Do NOT Try This At Home!

So today I decided my keg of stout had sat long enough and it was now time to put it on tap. At the same time I decided I should probably clean out my beer line on the kegerator.

Off I go and mix up some beer line cleaner, take the faucet and keg connector off and start pumping cleaner through line into a bucket. Then I take the faucet and connectors apart and clean them up all nice and shiny. By now I'm salivating over the thought of a nice cold stout to go with my ribs I'm smoking today.

I wiped everything off and flushed the lines with water. Then I put the keg connector back on the line. Next I hooked up the mixed gas, popped the beer line on the keg and here's where things went bad. Notice I neglected to put one thing back on that I had taken off...arguably the most important thing...the faucet.

I can now attest that beer will shoot about 15 feet out of the shank across the room and onto the middle of the tan carpet making a nice little dark brown puddle. I now wish I didn't have my regulator set at 30 psi. This isn't the worst of it though. After staring in wonderment at the stream of beer flying across the room it dawned on me that I needed to do something to stop the loss of beer...the carpet isn't important at this point.

What brilliant thing do I do next? I put my hand in front of the stream pretending that I'm the little Dutch kid with his finger in the dike. This made a glorious 6 foot diameter fountain of beer shoot backwards against the wall and bookcase. White walls. That are now stained with hundreds of brown spots that won't seem to come out no matter how much I scrub. And the room smells glorious.

As a kid I always took pride in being able to take things apart and put them back together with some spare parts left over. Now I don't.

So...when's the "Carpet Sucking and Wall Licking" party???

Sorry to hear about your loss. Remove the out line QD next time...

homebrewer_99 said:

So...when's the "Carpet Sucking and Wall Licking" party???

Sorry to hear about your loss. Remove the out line QD next time...

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That was my ultimate solution. I just neglected to mention it. I probably only lost a couple pints, but it looks like someone went on a hell of a bender in my living room.

This is my first post and I had to let you know that the image of this happening is quite funny.

I am in the process of piecing together my keezer and am sure that I will have a similar incident to share soon.

Thanks for the laugh.

Haven't done that one yet. I have done the connect a party tap with the valve locked open trick. And once as a kid I tried to catch a gallon of iced tea when the bottom popped out of the pitcher.

Sorry for your troubles, but that was pretty funny. I'm sure it's not so funny when you're cleaning up. I'll take your experience as a personal warning.

Your words sure drew a mental picture as I read.
Thanks for the laugh. Live and learn I guess.
Swmbo would have my stones for something like that.

OUCH! Sorry to hear about your lose of beer.

Any pics?:cross:

Try 1 of those magic erasers on the walls as they do work very good.

I was brewing today and did something similar. I was recirculating near boiling water through my pump and whirlpool return, i needed to unhook the wirlpool attachment but forgot about the really hot water running through it burned my thumb it hurts pretty bad but lesson learned.

I think we all have a story like this . I recently sampled a 6 month trippel....it tasted great. When I was done, I took off the liquid out qd, but the poppet stuck...and all that beer kept spraying straight up....soaking me and the cieling. I smelled like Abby ale until SWMBO forced me into the shower . In an emergency, I always pull the good old relief valve ring....saved me some cleanup more than once!

Well at least you didn't do what I thought you were gonna say you did (does that make since?). I thought you were gonna say that you sent beer line cleaner into your new stout Sorry to hear about your troubles.

Thanks for the luagh, and sorry for your troubles. I've come close to doing that exact same thing a couple times. I'm glad I've always caught myself, though, as with my mini-fridge kegerator setup I'd have gotten a blast of beer straight to the face as soon as I pushed the QD onto the keg!

On a related note, in college I remember tapping a mini-keg of Lowenbrau (or some such beer) that required piercing a valve assembly into the bottom of the keg. Of course we had it upside down on the kitchen counter and unbeknownst to us the valve was in the open position. The moment we "tapped" it we had a fountain of beer coating the kitchen ceiling. One of our squirrelier friends fled the room and wouldn't be seen for some time, leaving the rest of us there to quickly learn how to operate the little plastic keg valve. The fountain was extinguished within a few second, but boy, what a mess. We were all laughing hysterically as it caught us so much be surprise. Ah, good times. Oh, and later we mopped the ceiling, which worked surprisingly well.

for the walls, use the Magic Eraser. It removes everything from walls.

I'm sorry for your mess- but thanks for making me laugh. I had a similar thing last week in a way. I was using the BMBF to fill some Grolsch bottles. My fridge is an apartment sized, so I put the bottles on top of the fridge and filled. When I was done, I thought, "Oh, I'm done! It'll be easy to just pull the cobra tap off this tubing and stopper. Then I won't have any drips!"

What I forgot was the principle of counterflow pressure. Did you know that an entire bottle of beer can shoot straight up the racking cane if it's under pressure and spraypaint an entire room, ceiling to floor, in seconds? Did you know that if you have both hands full (tap in one hand, bottle in the other) that putting your mouth over the fountain does NOT stem the gusher? It is not possible to swallow that much beer that fast and live to tell. Did you know that dried beer on the ceiling and floor and windows and computers and TV is sticky? My dog is still walking by and licking the sides of the file cabinets and desks in the room.

Oh man, good stories! Hopefully I don't experience anything similar anytime soon <knocks on wood>.

YooperBrew said:

Did you know that an entire bottle of beer can shoot straight up the racking cane if it's under pressure and spraypaint an entire room, ceiling to floor, in seconds? Did you know that if you have both hands full (tap in one hand, bottle in the other) that putting your mouth over the fountain does NOT stem the gusher? It is not possible to swallow that much beer that fast and live to tell. Did you know that dried beer on the ceiling and floor and windows and computers and TV is sticky?

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As a matter of fact, I do know most of those things now. Personally, I love the new smell of the living room, but SWMBO isn't so fond of it.

I know in my house SWMBO would have my "you know whats" on a choppin block!

DOH!

Sluggo said:

What brilliant thing do I do next? I put my hand in front of the stream pretending that I'm the little Dutch kid with his finger in the dike. This made a glorious 6 foot diameter fountain of beer shoot backwards against the wall and bookcase. White walls. That are now stained with hundreds of brown spots that won't seem to come out no matter how much I scrub.

Click to expand...

Ouch! Are you still married? SWMBO would have killed me.

There's always paint you know.. Here's some good colors.

It's a way over used term but in this case it's true. I 'laughed out loud' when I read your description of your disaster. And I can relate. Last week I brewed a batch of my porter and ran the first runnings into a bucket. I put the kegerator on the fire and poured the bucket in, only to realise that the valve was open when the hot wort squirt all over my leg.

Note to self... Wait till the brewing is totally finished before sampling previous batches.

PTN

This is why everyone needs to set up a video camera whenever they do brewing stuff!

Okay I realize this is an old thread. I however just found myself tearing up with laughter whilst reading/picturing this display of would be comic genius. Im sorry that you had such an experience, however thank you for making my day seem a little less bad.

Poolshark, thanks for the resurrection of this thread. It was a great laugh!