Post your blunder

So I thought it would be fun to create a thread to share bloopers or blunders we've experienced.

I'll start:

Happened to me today; I was doing some secondary rackings and had poured some sanitizing solution into the receiving carboy. Well then the phone rang, so I answered it, etc...... Well, when I got done with that I got back to my mead. Washed my hands, and got right back to racking. Racked about ~2 gallons(out of a 5 gallon batch) right onto about 1/2 gallon of sanitizing solution. Imma friggin genius!

A couple of years ago I was making a pomegranate melomel, when the bottom of my primary brew bucket cracked. Come to find out there was a defect from the manufacturer. I leaked about 1/2-3/4 gallon of this blood red sticky mess which defies physics and ends up in rooms no where near the scene of the crime.

Not much of a blooper but I will join in to help get things Rollin. I was making a Bochet the other day and I was a little careless and almost let the honey boil over. I quickly reduced heat and started stirring and a large bubble popes and splashed a nice size drop onto my pinky. It was like dropping napalm on me! Instantly boiled the skin and hurt like heck. After that for the following hour it was like dodging bullets from the matrics. Every large bubble that poped I had to move like Neo to keep from getting doused with more napalm. Next time..... Bigger pot and hasmat suit!

Hmm blunder? Uhhh I currently have a bochet that I put too much honey in so my OG was ~1.550

Not a "blunder", but definitely a pain.

Bhunter87 said:

Hmm blunder? Uhhh I currently have a bochet that I put too much honey in so my OG was ~1.550

Not a "blunder", but definitely a pain.

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Not sure how you figured that, but I believe pure honey isn't even that high.

I meant 1.155

My b

Either way, it's HUGE and my ec1118 is never gonna eat it all.

A few years ago, I made a 55 gallon barrel of mead with a couple of friends. My friend had recently heard how de-gassing can help a fermentation. After a day or two of fermentation, he decided to try de-gassing the barrel with his brand new wine whip chucked into his drill. He put the whip into the barrel and pulled the trigger on his drill and let it run on high speed. He swears that he could see the barrel shaking before he saw the mead geyser. Whether it shook or not, I don't know, but I do know that all that CO2 trying to get out a 2" hole caused a geyser that hit the ceiling. In a panic, he instinctively tried to cover the hole with his hands. That just made the mead spray sideways in every direction. In the end, the barrel lost a few gallons of mead and everything within 10' was soaked with the partially-fermented sticky honey mixture. He actually had to empty mead out of the flourescent light fixture on the ceiling!

Holy crap that's so awesome!!!!! How was the mead?!? And how much honey did you use?? I'd guess ~160lbs?!

What type of yeast? That's amazing!!

Also, how many bottles did it make?? Wow and it took days to bottle! Wtf wow

Sounds like the mentos effect. Haha.

I was once cleaning the dust off an old demijohn that i was given. It needed one hell of a scrub so I decided to let it soak in boiling water for a period to help soften up some of the harder to remove stuff. I returned to the demijohn a few minutes later and decided to wash most of it off...with the cold tap. Doh!

Ricky

Bhunter87 said:

Holy crap that's so awesome!!!!! How was the mead?!? And how much honey did you use?? I'd guess ~160lbs?!

What type of yeast? That's amazing!!

Also, how many bottles did it make?? Wow and it took days to bottle! Wtf wow

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We've done it twice. Both times we used 3 buckets (180 lbs) of honey. After fermentation ended, we racked it into 3-15 gallon barrels and a couple carboys. One barrel got raspberries, another got cherries, etc, etc. That way, we each ended up with a few gallons of 4 different meads.

BTW - We used the no-heat method, so three of us were able to make 55 gallons of mead in about 2 1/2 hours.

How big was your starter? Gosh I'm amazed! Is the quality still good in such bulk containers? I kinda wanna know everything. I would LOVE to make 55gal!

Also, how did you mix the water and honey well enough? Did you warm the water and whip in the honey?

Bhunter87 said:

How big was your starter? Gosh I'm amazed! Is the quality still good in such bulk containers? I kinda wanna know everything. I would LOVE to make 55gal!

Also, how did you mix the water and honey well enough? Did you warm the water and whip in the honey?

