Homebrew facepalms

So I'm a big believer in learning from mistakes, both your own and from others so I was thinking of starting a thread dedicated to the biggest ******* moments we've each had while brewing with the idea of others learning from it and for a good chuckle.

I'll start: I just shoved too hard on the cap to my fermenter while trying to put on the airlock and now have a rubber stopper sitting in the bottom of my latest batch of mead.

I've melted at least three plastic carboys by putting too hot wort into them.

First time I brewed with a keggle, I filled it halfway with cold water to cool it off and start cleaning after the wort had been transferred, and then grabbed it to dump it out. I figured the cold water would have cooled the keggle off enough to be able to handle it, but wasn't thinking that none of that cold water touched the skirt, which is where I grabbed it.

Left the ball valve open on a kettle while filling it in the kitchen.

Brewed an entire batch with a broken thermometer

Froze my hydrometer

Thought I could dry out a sanitized glass carboy by balancing it upside down on the counter (at that point in my life I feared the foam). Knocked it over and it dominoed into my yeast starter and spilt it over my hot oven element. Just caught the carboy before it shattered. Had to used a smackpack of hef yeast I had kicking around in a pale ale.

Brewed and drank--a lot--at the same time first time I ever brewed....called that one "Dropping the Bucket Belgian." Tasted like nanners. Oh and I got to deep clean the kitchen because wort is sticky as hell and my father in law and I spread it from one end to the other.

Brewed with a pump for the first time with no hop spider, clogged the pump and valves, and had to figure out how to get 10 gallons of wort into carboys at the end of a very long and frustrating brew day.

30° brew days turn into 10° brew days when one gets a late start or decides to brew on a whim and the sun goes down just in time for wort chilling and clean up. My patio became an ice skating rink and I was frozen to the bone, exhausted, and sore from head to toe.

Starter walked off the homemade stirplate and all over my fermentation fridge...no yeast, big mess, 2 hours to lhbs.

Left my bucket of unmilled grain unattended and uncovered for a minute. Discovered my 12 year old chocolate lab REALLY likes grain when I walked around the corner and scared the **** out of her because she was shoulder deep in the bucket...no idea how much she ate! I do not leave her unattended near my grain and can't measure grain without locking her up or giving her some "distraction grain" in her bowl. She's like a freakin goat!

pelipen said:

Left the ball valve open on a kettle while filling it in the kitchen.

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Did the same thing except it was the spigot on my bottling bucket. Luckily I had a thick towel under it. I was well prepared for my own stupidity.

Kegged up an apple cider. Tasted it after two weeks. Thought it needed some back sweetening...

Made some caramel and added it to some apple juice concentrate. Popped open fully carbed keg and dumped about a gallon of sugar water into the keg... Ended up with about 2 1/2 gallons of sticky cider all over the wood floor in the office area of my condo. Every towel in the place was used to soak that mess up...

And to make things worse... I used to add pixie sticks to mt dew in high school... so I KNEW the effect that adding sugar to carbed up beverages was...

Removed a keggle mash tun right after doing a step on my burner and brought it inside to keep it warm. The valve was leaking a little so I put the keggle down on my carpet to grab a plastic bag to prevent the leak from staining the carpet. I picked the keggle up and the carpet came with it. I put the keggle down on the plastic bag and looked at the carpet to find a giant burned O where the keggle sat. Looked over and the plastic bag was melted to the bottom of the keggle. You should have put it on a wood board says SWMBO... "Thanks for the 20/20 hindsight."

The post about the dog eating the grain made me laugh because I've got a boxer and I can just see his dumb ass hammering some grain.

Thirdthorpe said:

So I'm a big believer in learning from mistakes, both your own and from others so I was thinking of starting a thread dedicated to the biggest ******* moments we've each had while brewing with the idea of others learning from it and for a good chuckle.

I'll start: I just shoved too hard on the cap to my fermenter while trying to put on the airlock and now have a rubber stopper sitting in the bottom of my latest batch of mead.

Click to expand...

I did that on my first batch. I got it out with a dishtowel. Glad I'm not the only one!

During my first attempt at using a wort chiller, one of the plastic tubes slipped off and shot boiling water on me.........

