Funny now. Not funny when it happened.

Thought I'd share a brewing related mishap.
If anyone has a funny story related to brewing please share so that I don't feel like such a plonker.

OK, So I bought some used kegs from Adventures in Homebrewing.
My dad brought them with him from Michigan when he came to visit. Saved me from shipping.
I was explaining to him how they worked. Grabbed a quick disconnect and preceded to attach it to the post.
Well, Adventures in Homebrewing guarantees their used kegs will hold pressure.
Turns out they don't lie.
When I attached the "beer" side quick disconnect liquid started shooting across the house. I panicked and jerked the fitting off the post as quickly as I could.
I looked to see what happened, and my step mother was wiping this unknown fluid off her face, and clothes.
Mind you she was sitting in the living room, and my dad and I were in the kitchen 20 feet away.
Turns out the mystery fluid was soda syrup, and boy did I have a lot of cleaning. It was everywhere!
A week later my wife was cleaning, and cursing me, still finding little shiny droplets on the walls, the closet doors, the floor, all the way into the hallway
another ten feet further than assumed.

LOL. Don't have anything like that to share. But I have to say, spraying your step-mother in the face with soda syrup is hilarious.

i bet you weren't very popular for a while. except as a topic for curses

My step mom took it like a man.
She's cool. She wasn't mad, or at least played it off well.

I bottled about 4 cases this weekend with a hammer capper. I guess that's just about as foolish. Not nearly as FUNNY, but just about as foolish.

Sounds like a great sitcom moment.

I don't have anything great to share, but that is hilarious. I'm sure at the time you were a little red faced.

That's hysterical. I have a similar story that is now humorous, but was frustrating me at the time.

The first time I hooked up my kegging system, I couldn't get the faucte in correctly, so everytime I hooked up the liquid line, it would shoot out the sides of the faucet in all directions. I kept trying, and it happened at least 3 times. During one of the times, I removed the faucet assembly completely, and it sprayed me right in the mouth.

classic!

I have a similar one. I didn't know it, but the FB in my BK (I use it to strain whole hops) was slightly warped. It let a few petals through, and they clogged my pump. Being your typical homebrewing genius, I pulled the outlet hoses off and backflushed it with the garden hose. I reattached the inlet hose, bled the air and closed the pump outlet valve. Then I reached over and turned the pump on. With a completely blank mind I looked into the outlet of the pump and opened the ball valve all the way. I got a nice faceful of 150ish degree wort. I still to this day don't know what I was thinking. The only thing I can figure is that I wanted to see if the pump was cleared. The details seem to be lost in the fog. I'm just grateful that I had got partway through the chill so that wort wasn't still boiling.

awesome, Ive got one.

Last brew day, got early to get all my stuff done.. allowing me to have a nice relaxing afternoon of brewin'. The night before I had filled up a fermenter with water to use as a measuring device--- cause its graduated.

anyway, scene set.

I was moving my half full (4-5 gallons of water) bucket off the counter.. but the lid wasnt attached down. fingers slid off so I was just hanging onto the lid, bucket dropped straight down.

If youve never seen the hydraulic effect of a plastic bucket full of water hitting the floor squarely from 4 feet up, Id strongly suggest trying it.. just make sure you do it outside. It was like a column of water, straight up into my face.

The dog had that "what an a$$ hole" look on his face while I wiped up the kitchen.

at least it was just water

Great stories.
Anyone else?
I'm starting to feel a little better about myself.

Here's one that could have turned out much worse than it did. I was getting ready to add the hops to the BK, had it in a hop sack, ran inside to enter some numbers into Beersmith went back out , No hops. SWMBO's dog took off with the hop sack and was playing with it, by the time I found it it was covered in dog slobber and grass. I made some quick substitutes and the beer came out fine. At the time the dog , a Boxer named Porter was just over a year old, she's two now and no smarter but I do keep a better eye on her when I brew.

I had some friends over who brew extract and wanted to see AG in action. After we mashed in my friend picks up the manifold and asked "when does this go in?"

one carboy exploded and lost a batch of beer back in my extract days. Don't put nearly boiling hot wort in the carboy and then dunk in cold water.

