Home brewing can be dangerous....

So today my buddy and I did a dual brew together. He was brewing a Flat Tire clone and I was brewing an American Pale Ale. We had everything set up on the balcony at my apartment and everything was going well.

After a while we started to smell propane. I knew something wasn't right because I've never smelled propane like that before when I was brewing. My buddy reached down to check the propane line and when he did a huge flame shot up his arm and singed his arm hair. We didn't know what to do because the flame was so huge. We couldn't get near the valve to turn off the gas because the flame was so big. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the fire extinguisher and put the flame out. I don't know if it would have blown the tank up but I wasn't going to wait around and find out.

After the cloud of smoke subsided we had sodium bicarbonate on the surface of our beer. We researched it and found out it's not harmful. We didn't want to waste the kits we bought so we skimmed off the powder and kept going. I hope it doesn't hurt the beer but I hated to waste the money. If it doesn't turn out right we have something to blame it on I guess.

The reason I started this post is to let everyone know that It isn't a bad idea to have a fire extinguisher around when you are brewing.

Awesome job with that fast thinking grabbing th fire extinguisher. Glad no serious injuries occured!

YIKES!!! Just in case it's not obvious (as I'm sure it is), check your propane equipment, figure out what caused that, and fix or replace whatever it is before you fire it up next time.

Good thing you had a fire extinguisher nearby or things could've gotten ugly real quick. Cheers to everyone being alright

This is why I'm going to convert my 10 gal pot to 220v electric with GFCI just seems like less chance of failure, plus it means I can brew in the basement, rain or shine, cold or hot, night or day. Glad you guys weren't hurt other than apparently some singed arm hair it sounds like.

If you keep StarSan or some other sanitizer in a spray bottle handy, you can spray down your propane lines and fittings and look for bubbles/leaks. It wont work as good as soapy water but hey, you already should have it handy.

-ArXiX

Very good point Wildrebel!! I have a fire extinguisher with 10' of my burner all the time. You just never know! So what was the reason for the failure anyway?

It seems that the connection from the hose to the burner was loose. I don't know if it worked its way loose when we were brewing or what. We were too scared to fire it back up after we tightened it up.