Not that long ago I put my IC into my wort with 15 minutes left like normal. I didn't really think about the tubing and melted the **** out of it. I'd used the silly thing probably half a dozen times before this too. Luckily it was on the outlet, so it wasn't the end of the world.

In the past, doing extract brews, I had to learn, more than once, to kill the heat before adding the LME. That stuff drops like a rock and caramelizes faster than I can stir!

I recently was making a yeast starter in a 5L Erlenmeyer flask of the stove and forgot to let it cool a few minutes before adding the nutrient. It was a science fair worthy volcano of boiling wort all over my stove. Started with 3.5L and ended with 2L in the flask and 1.5L dripping below my stove to my basement and all over my basket with all of my brewing supplies. A very sticky cleanup!

First batch: stuck racking cane through hole in stopper to keep it from going down into the trub, couldn't figure out why the siphon kept running backwards and blowing tons of air bubbles through my beer until I had done it several times.

Second batch: left a spigot open

Third batch: pitched my English yeast at 80 degrees thinking it would finish cooling off before fermentation started, woke up next morning and it had risen to 85

First BIAB: mashed in, then realized I had forgotten the bag

pelipen said:

Left the ball valve open on a kettle while filling it in the kitchen.

Click to expand...

Guilty...

There are some reel good ones in here.

Biggest one that sticks out in my mind was when I first started kegging. I had bought a used system off of craigslist. CO2 regulator had a bum diaphragm, and I had no idea that my beer was probably pressurized to 50+ PSI.

As I was futzing around with everything, I removed my faucet without disconnecting the beer line. beer shot me in the face like a firehose.

Pretty much something like this, but with an American Pale Ale. And I wasn't wearing a dress.

First batch I brewed after buying my grain mill was dead on arrival. Why? Because I thought it would be genius to hook my drill up to the hand crank to save me some effort. I did not, however, put any weight on the mill to hold it down. The result was a grain mill, full of grain, flipping upside down on the garage floor.

*******!!

PRE66_6TART said:

First BIAB: mashed in, then realized I had forgotten the bag

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Awesome. Did you eat barley soup for dinner that night?

TANSTAAFB said:

Brewed and drank--a lot--at the same time first time I ever brewed....called that one "Dropping the Bucket Belgian." ...

Brewed with a pump for the first time with no hop spider, clogged the pump and valves, ...

30° brew days turn into 10° brew days when one gets a late start or decides to brew on a whim ...

Starter walked off the homemade stirplate and all over my fermentation fridge...no yeast, big mess, 2 hours to lhbs.

...Discovered my 12 year old chocolate lab REALLY likes grain ...

Click to expand...

Ladies and gentlemen of Panem, we have a winner!
(cannon goes off)
Nevermind.

I always use compressed air to blow the water out of my Immersion chiller after it's use. Although one time I was brewing Saturday, then again on Sunday morning. So, I didn't bother blowing the water out. Put it in the boiling wort with about 15 minutes left and happened to be standing right next to it when it shot the, now boiling, water from inside onto my leg. Luckily it was cool out, so I had extra layers on. Had this happened in the warmer months, it would have burned me pretty good.

PRE66_6TART said:

First BIAB: mashed in, then realized I had forgotten the bag

Click to expand...

LOL, awesome

First time using DME I was making a starter and made a great volcano on the stove

just yesterday I grabbed my first hop addition and added it at 60 min, and then immediately realized that my first hop addition was supposed to be at 25 min! Not a big deal, I just felt like a dumb *** for not double checking the recipe when I came inside to grab my hops.

Also, I often forget to lock the cat up before brewing. The little guy likes to get into everything. I've had to re-clean and sanitize a piece of equipment more than once after he gets his little paws into/onto something.

I got my siphon ready to transfer beer to bottling bucket. Looked in the bucket and saw "liquid" in the bottom. Though I I left sanitizer in there. Quickly poured it out. Started syphoning and reached for my sugar water. Uhoh.

Measuring temp with a floating thermometer in my cooling wort while also stirring. Shattered the thermometer into my wort. Awesome.

Reading this thread makes me feel pretty good I have to say. Some of you guys should get an award. Especially you, Mr Keggle Carpet. That was classic.

