"DOH!" Moments In Brewing History....

My new beer is the best flat beer I've tasted to date, so of course, when I started carbonating it last sunday, I was very excited to see the progress today...

After tasting it...I thought to myself...'wait a second...this isn't carbonated at all!!' My "DOH!" moment....I forgot to turn on the bloody co2 tank!!

Been there, done that....at least it has conditioned another week. I'll one up ya. I let the keg sit for 3 weeks to fully carb. Went to sample and Doh!!

I have a good one. I have a single tiered pump driven keggle system. I had just begun to sparge while shipping wort over to my boil kettle. I always overlook the entire sparge process to make sure everything is bueno. My room-mates were bugging me and finally pissed me off enough to stop and move some stuff. When I came back I noticed my boil kettle which was roughly 1/2 full was empty! I left the valve of the boil kettle open. The weight of the wort was enough to leave the kettle, down through my counterflow chiller, through my march pump, and onto the sidewalk. I quickly added more sparge water and finished the sparge. The beer came out roughly around 2.0%. I don't know if I want to toss it or save it, maybe put it in my bicycle water bottles for those long rides. But, yeah, it was a $60, 10 gallon batch that literally went down the drain. DOH!

I was making my first batch after a 3 year hiatus (no room in the old apartment... plenty of room in my new house!) And wanted to lighten up the kettle before I carried it outside to chill with the sort chiller....

It turns out plastic auto-siphons don't hold up well in boiling hot water! DOH! It was just another reason to place another order with NB which meant another kit and more kegging equipment

I forgot to close the ball valve on my kettle before collecting my first runnings. DOH!

Jaysus said:

I forgot to close the ball valve on my kettle before collecting my first runnings. DOH!

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I don't know what is wrong with me, but I've NEVER collected all of my first runnings for the exact same reason. I think the problem in my system exists somewhere between the stool and the control panel.

Never done the carbonating thing, but I've been bit my open ball valves a number of times.
In a hurry to fill my HLT and get the water up to temp, I've forgot to put the temp probe in place before pouring the water in. luckily it's only a 1/4" fitting, so it comes out pretty slow.
My worst one was that I have a false bottom on my MLT that I disconnect after every brew session so that I can hose out the false bottom and clean underneath it. Well, one time I forgot to reconnect it - mashed in and started stirring.. what's going on here? Feels like a really solid doughball... hhmm.. DOH! That sucked, had to dump the mash into a bucket, connect the false bottom and dump the mash back in.

I once measured the salts for my water adjustment in ounces instead of grams. i didn't realize my yeast were dying in the salt water wort until after I killed the second batch of yeast.

jetmac said:

I once measured the salts for my water adjustment in ounces instead of grams. i didn't realize my yeast were dying in the salt water wort until after I killed the second batch of yeast.

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You must keep alot of salts on hand.. I think I'd figure that out quickly when it calls for the entire bag of gypsum.

damn, thats a good one

today, i i was doing a summer ale after i ground up the grain, everything was going fine.. then i went to check my gravity, was undershot by a good 5 pts.. (which im still dialing in my new crusher.. so im overshooting every efficiency. but anyways later to that conclusion i realized i forgot to put the pound of flaked wheat into the mash.

so now it will be an even lighter summer ale where i can drink more of.. haha

so we'll have to see how this one turns out.. hopefully not to bad

My last one was seeing the carboy full of mead and thinking, "Gee, I should probably gather up some bottles and put that away.." just as I noticed the empty airlock, which I forgot to keep filled...

My latest one since I got my bottle filler working was... I was going to soak some old old bottles in some oxiclean all day and when I went to get them out I didn't see or feel the white film on the bottles.. I forgot to put in the oxiclean.. Wasted day...

Got a new one...

So I was working on the build for the brew stand from the electric brewery. I've put about 6 hours in I think. Last part, staining it. I've never stained anything, so I figure it's just like paint, right? You just brush it on? Well it turns out my beautiful stand is now a splotchy stained mess. I'm hoping a new coat will turn things out better. Right now it looks like the top got too much stain, and the sides not enough. If that wasn't enough...I got the stain all over me, and had no paint thinner...resorted to using a bottle of fuel injector cleaner to scrub some it off. I have a new respect for furniture makers!

The stand looked beautiful before the stain...shoulda stopped there!

Anyone know how to fix a bad stain job?

When I first started brewing I got a kit for a 5 gallon batch at the LHBS, well when I got home the instruction sheet they gave me (printed from a brew software) said it was for a 10 gallon batch, so I logically split the ingredients and made two 5 gallon batches. After having a really low OG reading I called the LHBS and they told me the instructions may say 10 gallons, but they gave me enough supplies for a 5 gallon batch. DOH!

Needless to say the beer got tossed, but the LHBS was good about it and replaced my ingredients.

jdlev said:

Got a new one...

So I was working on the build for the brew stand from the electric brewery. I've put about 6 hours in I think. Last part, staining it. I've never stained anything, so I figure it's just like paint, right? You just brush it on? Well it turns out my beautiful stand is now a splotchy stained mess. I'm hoping a new coat will turn things out better. Right now it looks like the top got too much stain, and the sides not enough. If that wasn't enough...I got the stain all over me, and had no paint thinner...resorted to using a bottle of fuel injector cleaner to scrub some it off. I have a new respect for furniture makers!