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The whole point was to simplify things. No starter. Just pitched about a dozen packets of yeast.

I don't know how much batch size impacts the end result. It's tougher to manage temperature in larger batches. Other than that, I think larger batches are better.

So as to not completely hijack this thread, I'll pass on another story. My neighbor has made wine with his two brothers and his sister for years. They typically make 7 barrels (approx 400 gallons) every year. Every year they would burn a sulphur stick in each barrel before they filled it. One year, they got some freshly dumped bourbon barrels. His brother decided to burn a sulphur stick in each one, as they did with their wine barrels. Now, the bourbon in those barrels is high enough proof that there is no need for a sulphur stick. More importantly, bourbon is aged at a very high proof, then watered down to 80 proof when it's bottled. Turns out that dropping a lit sulphur stick into a barrel full of alcohol vapors isn't a very good idea. Well, there were flames and the heads blew out of the barrel. The explosion could've killed somebody, but luckily nobody got seriously hurt.

I am disappointed there are no pictures in this thread.

The only mishap I've had was while filling my carboy with a bochet mead, the hose slipped out and started spilling mead all over the floor before I could grab it and put it back in. Had it all over my shirt, pants, etc. Took about an hour of cleaning before the floor wasn't sticky anymore. lol

Who wants to photograph their own epic failures?!

Maybe not a blooper, but an experiment that was an epic fail- Back when I just started making mead I did some thing very disastrous- my first mead was delicious! So I then started making mead out of everything that I could find- Including a Goya malt soda- it fermented like a bat outta hell and when it was done it tasted somewhere between a Guinness and a burning tire.

Bhunter87 said:

Who wants to photograph their own epic failures?!

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If I had mead dripping from the ceiling, I would most certainly take pictures. lol As a matter of fact one time I was messing around with a keg in my kitchen, unaware there was still some pressure inside... needless to say I had old beer dripping from the ceiling, lights, microwave, stove, cabinets... oh yea and a nice amount on me. Pictures went straight to facebook. lol

Bhunter87 said:

Who wants to photograph their own epic failures?!

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this wouldnt really be a failure, but I was thinking about intentionally making a bottle bomb/rocket and recording it.... You know for educational purposes. "Now watch this video, do you still wanna rush into bottling?" lol

This would of course be done outside and under safe/controlled conditions

GinKings said:

A few years ago, I made a 55 gallon barrel of mead with a couple of friends. My friend had recently heard how de-gassing can help a fermentation. After a day or two of fermentation, he decided to try de-gassing the barrel with his brand new wine whip chucked into his drill. He put the whip into the barrel and pulled the trigger on his drill and let it run on high speed. He swears that he could see the barrel shaking before he saw the mead geyser. Whether it shook or not, I don't know, but I do know that all that CO2 trying to get out a 2" hole caused a geyser that hit the ceiling. In a panic, he instinctively tried to cover the hole with his hands. That just made the mead spray sideways in every direction. In the end, the barrel lost a few gallons of mead and everything within 10' was soaked with the partially-fermented sticky honey mixture. He actually had to empty mead out of the flourescent light fixture on the ceiling!

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ROFLMAO, that sux. how much did you loose? did you just take it out of his cut?

ExoticMeadMaker said:

ROFLMAO, that sux. how much did you loose? did you just take it out of his cut?

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The man had to wring mead out of his underwear. We didn't have the heart to take it out of his cut.

blunders... o where to start... so many

Blunder # 1 mikes hard lemonade clone

Couple years back when i was new to brewing i wanted to make a hard lemonade. Made 5 gallons using a couple bags of lemons and a lot of sugar in the raw. Fast forward a month or 2 and i was still trying to correct all the mistakes made ( ie turned out undrinkable) I decided to filter it using one of the cheap plate filters u get at the home brew stores. I kegged the hard lemonade, setup the filter and applied pressure. All went well tasted what came out of the first gallon (still horrible but now in a crystal clear state and undrinkable). pissed off at the massive disappointment, i let the last 4 gallons filter anyway while i worked and watched tv in the other room. The blunder started all of a sudden when i heard the kitchen faucet running.... After a few seconds i realized it wasn't the kitchen faucet but the lemonade fountain emanating from the liquid post of the keg as the 5/16 line had snapped off the filter and started to fill the kitchen with mess. Arriving like an untrained EMT to the scene of a horrible accident, I did want any of us would do. Look at the mess in horror. Realizing that that was not going to stop the mess I Used my knee to "block" the spray and did next thing any idiot in my position would do and pulled the gas port off the keg...hmmm....ehh A-hole that did nothing...Round 2...Pull the liquid port....and start the 5 hour clean up process and wait to figure out how the swmbo is going to kill me..

