Today's lesson learned while brewing.

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reinstone

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Doing a pale ale with a little bitter orange peel.

All was going well till I didn't bag the orange peel. Clog city, took an hour and fifteen minutes to chill

What bonehead things have you guys done?

This could get interesting.
 
One of the big ones for me is forgetting to close valves. I usually write "check all valves" on my recipes. The ants go nuts after a brew day. I tied off a hop bag with a long piece of twine one time. It was so long that it caught fire and the whole thing burned up. The hop bag fell in and it was like trying to pull a dead fish out of water, getting that bag back out. Even when I sort out my hops, put them in separate containers, have everything written on the recipe, and use a timer...I still sometimes forget if I put the last batch of hops in, or if I still have to put them in. Now I actually write down the addition times on a small piece of paper and put it in the container with the hops so I don't forget, but sometimes I forget to even do that. I still brew with open-toed shoes (flip-flops) which is pretty stupid, but I don't like taking on/off shoes...I need some crocs. Convincing myself that I'll clean something later is pretty boneheaded, because I never end up doing it and that never turns out well. One time I wanted to cultivate bottle yeast so I used water and white table sugar...I tasted it...that was pretty dumb. That was also the day that I learned what "CO2 Burn" was...not sure what it's officially called, but it sucks. One time I was convinced that I didn't really need to lubricate my keg gasket, and that some starsan would do the trick. I lost a full tank of CO2, where a finger's-worth of Vaseline would have sufficed.
 
I once drained my siphon tube full of bleach-based sanitizing solution (with the following 5 gallons of home-maid IPA) into my bottling bucket. I was scared but I'll be honest- I drank the beer still!
 
Went to dump some extra boiling water down a chipmunk hole from my keggle yesterday. The handles on top were cool, but the bottom just came off the flame. It didn't register right away cause I only slept a couple hours, not sure if I heard the sizzle or felt it first.
 
Took the perlick off the kegerator to give the lines a good cleanout, pressurized the next inline keg and then proceeded to attach the beer line... yeah, you guessed it, precious beer squirting across the kitchen. Never registered that I'd not put the perlick back on till I stood up and caught beer in my face.

Scrambling for things to turn off and yes, you guessed it, I went for the CO2 tank first, then the CO2 valve on the splitter, FINALLY I figured out that removing the beer line would actually kill the flow. By the time flow had been stemmed, I'd probably dumped a good gallon of beer, only ever happened once, never again.
 
When I brewed extract I added hot wort to a glass carboy on my kitchen counter. The rest is history.
 
I like to strain my wort going into primary. I found out pretty quickly that those funnels with the embedded filter screen clog up, like, really fast :drunk:
 
Oh boy... I'm not sure which is worse but here are my "oops" moments, they all happened some time ago...

1.) tried to use an autosiphon to transfer boiling wort to primary bucket
2.) dropped hydometer into bottling bucket full of beer, shattering it

I also almost always forget the irish moss... but that doesn't really matter to me much, I drinks the beer I makes.
 
Clogs are a big one. EVERYTHING either needs to go in a bag or in some strainer. Especially if you have a pump system. Trust me...just...trust me.
 
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