I dumped my bucket of grain into the strike water and it all floated on top. That's when I realized I forgot to crush it. Decided it probably wasn't a good day to brew and walked away.

Have had many many many incidents of forgetting to close valves.

Last night, it was time to bottle the latest batch. Since I've been splitting time between my house and SWMBO to be's place, I took care to gather up my bombers from her place in the morning so I could bottle while she was at work.

Fast forward to 5pm. I give all the bottles and my bucket and siphon a good clean, get every thing sanitized, and I'm good to go. Then two facepalms in rapid sequence:
1) As above I stuck the racking cane through the stopper to keep it out of the yeast cake, and things start flowing backwards. figured out the issue, problem solved.

2) bottles are filled, with time to spare. I go to the drawer where I keep my caps and capper, and there it is, gone. Turns out I left the capper at her house, and now I've got a dozen bombers full of beer with no caps.

Both things made me feel like a tool, until I saw this thread. I feel better

See that white thing in the bottom? That's the stopper for the airlock. I think its safe to say I'll never be getting that back.

Thirdthorpe said:

See that white thing in the bottom? That's the stopper for the airlock. I think its safe to say I'll never be getting that back.

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They are easy to get bak out using a dishtowel. Just let it sit until fermentation is over.

Ask me how I know this.....

I think you mentioned something about this earlier and I have no idea how a dish towel will get that thing out. I'm definitely willing to try. I thought maybe you mistook what I said for meaning the gasket on a brew bucket. I'm all ears.

On my 2nd AG batch I mashed in and was all stoked - temps were perfect, smelled great, life was good - until I looked over and saw my copper manifold sitting on the table...

Thirdthorpe said:

I think you mentioned something about this earlier and I have no idea how a dish towel will get that thing out. I'm definitely willing to try. I thought maybe you mistook what I said for meaning the gasket on a brew bucket. I'm all ears.

Click to expand...

[ame]http://youtu.be/0KDgDnvGCfc[/ame]

Thirdthorpe said:

I think you mentioned something about this earlier and I have no idea how a dish towel will get that thing out. I'm definitely willing to try. I thought maybe you mistook what I said for meaning the gasket on a brew bucket. I'm all ears.

Click to expand...

Edit: Ha! I'm slow today.

kranak said:

I got my siphon ready to transfer beer to bottling bucket. Looked in the bucket and saw "liquid" in the bottom. Though I I left sanitizer in there. Quickly poured it out. Started syphoning and reached for my sugar water. Uhoh.

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I've totally done this.

It was my first batch. I was siphoning into my bottling bucket and left the spigot open. I lost about a six pack and gained a very sticky floor before I realized what I had forgotten to do. I had to mop the dining room floor 3 times before it ceased to be sticky.

Don't try to carbonate a keg at room temperature then dry hop said keg immediately.

I set a keg to 30 PSI, shook the hell out of it and let it sit a couple days off the gas. I then opened up the keg to add some hops (setting the lid out of quick reaching distance). I had a huge gush of double ipa all over the carpet. Before I could set the keg lid again.

I was more mad about the loss of beer than I was about the mess that took me a couple hours to clean.

Ok, I just watched those videos and that would have been labeled as "PFM" if I were still in the Coast Gaurd. Thanks, by the way.

-noticed cooled priming sugar water on stove after bottles capped (used conditioning tablets and recapped)
-clogged autosiphons with hops bc i didnt stick a hop bag/whatever on the end of it (managed to unclog by removing bits of hops, over and over and over)
-broke racking canes trying to remove rubber hose without heating it up first (bought another one that was the wrong size)
-broke a glass thermometer in a brew +/- at flameout (got a metal one that seems more accurate, less fragile)
-pitched a yeast based on the packet description, pitched it, started reading about the bubblegum/banana bread esters produced by this strain in my IPA after pitching (beer turned out okay)

Man, I was dying reading these! Guilty of several things including losing a hydrometer and finding it in the fermenting bucket a few weeks later, breaking a hydrometer in a bucket, leaking 1/2 tank of co2 and not shutting off the tank or regulator beforehand. Leaving a valve open on the bottling bucket, dumping the last bit of beer from the bottling bucket all over my back as I tilted the bottle over too far trying to get it all out...