Had a couple instances of filling my bottling bucket while the valve was open. I solved this by going to a racking can and bucket without valve, hehe.

First time I used my IC, I just had a piece of vinyl tubing for the output. I was on my back porch, and draped the tubing off the end of the patio. It was summer, so I was brewing in bare feet.

Turned on the water at the hose. Output tube went flying around, dousing my feet in just-below-boiling water. Took a couple days before I could put socks on.

At least I knew my thermal efficiency was good!

Not brewing, but beer-related. This just happened last week.

With the Christmas tree in place, my swivel recliner was moved forward and the side table was relegated to the garage. While watching TV, I had a glass of beer on the floor next to my chair, well protected from foot traffic. (It was between my chair and the sliding glass door, with about 18 - 24 inches of space.) When we called my son home from his friend's house, he decided to walk up through the back yard, instead of coming all the way around the block.

Upon his arrival, he knocked on the slider for us to unlock it. At the sound of his rapping, our surprised dog let out several sharp barks, and charged the slider. Remember, I pointed out that this is a swivel recliner? Well, I was reclined. When the dog hit the footrest of my chair, Newtons laws of motion were put into effect, and the chair swiveled. As there was nothing for me to grab to halt the motion of the chair, it continued to swivel as I flailed about grasping for a handhold.

Finding none, I determined that I should grab my beer before it was struck by the still swiveling chair. Alas, as I looked down, the chair lightly touched the beer glass, causing the glass to tilt and hover at approximately a 45 degree angle for what seemed like several seconds, before succumbing to Newtons law of gravity! (Dam that Newton!!) Result: One glass (minus 3 sips) of Brooklyn Brewery's Monster Ale Barleywine spilled on the carpet.

With SWMBO present in the room.

During 2 of my last 4 brew days, I forgot about the 7 gallon bucket being filled with filtered water in my kitchen and ended up with varying quantities of water to mop.

When bottling my very first brew, I tripped over the baby gate at the top of the basement stairs while carrying 5 gallons of delicious brown ale. Luckily, I had mostly sealed the bottling bucket lid and let my body take the brunt of the fall. I ended up losing about a pint or two (onto my face and shirt) but walked with a limp from my bruised knee for a few months...

Mischief_Brewing said:

During 2 of my last 4 brew days, I forgot about the 7 gallon bucket being filled with filtered water in my kitchen and ended up with varying quantities of water to mop.

When bottling my very first brew, I tripped over the baby gate at the top of the basement stairs while carrying 5 gallons of delicious brown ale. Luckily, I had mostly sealed the bottling bucket lid and let my body take the brunt of the fall. I ended up losing about a pint or two (onto my face and shirt) but walked with a limp from my bruised knee for a few months...

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Way to sacrifice your body inseady of the beer! I was toobing on the Guadalupe once and got out of my tube, I went under 3-4 times trying to stumble to the side on the algae-covered rocks, but I kept my beer above the water every time! SWMBO didnt think it was very funny.

Also not brewing, but beer related. My first keg (15.5 gals) and no prior experience in tapping kegs. (this is circa 1978) The bud tap had; a two handle device that secured the tap to the keg, a one handle device that tightened a seal around a "plunger" that you forced through a wooden plung (bung). Found out how much pressure my keg was under after being rolled around a bit. Took a beer shower. I was 19 at the time so it wasn't quite so bad....

This is similar to the soda syrup situation, but instead involves an imperial IPA and some inexperience with cleaning a tower.

We had been waiting months for this IIPA to finish fermenting, it was the first IIPA we made and we had high hopes for this beer to punch us in the teeth with a hoppy explosion of flavor.

With the kegs/lines sanitized we kegged the IIPA. During this time I had removed the faucet for a good cleaning as it was slightly sticky. So the beer was kegged and we had cold-crashed it so that we could force carbonate it and try it right away. In the nature of impatience, we cranked that bad boy up to 30psi and rocked that keg like crazy.

