What are some of the mistakes you made...where your beer still turned out great!

Well lets see, I broke a floating thermometer in my wort during the boil.

Majorly screwed up a hop schedule due to a timer that the batteries went dead in during the first 10 min of the boil and I didn't realize it.

Wasn't paying attention to the immersion chiller once and the hose came off of it dumping lots of nice tap water into my cooling wort.

Had my dog's tail knock off an airlock while I was at work.

Forgot to add clearing agents to a couple wines that I have done.

Those are what I can think of off the top of my head, I am sure i had many other near misses along the way.

surffisher2a said:

Forgot to add clearing agents to a couple wines that I have done.

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Reminded me that in my barleywine and english standard bitter I just made entirely forgot the campden. Oh well. Might post later with an update if all is good or wrecked. Predicting it's fine and I'll forget to update.

Just today brewing a summer citrus wheat and had a stuck valve. Thought I would stick my un sanitized arm in to unstick it (uhhhh dummy there is a false bottom there) used a coat hanger (unsanitized) to unstick it. Smooth sailing

Miss mash temps constantly but only by 5-8 degrees up or down and the beers are always fine

Except when my thermometer broke (didn't know it) and mashed at 145 degrees for 60mins. No sweetness but the 12oz of citrus let me know I sucked on that one!


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Being overseas military, I regularly order my stuff from the states to include yeast. Usually I only order yeast during the colder months and I haven't had a problem. Every once in a while a package will get hung up and take longer than expected to get here. Recently, I wanted to try a Wyeast private collection; 3864. It ended up being one of those packages that took a month to arrive. I made a starter and used it anyhow. After 2 weeks of fermentation it was down to 1.008 so I went ahead and bottled. It wreaked of sulfur and I feared it might be ruined due to unhealthy yeast. I kept my fingers crossed but wasn't sure what I was in for. After a month in the bottle, it's fantastic. I'm getting some really nice, fruity esters that I perceive as pear.

First brew ever was a True Brew extract with specialty grain kit - Red Ale. I didn't realize how big a pot I would need. My HUGE pasta stock pot was a whopping 5 qts. So I scrambled trying to find something that would hold 2 gal of wort. Ended up with a big enameled oval lobster pot that spanned two burners on the stove. When it was done, I poured the near boiling wort into the carboy. Amazingly enough, the carboy didn't break, I had no ill effects from hot side aeration and I had the first "Lobster Bisque Red Ale". Needless to say, I've since bought a brew pot (or two) and retired the lobster pot - although the last time we had lobster, it did taste a little grainy.

One time I made the mistake of snorting coke off the belly of a Brazilian hooker that turned out to be a dude. Next time I brewed beer though, it still turned out great!!

Mixed up my washed yeast in the fridge(forgot to label) made a blonde with hefe and American ale yeast. Tasted horrible when I kegged, so I threw an oz of Amarillo in the keg. Pretty darn good when chilled.

Revvy said:

I have had a beer where the autosiphon wouldn't keep, and I had to literally use it like a pump to move the beer.

I have had my auto siphon and my bottling wand get so gummed up with whole hops and pumpkin goop that I couldn't use them. Then ground the spring tip of my bottling wand in the garbage disposal and had to literally bottle directly from the spigot.

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About acouple of these points..My autosiphon never keeps, and if it does, its literally a trickle. I always have to pump the siphon to keep it flowing.

And I never use the bottle wand lol. I never figured out how, so I always bottle directly from the spigot.

Am I really doing something that wrong? It must be wrong if you included it in this post...

Bottling from the spigot without a bottling wand is a surefire way to oxidize the heck out of your beer. I did it with my first and second batches and got cardboard-flavored beer.

Weird. I've done 4 brews so far and 3/4 have been amazing. Something was off about one of them. It was really good after it sat in bottles for 2 weeks, but after a few more it was pretty undrinkable. Some bottles were good, but most were bad.

mrgrimm101 said:

Weird. I've done 4 brews so far and 3/4 have been amazing. Something was off about one of them. It was really good after it sat in bottles for 2 weeks, but after a few more it was pretty undrinkable. Some bottles were good, but most were bad.

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Oxidation takes a while. So do infections. Are you siphoning to a vessel lower than the original? If so, you have an air leak at your connection and are mixing even more oxigen in.

Yes I place the fermenter on a chair and place my bottling bucket on the ground and siphon to it, as I mix in the water/sugar mixture for bottling. "An air leak at my connection" What does this mean?

mrgrimm101 said:

Yes I place the fermenter on a chair and place my bottling bucket on the ground and siphon to it, as I mix in the water/sugar mixture for bottling. "An air leak at my connection" What does this mean?

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Air is getting sucked in where your AutoSiphon connects to the hose. Try a little clamp on there.