Blunder # 2 Mixing Cider and Mead

Paint the picture...right....Morning of Christmas day 2010.... Just finished bottling a Berry Mead that tasted like Robitussin...put the bottles on the top shelf of the then metro shelving unit in the same kitchen that the lemonade incident happened. Cleaned the kitchen and started to prep for the family in-law dinner for the next day.. Moved all the carboys and Ail Pals either on the Metro shelf or around the unit. vacuuming around the house as instructed by the wifie i moved out of the kitchen to other areas in the house... Out of nowhere a bottle of mead, not happy being just mead, fell off the shelving unit and hit a 6.5 gal carboy full of an amazing strong apple cider/wine obliterating the once new pristine expensive glassware an making my kitchen again into a swimming pool..yes a swimming pool...

In case u all were wondering..i am no longer aloud to do anything but ferment in the house. I am aloud to bring sealed containers in and sealed containers out...I do anything else in the garage...harsh ehhh???


jeff

How apropos that someone started this thread, as not 2 days later (yesterday) I was bottling my last fall's cider. I forgot to add the acid blend that I typically put in...I was tasting the left overs from the bottling bucket, and it tasted off somehow. Suddenly it struck me -- missing that little tart finish to balance things out!

I had to make up a solution of acid blend at a ratio to mimic the amount I would've added to the whole batch such that 1 ml would be what each bottle would contain, then I opened each bottle up and added 1 ml of solution, and recapped.

A total PITA, but in the end it was well worth the time and an extra 50 or so bottle caps (especially after tasting the 2 different versions in side by side).

Either way, it's HUGE and my ec1118 is never gonna eat it all.

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Well, never say never. Only 2% over EC-1118's tolerance. It might do it, with a little extra nutrition and energizer at the end there...

Blunders, I have made a few- many years ago during my bottling days I had the carboy atop the kitchen counter racking cane inserted with enough hose for me to comfortably sit on the floor to bottle. So here I am crosslegged and comfy bottling oh I do not know probably a Pale Ale and somewhere along the 4th or fifth bottle CRASH and a fountain of red shooting up between my legs! Room is fuzzy and I bees dizzy like those days from the early 1970's. Fast forward, surgury performed on the right thumb and forearm, Family jelwels were undamaged. Almost lost the thumb and hadd to repair the tendon in the arm from broken glass. Never never turn your head and bottling hose at the same time.

A couple years ago was fermenting a basic mead and forgot to move the carboy out of the area we were remodeling....like to the opposite end of the house OR wait maybe out of the house and 4 months later I find plaster dust floating ontop of the mead. Not sure how it got through the orange cap but I never just rely alone on the cap without some additional wrap over it now.

GinKings said:

The man had to wring mead out of his underwear. We didn't have the heart to take it out of his cut.

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knowing he lost good booze would be punishment enough

Every year they would burn a sulphur stick in each barrel before they filled it.

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Same exact thing happened to Gordon Strong. In his -great book, by the way- "Brewing Better Beer" he opens with how that incident put him out of commission and made him re-examine his life.

Just in reading this thread alone, I know why I never want a glass carboy.

Based upon reading a ton of forum posts and my own experiences in other foodmaking endeavors, my theory is that most blunders are the result of making the fermentation process more complex than it need be.

Meaning that if you simplify, simplify, simplify, your chances of messing up drop to almost zero.

Valk, just to be clear, did you pull the carboy off the counter or something else? I've taken to putting my carboy in the sink when bottling as my siphon tube isn't long enough to reach the floor without being that little bit lower... Looks like it's a good idea for more ways than one!