A lesson well learnt (look away now if you like Crown urns)

squirt in the turns · Sunday Jun 24, 2012 6:04 pm

I boiled up 6 L of water in my urn on Friday night with the intention of washing some yeast the next day. Turned off the heat, put a couple of layers of cling wrap over the top, put the lid on, another layer cling wrap, and left it overnight to cool.

The next morning it looked like this:

gregb · Post by **gregb** » Sunday Jun 24, 2012 6:18 pm

Bummer.

I would not have expected that the normal lid and cling wrap gave you that good of a seal.

Bum · Post by **Bum** » Sunday Jun 24, 2012 6:32 pm

Ouch!

Very, very suprising that the SS buckled instead of tearing the gladwrap. I've had krausen split gladwrap before. This is fairly amazing.

Are you going to try to panelbeat it or just replace?

emnpaul · Post by **emnpaul** » Sunday Jun 24, 2012 6:58 pm

Dude that sux. Dogs balls.

Maybe email them a pic and see if they'll help you out.

bullfrog · Post by **bullfrog** » Sunday Jun 24, 2012 8:47 pm

Oh god! That's huge!

Reminds me of the Mythbusters episode where they vented the pressure from an antique scuba suit and buckled the helmet.

rotten · Post by **rotten** » Sunday Jun 24, 2012 10:29 pm

Mine is only a chinese crown, but I will be sure to not do that to it.

Tap hammer at the ready

squirt in the turns · Monday Jun 25, 2012 1:20 pm

emnpaul wrote:Dude that sux. Dogs balls.

Maybe email them a pic and see if they'll help you out.

Email Crown, or the retailer (Craftbrewer)? It's a nice thought, but either way I don't know what they'd do to help. They might get a laugh out of it though.

To make me feel better (or perhaps to put the scale of my problem into perspective) a couple of mates came out with some stories when they saw the damage. One who used to work for Independent Distilleries in NZ told me about a time he finished steam cleaning a multi-kilolitre tank, closed it up, and it imploded to the point of bending in half. An expensive mistake but it didn't cost him his job. The other story was about a friend of my housemate who worked at a hydroelectric dam, also in NZ. I guess they needed to empty the pipeline for maintenance, so they closed the intakes and then dumped the water out of the outlets. At some point in this process a valve should have been opened at the top of the pipe to admit atmosphere, which this poor bloke forgot to do. The entire assembly at the top of the shaft imploded and was written off. You'd think they'd have a fail-safe to stop that from happening, but apparently not. Predictably, the guy was fired.

Anyway, I took a rubber mallet to the urn and got it more or less cylindrical again. Some of the big dents popped out quite easily, but as you can see in the first pic, it creased itself up quite severely around the back, which I freaked out over a bit as this is where the weld seam is. I've heated a bit more water in it for cleaning purposes but am yet to boil a batch. I reckon it'll be OK though. Might have to upgrade my kettle and demote the urn to HLT duties. If it's going to fail (split), I know that H2O at 70c+ is bad, but boiling wort is worse. I'm in the process of designing a HERMS, so it's a good time.

warra48 · Post by **warra48** » Monday Jun 25, 2012 1:45 pm

Wow, that's a bummer.

Just goes to show the strength of clingwrap, and its resistance to tearing. Obviously, it was easier for atmospheric pressure to ding a thin SS wall than ripping the clingwrap.

Sonny · Post by **Sonny** » Monday Jun 25, 2012 6:17 pm

That's bloody awesome, I'll be sure not to do that trick.

emnpaul · Post by **emnpaul** » Monday Jun 25, 2012 7:06 pm

squirt in the turns wrote:
Email Crown, or the retailer (Craftbrewer)? It's a nice thought, but either way I don't know what they'd do to help. They might get a laugh out of it though.

Crown. Assuming the element and thermostat etc, are OK they might be able to sell or even give you a replacement "skin" and then you just swap the rest of the parts into it. Gotta be worth a try.

I really do feel for you though mate. It sux.

squirt in the turns · Monday Jun 25, 2012 9:55 pm

emnpaul wrote:
squirt in the turns wrote:
Email Crown, or the retailer (Craftbrewer)? It's a nice thought, but either way I don't know what they'd do to help. They might get a laugh out of it though.
Crown. Assuming the element and thermostat etc, are OK they might be able to sell or even give you a replacement "skin" and then you just swap the rest of the parts into it. Gotta be worth a try.

I really do feel for you though mate. It sux.

Lol, no worries. It's a nice idea but I'd be pretty surprised if they were able/willing to supply parts and instructions to service it.

I'll try to boil a batch in it later in the week. If the steel had torn or crinkled too severely I'd be more worried, but as horrific as the pics look, it's almost back to the original shape and all the seams are intact. The sight glass snapped off when I took the mallet to it, so I took the fitting off and put a bolt through the hole. The biggest potential problem I see is measuring volumes in it now, as it's not quite a consistent diameter all the way up. I might start fly sparging once I get the new system up and running which will reduce the need to measure the volume in the HLT accurately (just stop sparging when the volume in the kettle is right. Or the gravity's right. Or whatever the correct process is).

emnpaul · Post by **emnpaul** » Tuesday Jun 26, 2012 8:30 pm

As long as it's still a goer then that's not too bad I suppose.

Appologies if this trick is known to you, (more than likely) but I'll go on just incase. I'm still using a 19l stockpot (no sight tube) for my AG brewing and made a pretty handy volume measuring stick out of a piece of electrical conduit. Just used a one litre pyrex jug to fil the pot 1 litre at a time marking off measurements as I went. Then engraved it with the tip of a soldering iron. It's not perfect obviously, as there is slight error in the engraving plus expansion and contraction etc, but it's ballpark enough to give me an idea of what's going on in there. Perhaps that would help?

squirt in the turns · Wednesday Jun 27, 2012 12:14 pm

I know of the trick but never bothered to make a measuring stick. When I got the urn I marked the sight glass at (very) rough 2 L increments. Later on I got a stainless steel ruler and just calculated the volume based on liquid level, the urn at that point being a perfect cylinder (

), and a litre occupying a little under a vertical centimetre IIRC. I was never that fastidious about volumes, but in the interests of repeatability and consistency I'll tighten up tolerances when I start brewing with the HERMS. If, once I move to that system, I find fly sparging isn't for me, I'll probably have to make a measuring stick for the urn in order to accurately batch sparge.

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