Bottling with a bottling wand is easier and better. Just connect it to the spigot with a 2-3 inch piece of tubing. It automatically flows when presses on the bottom of the bottle, stops when you pull the bottle away, and leaves the perfect amount of headspace if you fill right to the rim.

How do you know that there's air coming in at the connection?

If it keeps stopping during transfer and you have to pump it to get it going again, it is losing suction. As long as you are transferring to a lower vessel, it can only lose suction by an air leak. It is possible you have a pin hole in your tubing or a crack in the AutoSiphon, but it is nearly always the connection between them that fails.

Ok that makes sense. What sort of clamp should I get? Would a stainless worm clamp work?

mrgrimm101 said:

Ok that makes sense. What sort of clamp should I get? Would a stainless worm clamp work?

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A stainless worm clamp would be the best. Just be careful not to over tighten or you will crack the siphon.

I went back and read your original post and it sounds like there might be another possibility though. If your autosiphon leaks around the gasket, it can be hard to get a full draw and the air can work its way backwards to spoil the suction. You want to make sure your tubing is full of beer, even if it takes 2 or 3 pumps.

If you pour water in the top of the tube, does it flow freely through? If so, you need a new siphon. If it is a slow trickle, you can probably get by by pouring na ounce or so of StarSan on top of the gasket before you pump it. I would test it all with water before you need it. I've had to figure stuff out on bottling day before, and it sucks!

It doesn't flow through the tubing. I think it may leak a little around the gasket. I can get it to fill, and it will flow itself, its just slow. Although sometimes as I pump the beer will make its way into the tube above the gasket on the cane. Maybe the thing works like its supposed to, I just assumed it have a quicker flow than it does.

This is a pretty decent video of a proper flow. It's the first one I found that had any close-ups. Unfortunately, I am at work so I had the volume off and don't know what he is saying but....

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nORZ2dkCzeA[/ame]

Looks like mine works just fine lol. It just goes slower than I had thought it should. And I've never let my tubing just lay in the bottom of the bucket. I always hold it so it doesn't come into contact with the beer. Now I know that I can just let it sit and swim lol.

Thanks!!!

mrgrimm101 said:

Looks like mine works just fine lol. It just goes slower than I had thought it should. And I've never let my tubing just lay in the bottom of the bucket. I always hold it so it doesn't come into contact with the beer. Now I know that I can just let it sit and swim lol.

Thanks!!!

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It actually works best with a little coil in the bottom like he has in the video. That gives the beer a gentle stir to mix in the priming sugar and minimizes splashing, which mixes oxygen into the beer.

I don't know if they actually work or not, but oxygen absorbing caps aren't that much more than regular ones. I tend to think they probably do work though as I recently finished off a batch of stout that I bottled just over 2 years ago and there was no trace of oxidation at all.

And when you start using your bottling wand, make sure you take it apart and clean it after each batch. It was my 3rd or 4th batch before I realized the thing came apart for cleaning and there was some pretty gross stuff in there.

My yeast starter fermented a batch of porter so fast that I thought fermentation stalled. I used my new refractometer to check the gravity and sure enough... 1035... Stalled! I forgot the refractometer doesn't work after primary fermentation without calcs. I proceeded to remove the lid and do lots of stirring, fearing I hadn't oxygenated enough to begin with. After several stirrings over two days with no success, I pitched more yeast. Still nothing two days later so I pitched more yeast! Nothing!!! Them I remembered and took a hydrometer reading. 1011! I'm an idiot. This porter has been in the secondary for three weeks and I think it's fine.


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Last week I tried to do two batches in a row... Starting at 7:30pm... First one being a 2 hour mash.

Got a bit tipsy during the first brew. The second one was going well until I added the FWH and put in on the burner... Outside...and then fell asleep.

So it stormed all night and added an immeasurable amount of water to my beer that boiled for God knows how long. When I woke up my propane tank was empty and I was hungover. I blame abner from hill farmstead brewery.

I decided to try and do my other hop additions during another boil, let it cool, and then realized I was super late to work (really only 2 minutes, but I like to be early, especially since I get onto everyone there about their time). So I decided to add the yeast the day after.

Next day... Crap... I forgot to cover the wort when I left. I added 2 packets of notty and let it go. I really hope this beer is not any good, cause there is no way I could ever repeat it.


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1: hose got draped over burner heat shield and popped shooting water 25 feet in the air blowing out burner.. lucky i had pot lid on

2. Dropped the spring on the out side connection into a full keg... had to rack to another keg to fish it out.

3. Didnt notice i got sent unmilled grain and mashed it... hard to extract sugars from unmilled grain.

I once forgot to connect the spigot to the false bottom in my mash tun. I got a stuck sparge and tried the usual things to get it going. Then I realized my mistake, dumped the entire mash into my boil kettle, attached the false bottom, dumped the mash back into the lauter tun and proceeded to sparge. The beer turned out fine.

