Broken Carboy Club

Williams 728
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joenads

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I joined the broken carboy club yesterday and I'll tell you it was not an initiation I ever want to go through again. I believe I got away with a bit less than some of the other horror stories I've read about today, but I still have to make an appointment with a hand specialist.

As I was cleaning my 6.5 gallon carboy towards the end of my mash, it decided to slip from my hands while I was trying to put it on the carboy drying stand. A nice shard of glass caught my pinky finger near the webbing and started bleeding real good. I made a fist and due to where it was cut, I was able to keep it from bleeding any more. I ended up doing the quickest sparge (maybe even considered a no sparge) in order to get the wort off the grains. I figured if I let it sit, it would break down the grains and give me some nasty tannins. Collected my 14 gallons in the boil kettle, then my neighbor drove me to the ER. I ended up with 8 stitches around my pinky, and as far as I know, no damaged tendons. Might have gotten some nerves as my pinky now feels like when your hand falls asleep, still can feel stuff but a bit numb to the touch. Like I said, I still have to go see a hand specialist.

I came back and manage to get my boil off and also had to free up another carboy, so I also bottled my belgium dubbel. It was in my primary for only 3 weeks, but it tasted pretty good and I know the gravity was steady.

For this batch, I was shooting for an OG of 1.057 but ended up with 1.051. I figure that's good enough given the circumstances and I believe I saved my beer and my finger! I split the batch up for an oktoberfest and a dampfbier, so I was pretty excited to get these beers made...
 
JonnyJumpUp said:
The order you did things made me laugh....

1. Save brew.
2. Save finger.
3. Return to brewing.
Click to expand...

Priorities, right?

Pappers_ said:
Hope you heal up quickly and fully.
Click to expand...

Thanks, never thought how nice it is having your pinky free. Not to mention keeping that finger dry during clean up...
 
joenads said:
Priorities, right?



Thanks, never thought how nice it is having your pinky free. Not to mention keeping that finger dry during clean up...
Click to expand...

I broke my pinky a few months back. You don't know how much you use it until something happens to it. Get well soon.
 
passedpawn said:
Hope it heals quickly and the feeling comes back. Are all your carboys glass? It's hard to handle them at all after an event like that (I know from experience)
Click to expand...
Yeah, I have 3 more that are full of beer right now. My buddy ended up shaking them and putting them in the keezer and ferm chamber for me. I plan on ordering some better bottles to try out. I think I was able to justify a conical to SWMBO though by saying it's cheaper than another ER visit:mug:
 
I ordered a few better bottles to try out with my next brew. gonna try a basil honey wheat, and picked out 2 different yeast to try. also went to the hand surgeon yesterday for a follow up as recommended by the hospital. Although half my finger is still numb, he said there is no major nerve damage. The hospital told me to put neosporin on it twice a day and gave me a splint to keep my finger straight. The hand surgeon told me the hospital always tells you to do the opposite of what you should do... I feels so good to move my finger around, but a bit weird to not have full feeling when i touch stuff. The surgeon wanted to know how I cut it and i told him it was on a 6.5 glass jug. he's liek "what, a carboy?" he told me he used to make beer all the time and his best was a doppelbock but hasn't made any in about 6 years. I'm gonna see if i can bring in some homebrews to pay my bill when he takes the stitches out.
 
Every time I hear one of these stories it makes me consider switching to better bottles exclusively. Hope your hand heals quickly and glad you saved your brew! Could've been twice as tragic!
 
When I first started last July I opted for Better Bottles mostly for weight. With these stories I have never regretted the decision for a second.

Hope you heal well and love the fact that you didn't lose any brew.
 
EEEK - that sucks, man! :eek: Congrats on thinking on your feet and salvaging your beer w/o killing yourself! :rockin: I hope your hand's OK--you could just have temporary nerve blockage from the swelling.

After seeing the carnage a broken carboy can cause, I pretty much only move my glass carboys in their milk crates. Even when cleaning and scrubbing, I just put the whole crate in the sink and only lift the carboy out to flip it for draining/drying. I even replaced my basement sink with one of the flimsy plastic ones just so I wouldn't have to worry about glass breakage as much. For a while I was only using Better Bottles but I've switched back to glass for secondaries.

On the upside, your beer will probably be great. I've had more than one occasion where something real bad happened in the middle of a brew and I thought the batch was lost, but it came out great--even better than I would have expected from a "normal" brew session.

The most recent one was when I was in the middle of lautering and someone fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into the traffic light pole at the corner of my block. I ran out when I heard the crash, found that the crash took down the whole pole (it was a big one) causing a really dangerous situation for oncoming traffic, and the guy couldn't get out of the car. After I got him out of harms way and the fire department showed up, I went back to my house to find a good gallon or so of wort that was lautering had gone down the drain, and the portion that was already in the kettle was at full boil, probably scorching on the bottom. The sparge tank was empty and the grain bed was dry--I fly sparge and normally tweak in sparge rate to keep it just right so who knows what happened while I was gone.