After about 10 minutes of carbing we were ready to taste. We couldn't wait. 9.5% ABV and hops were the only two things on our mind. At this point I would like to remind you of the location of our faucet (in the sinnk) and the state of our psi (cranked up to 30). It all happened in slow motion. The liquid disconnect went on and there was an unfamiliar spraying sound. The IIPA blasted us relentlessly and doused our kitchen like a Rainbird on steroids. We had no idea what was happening. It only took a couple seconds for us to figure out what was going on, but it seemed like an eternity. Our precious creation was everywhere.

We lost about a gallon of the IIPA on that fateful day, but at least we took most of it to the face. And to this day, the kitchen still smells fresh. I believe that the hops have permeated every piece of hardwood and drywall in the room.

AT the request of the SWMBO I brewed up a batch of strawberry wheat. After the yeast started chugging away, a day later I noticed some yeast sediment and strawberry seeds in my airlock. I decided to pull off the airlock, clean it up, sanitize it and put it back on. Little did I know that the airlock had gotten clogged with strawberry seeds and hop residue and it had built up quite some pressure. As soon as I pulled the airlock out it was like a strawberry volcanoe errupted in my face. My face, the two adjacent walls, the plant hanging above the fermenter, and the ceiling were all covered in strawberries and beer.

dmfa200 said:

My step mom took it like a man.
She's cool. She wasn't mad, or at least played it off well.

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Sounds like she's used to taking shots to the face.


BOOM!

Count it!

You made my mind go somewhere it didn't want to go.

try and get that outta your head next time the in-laws visit!

Last brew day, everything was going fine. I had just put my wort onto the burner to start the boil and I watch it like a hawk for boil overs (boilovers are just NOT funny). Well, my 2 girls came outside to see what daddy was doing and distracted me for a minute. When I look back, I see my kettle is about to boil over. So I turn down the heat and quickly reach for my mash paddle to stir to prevent the boilover. Well, wehn I reached over I didnt grab my paddle, but my plastic thief I had sitting out to take hydrometer readings. Needless to say, I stuck it in before thinking, and when I pulled it out, it looked like a Salvador Dali Masterpiece. It didnt melt into the beer, just severely warped and deformed.

After brewing I figured if heat messed it up, heat can fix it. So I put it into hot water and was able to get into somewhat normal shape.

I had two similar experiences with my first keg. When I brought my first kegs home and into the house my cats and dogs came over to check them out (as all animals do when new things enter their territory). It was at this time I decided to check and see if there was pressure in one of the kegs by pulling the release valve. The hiss was so loud that all the animals ran for their lives in every direction. About 6 months later I finally got my hookups and proceeded to connect the output valve to the same keg that I had previously checked for pressure. It shot vaporized pop syrup all over the storage room and scared the pants of me this time.

JohnnyO said:

That's hysterical. I have a similar story that is now humorous, but was frustrating me at the time.

The first time I hooked up my kegging system, I couldn't get the faucte in correctly, so everytime I hooked up the liquid line, it would shoot out the sides of the faucet in all directions. I kept trying, and it happened at least 3 times. During one of the times, I removed the faucet assembly completely, and it sprayed me right in the mouth.

Click to expand...

Sounds like an improve delivery system to me, one less glass to clean.

Just last night after racking a Hefe over into a keg, I just had to taste it so I gassed it and locked on my tap adapter. Well, I forgot to CLOSE the tap before putting it on the post and the hefe started squirting out.

No big deal except it squirted onto the back of the high pressure gauge of my regulator at just the right angle to half fill the gauge up, you know the one that says "use no oil".

Unrelated, I then find out my reg is leaking AND my CO2 bottle is damn near empty.

Amateur at best compared to this!

How about a not funny now, but will be funny? Last night I dropped my Leatherman into my wort as I was tightening a hose clamp. Plunk.
Mind you, my Leatherman has years of caked up pocket lint plus God-knows-what all of which I am sure is now in the the fermenter. Lucky I lubed it last week with food grade keg lube.
I told my two friends there: "this is the beer we give to other people".