hobby, every time you do something there is a valuable lesson to be learned
For example, I have no idea what you mean by protein break and how that affects boil, but now that you told me, I will go and google it and learn something new, so thank you for that.

Btw, that particular batch is just refusing to go quietly. Not only I've lost 12 gravity points on that escaped sugar, but it actually puked into the airlock after a night of silence. Never had that reaction before and its not the first time I do this recipe. Had to put a tube in water type of airlock and now its happily bubbling away. I wonder why its so foamy all of a sudden...

[greggn]

I wonder why its so foamy all of a sudden...

How are you controlling the ferment temperature ?

[gwizard]

Inkbird temp controller + heating belt.
I've modded all my fermenters with a termowell.

[MartinCash]

In this hobby, every time you do something there is a valuable lesson to be learned
For example, I have no idea what you mean by protein break and how that affects boil, but now that you told me, I will go and google it and learn something new, so thank you for that.

Btw, that particular batch is just refusing to go quietly. Not only I've lost 12 gravity points on that escaped sugar, but it actually puked into the airlock after a night of silence. Never had that reaction before and its not the first time I do this recipe. Had to put a tube in water type of airlock and now its happily bubbling away. I wonder why its so foamy all of a sudden...

Yeah, DWWG needs a fair bit of headroom in my experience as well. One thing, if you have a slow cooker, there is a post in the original thread (I think) that said slow-cooking the wheat germ overnight was equally effective with no mess and no stirring.