The stand looked beautiful before the stain...shoulda stopped there!

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Stain can be tricky.. I've done a few furniture refinishing projects, so learned quite a bit about it. there are a few things you need to look out for:
1. I use a rag to rub the stain on, that keeps the amount of stain going on fairly even
2. If you're rubbing it onto a soft wood like pine, alot of times the wood won't take the stain evenly and it looks splotchy. In that case, sand it back down and use a wood conditioner as the first coat.
3. Contact time: if you read the directions, you're supposed to wipe excess stain off after a certain amount of time. If I know I need another coat I don't really do this since I'm trying to get darker, but if the piece looks good it's important to wipe the stain off at that point and then let the wood dry.

I used the prestain The wood I'm pretty sure is pine...here's another problem...half the wood is pressure treated, and half is just standard lumber! Doh!

haha DOH.. you're not going to be able to match the pressure treated to the rest. Maybe a two-tone look will be ok. Nothing wrong with picking a nice color and painting it.

That's what I figured...do a rattle can white paint job to match the rest of the garage...I like the old rustic look of a dark stain...reminds me of a brew pub

When I was building the bar in my basement I was about 6 beers deep before I decided to start staining. Knocked over a brand new can of Dark Walnut stain all over the damn thing, and floor, and newly painted walls....

First brew, finally racking to bottling bucket after waiting three agonizing weeks. The auto-siphon loses it's siphon with about a gallon left to go. I was so excited to start bottling that I mixed in the priming sugar solution (prepared for 5gal) into the 4 gallons of beer that I had already racked.

I didn't notice my mistake until I'd finished the majority of the bottles. after spending a week+ under careful temperature watch for bottle bombs, I finally got to try one...talk about some serious BITE. They were drinkable, but you had to watch your head space, because the bubbles would rise so fast that it would build beehive like texture and climb up and out of the glass.

DOH!

Got another one (I'm on a streak!)

My new hops garden...yeah...I turned on the water when I got home yesterday around 5:30pm...forgot about it and turned it off this morning at about 8:30am....How many gallons is that at 15 hours of watering?

The worst part...I have a damn timer on the freakin thing I just didnt use!

Hops look ok for now though....areas got decent drainage, and it's pretty dry today so they should dry out quick..so I don't think I killed any of them (luckily)!

I didn't put a hose clamp on the serving line connected to my picnic tap. The keg was at 13psi in my fridge and the tap blew off the end of the serving line, quickly dispensing 3.5 gallons of a wonderful lager all over the fridge and onto the basement floor. Big mess, bigger DOH!!!

Cheers!
K

Skinner said:

I didn't put a hose clamp on the serving line connected to my picnic tap. The keg was at 13psi in my fridge and the tap blew off the end of the serving line, quickly dispensing 3.5 gallons of a wonderful lager all over the fridge and onto the basement floor. Big mess, bigger DOH!!!

Cheers!
K

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You should change your name to 'Sinner'!

So I was stoked about getting my new kegs to turn them into keggles and start my journey into all-grain...I decided first thing in the morning to release the pressure on one (it felt empty)....(it wasn't). I did it upright and spent the next hour spraying beer out of my garage and sanitizing my mash tun...DOH!!!

Last weekend I was bottling a batch of irish stout. I put the bottles into 6 pack holders when I was done capping and moved them to the other side of the kitchen. The bottom of one of the holders seperated just as I reached the other side of the kitchen. 1 of the bottles made it to the counter, the other 5 hit the tile floor and shattered. So there I stood, barefoot and helpless with 5 shattered bottles of stout all around me. The good news is with the SWMBO's help I made it out without a scratch, but it took forever to clean all that beer and glass off the floor!

I overtightened the bolt for the inlet on the brand new march 809....and cracked the pump housing

Hydrometers are NOT waterproof for extended periods at very high temperatures...like the dishwasher. DOH!

So the only sink I have is in the kitchen...filling a carboy is done with some vice grips and the sprayer....turn it on with some star san and walked outside to give the wife some cold water. A.D.D. kicked in and forgot about it for about 10 minutes...flooded half the kitchen, and the drawers directly under it with about 2 inches of water.

2 inches of water in kitchen = FAIL/DOH!
Buying a wet/dry vac for $20 2 days before = WINNING!

smokey said:

Last weekend I was bottling a batch of irish stout. I put the bottles into 6 pack holders when I was done capping and moved them to the other side of the kitchen. The bottom of one of the holders seperated just as I reached the other side of the kitchen. 1 of the bottles made it to the counter, the other 5 hit the tile floor and shattered. So there I stood, barefoot and helpless with 5 shattered bottles of stout all around me. The good news is with the SWMBO's help I made it out without a scratch, but it took forever to clean all that beer and glass off the floor!

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Been there, done that. Is there a t-shirt?:cross:

Split an o-ring on liquid post of keg co2 dumped 5 gallons of milk stout -2pints I drank

I was transferring into my conical but forgot to close up the racking arm after sanitizing. Luckily only lost a few pints

Was wiping out some condensation from my chest freezer kegerator. Pulled the temp controller probe out "for a few minutes" to finish the job. Remembered to put the probe back in 3 DAYS LATER. 2 kegs frozen solid at normal chest freezer running temps. (Good news is that the kegs and the beers were fine once thawed.)