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MarcusKillion · 12-30-2012, 06:07 PM

How much room do i get to post my screw ups ?
Dropped towels in wort when transferring .
Siphon the beer by sucking on tube . Hey if it is good enough for your gasoline ...
dumped in a quart of extra wort to my primary that I forgot to boil first .
pitched yeast while wort was about 83 degrees .

things I do not do : Sterilize like crazy .
I use no rinse on my bottles and buckets and paddles .. but I do not get crazy . I simply wash anything else off with hot then cold water while brewing . measuring cups etc. Ever wonder if this stuff is actually doing anything ? Rinsing something off and then immediately using it sure can not be sterilizing it . Surely it must sit a while .

Boiling with lid on .
The list goes on ......

**ScottG58** · 12-30-2012, 06:26 PM

I accidentally made an imperial Two Hearted clone. I did not check the equipment profile when loading the recipe to Beersmith. The profile was set at extract rather than all grain. I ended up with a 1.076 OG and 83 IBUs. (I skipped the 30 minute addition after realizing my mistake or IBUs would have been 100 plus).

Finished at 1.018 and tasted good going into bottles. I named it "Two-Hearted Imperial Mistake."

feinbera · 01-31-2013, 09:12 PM

OK, I'll throw one more on the pile, my first all-grain batch.

The screw-ups start on brew day, as we're transferring the cooled wort to the fermentation bucket. I'm so excited/nervous about using the fancy ball valve on my brand new brew kettle that I completely forget I need a hydrometer sample for an OG reading until I've already drained half the wort.

My brewing partner and girlfriend is here helping, so, no worries, right? I ask her to grab a little glass to hold the sample while I keep an eye on things at the kettle, she brings it back, holds it over the fermentation bucket near the stream of wort... then, we completely fail to communicate who is supposed to be holding the glass, and, *SPLASH!* into the fermentation bucket it goes.

At this point, I figure, what's done is done -- any bugs on the glass will have floated off into the wort in the first second or two, and I can only introduce even more contamination by reaching in there after it. So, we leave the glass, get another one under the wort stream in time to pull the hydrometer sample, pitch our yeast, and call it a day.

Fast forward a couple of days, fermentation is proceeding well -- a little too well, in fact, there's krausen goop starting to get into the airlock. I'm sure you all know where this is heading... I pull the airlock and rubber bung, clean 'em, sanitize 'em, and make that popular mistake of putting the bung into the bucket lid and then trying to insert the airlock. *PLOP!* in goes my only bucket-lid-airlock-hole-sized bung, to keep that sample glass company.

Did I mention that it's the afternoon of Christmas eve?

So, yeah, here I am, holding my now-useless airlock in my hand, LHBS is already closed, won't be open on Christmas Day, 36 hours before I can possibly get a replacement bung. I throw a little glass bowl over the airlock hole in the hopes of at least making it harder for the nasties to drift into my beer, then it's off to the folks' place for Christmas Eve dinner.

After spending the next 36 hours periodically cleaning copious amounts of krausen goop off the top of my fermentor, hooray, the LHBS is open, I can pick up another bung, rig up a blow-off tube, and RDWHAHB. If there's a silver lining to cleaning up sticky, drippy krausen goo, it's that doing it in a room that smells half like porter and half like rising bread ain't all bad.

Well, it's a few weeks later, and I just racked it to secondary last night. I don't think this beer will every be "great" -- some unrelated growing pains in my all-grain process and some overzealous temperature control have kept this batch from fulfilling its full potential. But none of my hydrometer samples had any trace of funk or sourness, and there wasn't any sign of pellicle formation, in spite of my multiple poorly-timed attempts at infecting the batch, so, I'm confident this beer has a bright future ahead of it.

Cheers!

**scratchy1971** · 02-01-2013, 12:23 AM

My second batch was a partial boil recipe that recommended using two frozen milk jugs of water to cool/top off the boil. Just cut the plastic and throw these two hunks of ice in the wort and your done. Sounds easy, right?

Had the first jug cut and was trying to get the ice out, when it slipped and the plastic cut my hand. Bled all over the ice, then that slipped and fell in. With all hopes of sanitation gone, just cleaned my hand, put the other ice in and called it a batch.

That bloody ale tasted just fine.

**bleme** · 02-01-2013, 12:32 AM

Lol! Blood should be fairly sanitary but that plastic...

Patro · 02-01-2013, 01:37 AM

Ran out of time and had to pitch yeast at 80 degrees (us05). I threw it in the fermentation fridge and three weeks later it tasted great. No off flavors that I could taste.

kingogames · 02-25-2013, 04:00 AM

I've only recently started brewing. 1st batch was a one gallon pale ale I ordered from Homebrew Exchange. Anyways, I got it and realized it was all grain, had NO idea what to do, I have no equipment for all grain, so I just winged it (got a lot of help on here btw). Just cracked one the other day and it's great. Great head, lacing, taste is still a little green, so I'll let the rest bottle condition for another month or so. OH, sucked up a lot of hops when transferring to bottling bucket, so I put a grain bag over the end of my autosiphon with a rubber band, neither the bag or the rubber band was sanitized! Oh well, they have a lot of sediment, but no infamous (and maybe mythical?) bottle bombs!

On my most recent batch, a chocolate lavender stout I was pushing the airlock into the lid hole and the gromit fell in and I reached my arm in to fish it out. Fermented fine (I think). Just went to bottles today, so we'll see in a little while how that turns out, tastes fine now though.

Let's see, I have NB Kiwi Express fermenting (just about to add dry hops) and I added the LME at the beginning of the boil instead of at thee last 15 min like the instructions say, so we'll see. Seems OK though.

That's three mistakes in my first three batches and (so far) no one has died or gotten sick, and the beer hasn't tasted that bad either!!!!

KramHam · 02-25-2013, 03:37 PM

I reached into my primary bucket to get out the airlock seal. The Oktoberfest brew still tasted great! I am still new to brewing and I am sure I will have more stories. It is nice to read that others mess up too!

MarcusKillion · 02-26-2013, 05:24 PM

kingogames ;
Put a spigot in the bottle bucket about 1 inch or so from the bottom and that will allow things room to settle in and you will not have so much suck up into the bottle .
Use a 5 gallon nylon paint strainer instead of a grain bag for a filter when there is a lot of stuff like hops floating around in the wort. I also use this http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f85/filter-siphon-tube-leave-trub-behind-380879/ to filter my wort when siphoning into bottle bucket and it works great .

Mistake ... I dropped a towel that I was using to prop up my bucket into my bottle bucket . the towel was clean until I used it to prop up the bucket which had been sitting on the floor . No problem how ever . I guess that alcohol is enough to kill off small amounts of germs . Now people know why I served them a beer with a label that said " dirty towel brown ale "

Dynachrome · 02-28-2013, 02:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drummstikk

I was probably ten batches in before I finally made a yeast starter and fermented in my cold basement with an electric blanket and a temperature controller. I couldn't believe the difference it made in my beer! Strange flavors disappeared, and my beer was never again underattenuated. If somebody had told me, I could have done this on my 2nd or 3rd batch. Now that would have really saved some worrying.

Yes, two big things. The yeast starter can be low tech too, IMHO.