First Brewing DISASTER - overcome!

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

fall-line

Supporting Member
HBT Supporter
Joined
Mar 15, 2011
Messages
434
Reaction score
55
Location
Seattle
Just had to share this experience to commiserate with those of you who have had a similar experience (or can imagine.)

I've been brewing for 6 months now and last night I experienced my first major diaster while transferring a really outstanding batch of Dead Guy Clone from primary to secondary. I pulled the ale pail out of my fermentation chamber and carefully racked it to a freshly cleaned and sanitized carboy. To be extra careful about sanitization, I sprayed a little starsan solution on the rim of the carboy opening and replaced the (freshly sanitized) airlock and proceeded to pickup the carboy and put it back in the chamber.

Well.... it turns out 5 gallons of beer in a carboy with neck 'lubricated' with sanitizer is a difficult thing to pickup and slide into a front loading fermentation chamber. It didn't feel particularly heavy, but I'll be dammed if it didn't slip out of my hands from about 2ft up over my basmenet concrete floor. The result was spectacular.

Broken glass and beer went gushing in all directions (including in my slippers, but thankfully I wasn't badly cut.) I allowed my self about 1 second to feel sorry for myself and yell a few things I will not repeat here, before the fury of damage control and cleanup began. I won't go into all the details, but needless to say I had an unpleasant couple of hours of cleaning.

I can't say enough how key it was to have a wet/dry (shop) vac handy. I was able to get suction on the floor within about 30 seconds from the spill, and was therefor able to capture probably ~3 gallons of the stuff as it was pooling and flowing around the room. I don't know what I would have done with out this! Highly recommended tool to have on hand if you are ever working with large volumes of liquid.

Casualty list:
  • 5 gallons of one of my favorite homebrews
  • 1 5 gallon carboy
  • 2 decent area rugs
  • Some drywall.. yeah.. this was bad
  • A shopvac filter
  • Two towels
  • A good helping of pride.

After the bulk of the cleaning was complete I turned my attention to the hydrometer tube full of beer that I had sampled during the racking, now the only remnant of this batch. It was fantastic. This is the third time I've brewed this particular beer, and this was easily the best racking sample.

Oh well, life doesn't alway go to plan. :) I resolved to 1) buy some carboy handles 2) get some ingredients for another batch of Dead Guy and 3) head upstairs and start brewing up my batch of Pale Ale per my plan for the evening. My brew day didn't end until 12:30 last night, but dammit I got it done!
 
I thought you were going to take RDWHAHB to a new level by using a shopvac as a secondary, glad you didnt get to badly wounded by this.
 
Damn, that sounds awful, thankfully your okay.

This has almost happened to me lifting carboys in and out of my fermentation chamber. You must brew another one ASAP now! The pipeline is unforgiveable and doesn’t care about anything besides itself, your liver is evil as well and must be punished daily do it your biddings in the wake of this disaster and brew another beer!
 
I saw some carboy handles once that looked like the cargo net on the back of a pick up truck. One handle on each side. Goes about half way up the carboy.
 
Perhaps consider switching to Better Bottles?

(If you were already using them you likely wouldn't have lost your brew.)
 
I thought you were going to take RDWHAHB to a new level by using a shopvac as a secondary, glad you didnt get to badly wounded by this.

You know, even after sucking up all the dirt and broken glass along with the beer, it was still hard to pour the contents of the shopvac out! On a related note, my garbage man is going to love me come garbage day. I tried to "decant off" the beer so I could only throw the glass in the garbage, but there were so many tiny glass fragments it was impossible. There is a slurry of beer and grime in my can waiting to be picked up now..
 
Perhaps consider switching to Better Bottles?

Yeah, also a good suggestion. I think I'll pick one up to try it out. I've always preferred the idea of glass over plastic, but after this experience I can see why they might actually be deserving of the Better Bottle name..

Thanks
 
+1 for the Brewhauler

I broke a glass carboy in my bathroom a few months ago. Luckily it was only full of water, but it still sucked to waste the money on a new one and to clean up all the shards of glass.
Ever since then, I haven't lifted a full carboy without a brewhauler. I looked into Better Bottles right after the accident, but I decided to stick with carboys.
 