On a recent brewday i was attempting to strain wort by strainer with handle sitting on top of fermenter pail. I had only sanitized the basket part and not the handle.
The strainer fell into the pail near the end of the pour so i reached in with unsanitized hand and arm and fished it out.
turned out very good .

My first brew, was a BB kit, Scottish Ale. Forgot to put the bucket in the spare closet. (in a Rubbermaid ghetto swamp cooler). Light still got into the exercise room. Bottled after 5 days of fermenting cuz I panicked after seeing no bubbles for a while. SWMBO had a cold, so I cussed her out when she came into the kitchen as I was about to rack into bottling bucket. As I racked the beer from the fermenting bucket into the bottling bucket, I felt something on my feet ... moisture ... wetness ... beer. I had left the spigot open. I closed it quick, but saw a bunch of priming sugar water on the floor with some scottish ale swirled in for good measure. How much came out, I have no idea. It was too late to call LHBS, and I didn't know about HBT, and had no chart, scale, spares, or anything. Had to think quick, so I boiled up 1/2 cup of brown sugar with another bottle of water, poured it in slowly, stirred, bottled, and capped. Bottle conditioned for only 1 week, before throwing a sixer in the frig for a tasting party.

Best beer yet.

RDWHAHB

I cold crashed a pair of cream ales and left the blowoff tube in a bucket of star san instead of swapping out to air locks. The fermenters sucked the entire 4 cups of star san into the fermentors. Still an awesome cream ale.

brewed an ode to arthur ( guinness clone) a while back.. for some reason my efficiency was awful so my OG was way way low... then my boil off was wrong so my 5 gallon batch was almost 6....OG was only 1.030.......let it ferment and kegged it... actually a pretty decent low ABV beer

It's normally the other way around for me.... It's generally lot's of Beer that make my mistakes seem like they turn out great!

Washed my primary bucket but forgot to Sanitize? 👎 yes I did

I can't count the number of times I have disconnected hose camlocks without first considering the effects of gravity... #stickygaragefloor

Once I forgot to sanitize the 2 micron oxygenating stone. I just attached it to the wand, plunged it into the newly-chilled wort and cranked up the O2. The next few weeks I had thoughts about what microscopic creepy-crawlies got blown out of all those pores and into my wort. But on bottling day, it smelled and tasted fine. The beer was still fine after bottle-conditioning. The O2 probably killed some of the bugs, and maybe I got lucky and dodged the rest of them.

But I now sanitize the stone by boiling it in water for 10 minutes before use. I'm taking no chances.

Stuck my hand in cooled wart to unblock my false bottom only to have a friend remind me I could syphon. Beer turned out fine til the keg faucet opened up and dumped all the beer into the chest freezer. It tasted good off the floor though.

Very recently I brewed a Scottish ale and to up the ABV I included an extra 1.5 # of malt extract without countering it with a lil extra hops. Well after a few weeks fermenting I bottled it then had one and it tasted like ****. Like that candy whoppers but no chocolate and overly malty sweetness. I almost started emptying them all out cuz I was gonna bottle another beer soon anyways. A buddy said don't and we'll see where it is at in a couple weeks. Aging it saved it. It's calmed down and it's drinkable finally

The last IPA I brewed I was doing a BIAB clone of two hearted ale... dumped all my milled grains into the boil and had to fish them out with a strainer to get them into the now soggy bag i also dropped into the boil. No real harm done though it actually turned out to be a great beer.

Had to share this because I'm still kicking myself.

Pale Ale was done cold crashing last night. Proceeded to clean/sanitize the keg and all equipment. I also cleaned and sanitized the lines/coupler/faucet on the kegerator. Racked the beer to the keg put it in the fridge, tapped it and turned on the CO2. My mind slipped and I forgot to reattach the faucet on the kegerator. Shot flat beer all over my brand new basement carpet. I'm an idiot lol

So I mentioned earlier in this thread that I had a cream ale that sucked back all the star san out of the blowoff container when I cold crashed it. Last month it took a silver in competition in the fruit beer category - I had split the 10g batch and added apricot extract to 5. Add to that the beer was 5 months old!

Clogged the kettle dip tube, platechiller, and pump with whole hops.

The kettle with 10 gallons of wort (and 13oz of Citra hops) sat at near boiling temp for an hour while I back flushed the chiller and pump with hose water.

I ladled all the wort from one kettle to another kettle with a screen installed (not sanitized) and then chilled through the pump and plate chiller (not sanitized).

Beer was great. (my first hop stand!)

Spent so many thousands of dollars on the hobby.