Should I use Bodywash in my Brew?

We have all had our misadventures in brewing, but I thought you all may appreciate what I woke up to this morning. My girl friend and I had just brewed up a fresh batch of oatmeal stout Sunday afternoon. All went well with the brew and it was sitting in primary happily fermenting away in our fermentation chamber(read: storage closet). Early Monday morning when she got up for work she checked on the new brew and found the airlock clogged and the whole thing ready to explode. Not having time to worry about it and not wanting to clean up after another fermenting explosion she quickly moved the beer bomb to the shower. By the time I woke up, it had finally blown. While cleaning everything up hoping to save the beer I found her bottle of body wash had fallen into the wort.

I'm going to see this through to bottling out of a strange curiosity, but I am not terribly optimistic about this batch.

I'm interested to hear other "misadventure" stories.

Get yourself a blow off tube.

What was the wort temp when you pitched yeast?

Rick

Kudo's to her for trying, too bad it (possibly) went south on you. Perhaps
you'll end up with a really **AHEM** clean beer.

I'll share one, and it's all about me doing a brain fade.

Somewhat hectic day. First bottling attempt of my first brew.
Got my priming sugar mix made, cooled and dumped into the bucket and set the lid from a pot on to keep crap out.

A few friends are present and we're chatting as I sanitize the auto-siphon and give my layout a once over. Total of maybe 5 minutes max since putting the prime in bucket.

I take the lid off the bucket and notice liquid in the bottom. My brain instantly thinks I didn't drain out the Star-San so I take the bucket to the sink and pour it out. My B.I.L. asks "Wasn't that your priming sugar?".

I stop dead in my tracks, look at the bucket in my hands, look at the sink, repeat this a few more times....

SON-OF-A-*****!

Hang my head and state "Looks like I get to practice that again" while I start to laugh.

Fortunately I actually had another bag of priming sugar for my second attempt.

That mistake got a bit of mileage throughout the evening. I even had of one them stand in front of the sink after putting sugar batch #2 in the bucket so I didn't try pouring it out again.

I'm taking a lesson from my time in racing and adding "Spares Package" to every brew and bottle day list.

just use table sugar--it's cheaper and no worse.

Congrats on having a girlfriend that checks on your fermenter but next time have her pull the airlock out if she's in a hurry.

I had a friend in college who kept all his fermenters in the bathroom so the possible explosions wouldn't be smelling up his apartment. It was pretty funny when folks would visit and comment on the strange noise coming from the loo.

One of my finer moments was struggling to get a siphon started, giving up, putting my mouth on the tube and sucking a big chunk of hops into my sinuses. I had to resanitize a bunch of bottles that got hit as I choked and spat all over the place
Lesson learned: brewing is not a brut strength activity.

temple240 said:

Congrats on having a girlfriend that checks on your fermenter but next time have her pull the airlock out if she's in a hurry.

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Don't tell her to pull the airlock, trust me on this one.

Had a porter sitting in the tub which had just been brewed the day before. My girlfriend gets up early to go to work and sees that beer is flowing into the airlock. She tells me (who is still in bed) to which I reply "just pull the airlock, let it flow out". By now she is all ready for work and about out the door, she says okay, and goes to pulls the airlock. I hear OMG!!!! WTF!!!! and fast stomping coming towards me.

The beer had ruptured from the airlock hole due to the high pressure built up and sprayed her head to toe. She was not happy, nor did she make it to work on time that day. She took it well better than most would, but I guarantee that she will never pull an airlock again.

2ShortHairs said:

Don't tell her to pull the airlock, trust me on this one.

Had a porter sitting in the tub which had just been brewed the day before. My girlfriend gets up early to go to work and sees that beer is flowing into the airlock. She tells me (who is still in bed) to which I reply "just pull the airlock, let it flow out". By now she is all ready for work and about out the door, she says okay, and goes to pulls the airlock. I hear OMG!!!! WTF!!!! and fast stomping coming towards me.

The beer had ruptured from the airlock hole due to the high pressure built up and sprayed her head to toe. She was not happy, nor did she make it to work on time that day. She took it well better than most would, but I guarantee that she will never pull an airlock again.

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I take back my suggestion.

C_F said:

so I take the bucket to the sink and pour it out. My B.I.L. asks "Wasn't that your priming sugar?".

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This sorta happened to me, I boiled my priming sugar left it cooling while I'm doing last minute preps before racking.... I tell my wife hand me that small pot, while I'm at my bottling bucket, I watch her... she looks at it notices the liquid in it and dumps the liquid out in the sink and brings me the pot !!
I too got extra practice

stvo said:

This sorta happened to me, I boiled my priming sugar left it cooling while I'm doing last minute preps before racking.... I tell my wife hand me that small pot, while I'm at my bottling bucket, I watch her... she looks at it notices the liquid in it and dumps the liquid out in the sink and brings me the pot !!
I too got extra practice

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Aha, this is what I'm doing wrong. I'm performing all the work and anyone present just observes. If I get them to help I've got someone else to blame for, well, anything!

Brilliant!

2ShortHairs said:

Don't tell her to pull the airlock, trust me on this one.

Had a porter sitting in the tub which had just been brewed the day before. My girlfriend gets up early to go to work and sees that beer is flowing into the airlock. She tells me (who is still in bed) to which I reply "just pull the airlock, let it flow out". By now she is all ready for work and about out the door, she says okay, and goes to pulls the airlock. I hear OMG!!!! WTF!!!! and fast stomping coming towards me.

The beer had ruptured from the airlock hole due to the high pressure built up and sprayed her head to toe. She was not happy, nor did she make it to work on time that day. She took it well better than most would, but I guarantee that she will never pull an airlock again.

Click to expand...

Huh, I'm surprised you can still type after that. She sounds like a keeper for sure. I know if I pulled the airlock and got a beer shower I'd kick my own ass.

I feel fortunate to have never had a fermenter blow the lid or the airlock yet in the 25+ batches I've done. I do have impeccable temperature control though and prefer to ferment on the cool side of each yeast strain's range which helps tremendously on minimizing explosions!