Bottom line, I just counted my blessings, got back to work, and a couple months later the beer came out awesome somehow. God looks out for idiots and brewers. :mug:
 
I had a similar injury about 15 years ago trying to put a cork back in a wine bottle. I got the cork started and tilted the bottle on it side and put the end of the cork against the edge of the kitchen counter. When I pushed on the bottle to stuff the cork back in it broke into 5 or 6 pieces. It cut the base of my little finger on the outside edge of the my hand. The cut was only about a 1/2 inch, but down to the bone. I could actually see the knuckle at the base of the finger. I knew something was amiss because I could only feel the inside half of the finger. The outside half was as numb as a hot dog. Went to the ER and got stitched up just like joenads. They also told me to go to the hand specialist a couple of days later. He confirmed I had cut a nerve that led to the numb part. A couple of week later I had hand surgery to repair the nerve. The surgeon said that reattaching a cut nerve only gives the cut end a place to grow back into and that nerve had to regrow from the cut all the way to the end where nerve tips are.

It worked out OK and eventually healed up, but I can tell you exactly how fast nerve grows back. The skin wound itself was all healed up in a couple of weeks. However, the nerve only grows back about 3/16" per month. I could plot the nerve regrowth with a pin and a Sharpie . I did exactly that over the next 4-5 months right before every follow-up appointment with the hand doctor. He'd laugh everytime and say I was doing his job as he looked at my row of Sharpie dots that mapped the end of where I had feeling as it progressed out the length of my finger.

Today it still feels a little weird, like it's 1/3 asleep, but at least it's usable and I can tell when my hand touches something which I can tell you is really important on the outside edge of your hand. Without feeling there you get it caught, smashed, and burned in all kinds of way you wouldn't even think of.

Because I'm scared to death of doing this kind of thing again I only wash carboys in a plastic laundry sink that I don't think can break them and only carry them around (full or empty) in a milk crate even though they all have carboy handles. Also, I'm working on moving to fermenting only in SS to avoid the issue in altogether.
 
starsailor said:
I had a similar injury about 15 years ago trying to put a cork back in a wine bottle. I got the cork started and tilted the bottle on it side and put the end of the cork against the edge of the kitchen counter. When I pushed on the bottle to stuff the cork back in it broke into 5 or 6 pieces. It cut the base of my little finger on the outside edge of the my hand. The cut was only about a 1/2 inch, but down to the bone. I could actually see the knuckle at the base of the finger. I knew something was amiss because I could only feel the inside half of the finger. The outside half was as numb as a hot dog. Went to the ER and got stitched up just like joenads. They also told me to go to the hand specialist a couple of days later. He confirmed I had cut a nerve that led to the numb part. A couple of week later I had hand surgery to repair the nerve. The surgeon said that reattaching a cut nerve only gives the cut end a place to grow back into and that nerve had to regrow from the cut all the way to the end where nerve tips are.

It worked out OK and eventually healed up, but I can tell you exactly how fast nerve grows back. The skin wound itself was all healed up in a couple of weeks. However, the nerve only grows back about 3/16" per month. I could plot the nerve regrowth with a pin and a Sharpie . I did exactly that over the next 4-5 months right before every follow-up appointment with the hand doctor. He'd laugh everytime and say I was doing his job as he looked at my row of Sharpie dots that mapped the end of where I had feeling as it progressed out the length of my finger.

Today it still feels a little weird, like it's 1/3 asleep, but at least it's usable and I can tell when my hand touches something which I can tell you is really important on the outside edge of your hand. Without feeling there you get it caught, smashed, and burned in all kinds of way you wouldn't even think of.

Because I'm scared to death of doing this kind of thing again I only wash carboys in a plastic laundry sink that I don't think can break them and only carry them around (full or empty) in a milk crate even though they all have carboy handles. Also, I'm working on moving to fermenting only in SS to avoid the issue in altogether.
Click to expand...

I have a very similar story involving a sledgehammer and my left thumb. The feeling came back to the entire thumb except the very tip. I never saw a doctor.
 
I use to have a giant 13 or 14 gallon glass carboy, this thing was a monster. I say "use to have", because I sold it about 3 or 4 months ago on craigslist. Every time I carried the thing around, I thought I was going to break it, and full of ten gallons it would have weighed well over 130 pounds.
 
Glad you are ok, I'm bad with glass period! Factor in carboys and I'm screwed - 20 stitches and a forever screwy fingertip, I'm done with them. I have broken four of the damm things, one almost took off my finger tip and badly cut my thumb, the others I was lucky. People talk about CIP for conicals, I need CIP for carboys as all my carboy woes have occurred during cleaning. SS for me!
 
gunmetal said:
I use to have a giant 13 or 14 gallon glass carboy, this thing was a monster. I say "use to have", because I sold it about 3 or 4 months ago on craigslist. Every time I carried the thing around, I thought I was going to break it, and full of ten gallons it would have weighed well over 130 pounds.
Click to expand...

Are you serious? I didn't know those existed...that's just crazy

OP, I had a pretty bad cut at the top of my middle finger when a buddy dropped his side of a washing machine we were carrying. The bottom pretty much used my hands as a ramp back to the ground. I didn't have feeling in the tip of my finger for a while, and it took a lot longer than that to get back to normal.
 
They're called Demi-Johns. I had one.

Luckily no one was hurt when it moved on.
 
Now, if better bottle or someone would make a 7, and 13 gallon plastic bottle I'd be happy.
 
well, my 3 6 gallon better bottles came in yesterday. they look pretty sweet, nice and lite, and no chance of adding more stitches to my hand!
 

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