Oh noes....after reading the broken hydrometer thread last week, i brioke my hydrometer on Sunday....I have to rack off my carboy into a secondary on this Sunday...:(

Sorry to hear of your loss, but the good news, you werent hurt and now you hafta brew some more :mug:
 
Absolutely.. my basement smells like a frat house the day after a party still, but it could have been much worse. I'll be brewing up another batch of this awesomeness day after tomorrow. If you are a fan of the Dead Guy style, I highly recommend you try Yooper's recipe. (see above for link)

Thanks for all the good suggestions. I need two carboys at this point, so I'm going to be picking up one glass carboy (along with a brew hauler) and one better bottle. Looking forward to using both.
 
You know, even after sucking up all the dirt and broken glass along with the beer, it was still hard to pour the contents of the shopvac out! On a related note, my garbage man is going to love me come garbage day. I tried to "decant off" the beer so I could only throw the glass in the garbage, but there were so many tiny glass fragments it was impossible. There is a slurry of beer and grime in my can waiting to be picked up now..

you could have cold crashed the shop vac with some gelatine that might have gotten the nastys to settle and used cheese cloth over the siphon tube to catch the glass. I wonder what kind of magic funk that beer could have picked up in journey around the basement and shop vac or if it was absolutely horribly you could have had a few bottles of beer for when that guy comes over trying to bum beer:mug:
 
Thanks in large part to the suggestions (and sympathy) offered in this thread, I've made the switch to better bottles and am so far very happy with them. I picked up a 6 gallon for primary fermentation and a 5 gallon for secondary, and am currently using them along side my (remaining) glass carboys and ale pails.

So far so good! I really like being able to pickup a better bottle that is 1/2 full of sanitizer or PBW solution and shake the sh*t out of it without worrying about a heavy, slippery mass of (about to be) broken glass flying across the room.

As for the Dead Guy Ale that was lost, its replacement batch is just a couple of days away from being transfered to secondary, and I'm looking forward to drinking it in July.. just a little behind schedule.
 
Just to commiserate a bit.....last fall I racked a batch into a carboy and carried it down to my basement. Made it down the stairs with the carboy as I have a hundred times. I carefully went to place the carboy on the concrete floor and all I can think is that there was a pebble or something right on the rim where I set the carboy down. Just as I set it down I heard a little "plink" and the carboy desinigrated with a whole batch of beer.

I give you credit about only taking a second to gruff about it. I jumped up and down and cursed like a sailer. Then I cleaned it up, and then I did RDWHAHB about 6 times in a row. That made me feel better.

Basement still smells.....

Alan
 
Ouch! That seems even more cruel than what happened to me.

I'm sorry that your basement still smells. Mine is surprisingly fresh smelling, though I will need to do another round of moping to really get all the smell out I think. The big saving grace for me was the shop vac as I mentioned. I had the floor relatively dry and the mopping (bleach & hot water) underway really quickly.
 
Thanks in large part to the suggestions (and sympathy) offered in this thread, I've made the switch to better bottles and am so far very happy with them. I picked up a 6 gallon for primary fermentation and a 5 gallon for secondary, and am currently using them along side my (remaining) glass carboys and ale pails.

So far so good! I really like being able to pickup a better bottle that is 1/2 full of sanitizer or PBW solution and shake the sh*t out of it without worrying about a heavy, slippery mass of (about to be) broken glass flying across the room.

As for the Dead Guy Ale that was lost, its replacement batch is just a couple of days away from being transfered to secondary, and I'm looking forward to drinking it in July.. just a little behind schedule.

I use Better Bottles, too, and really like them. There are a few things to be careful about:
Don't use a carboy brush on them
Don't tilt the bottle on edge to aerate (use a tennis ball under the center, instead)
Don't use too strong caustic cleaning solution (0.5% by weight PWB or OxiClean is OK)
Don't use water over 140ºF to clean them

See the Better Bottle web site for details:
http://www.better-bottle.com/
 
I shattered a 6 1/2 gallon carboy a few months ago. I got lucky twice - first, I didn't get a scratch on me and second I was cleaning it before filling it with a fresh batch of Amber Ale. Just a reminder, Oxy-Clean is slippery as hell!

Two batches through a 6 gal. Better Bottle and I'm very happy (though my blow off tube doesn't work in it)
 
Yeah the best thing to get for moving carboys is a strap system called The Brew Hauler. I can honestly say that it has saved many a batches when moving up and down stairs.
 
Back
Top