ooooops. Mistake laiden day.

Bottled a batch of beer last night that was supposed to be an Irish/Scottish Red ale, which didn't come out red and I blame myself for listening to the girl at the LHBS who made me deviate from the recipe I had, and not as bitter as I hoped. But whatever, it could have used some stronger hops in the boil and maybe some dry hopping, but it still tasted ok from the sample I had. Malty, but I guess that should be expected from an Irish/Scottish ale.

Mistake #1 - forgot to add the sugar to the bottling bucket before filling the bucket. No problem. Just poured it in and slowly stirred.

Mistake #2 - Big problem of the night was I accidentally dropped two pieces of plastic that had been sitting under the carboy straight into the bottling bucket after I had filled it up. Lord knows what sort of nasties were on that. I retrieved the plastic and continued bottling anyways whilst chanting the mantra "Relax, have a home brew" though in my case I didn't have any available and I was already slightly inebriated (hence the dumb mistake of dropping the stuff into the bucket). So we'll see how those end up turning out in the end.

Mistake #3 - was when I was transferring my porter over to the secondary. I added some coffee to the carboy before making the transfer. Except it didn't click in my head that the added coffee means less space in the carboy. So I racked off the primary happily and got towards the bottom, not noticing that the carboy was full. I got porter all over the floor.

Important lesson learned - Don't drink too much before doing this.

Edit:
Other lesson learned: Oxyclean is AWESOME.

well, as far as the sugar is concerned you should be fine.

as far as dropping into the bucket is concerned, i like to quote a random person whom i can't quite think of their name. basically it went like this. "just think, monks used to brew and bottle stream side." brewing has been around for thousands of years. I am not saying don't worry about sanitizing things, but i am saying that it will probably end up fine. we sanitize to minimize infection, though the risk is always there. some people even ferment in an open container, doesn't seem clean to me but somehow it turns out just fine.

coffee- i made the same mistake with my raspberry heffe. put 48 ounces of berries and 1 quart of liquid (that is steeped them into making a nice berry and syrup concotion) into the bottom of my secondary before racking ontop of it. same problem, didn't remember that it would take up space. long story short, my 5 gallon carboy was filled to the brim, i lost a little brew left in primary but luckily i also didn't take into account the amount of trub i was leaving behind. turned out to be almost an even switch.

As for drinking, i always drink when i do any brewing related activities... including browsing the HBT forums. lately i haven't because i am recovering from knee surgery and the meds they gave me don't play nice with alcohol... i think the drinking aspect is actually a requirement for brewing. If i recall correctly there is a procedure in the complete joy of homebrewing book that actually has you get a brew and drink it as directed in instructions during a brew. if not revvy's bottling guide surely tells you to drink up

cryptonic84 said:

As for drinking, i always drink when i do any brewing related activities...

Click to expand...

Oh of course I'll continue to drink whilst brewing. But yesterday I had played a kickball game at which I had 3 bottles of Victory Prima Pils, after which we went to the local bowling alley (which has a good bar & lounge) to have some post-game-it's-ok-we-lost drinks. I started bottling as soon as I got back. I was a little bit too buzzed really pay attention to what I was doing.