what was your most dumb move in brewing?

Mine was deciding that I didn't really like flip tops after buying them I gave away a BUNCH of them to a fellow brewer. Now I wish I had em back.

Mine was quitting after only one try, and after not finding out what I did wrong.

Here I am, a decade-plus later, finally learning how much I enjoy brewing.

Mine was saying "Most Dumb" once instead of "dumbest".

Well let's see... There was the time I broke a 13 gallon glass carboy and almost cut my finger off. Then there was the time I grabbed the handle of a nearly red hot pot handle and seared my fingers like a steak. Then just last week I walked away from my filling sanitizer bucket to answer the phone and the hose floated out and put about 25 gallons of water on my ktichen floor. Sweet. Live and learn I guess.

buying a 7.5 gallon boil kettle and a 5 gallon mash tun.

way to small.

Buying a magic rig killed my brewing. Now I have all the stuff, and none of the time.

Sticking my hand in the mash tun when I dropped a thermometer in there.

Mine using a 30 qt boil pot and thinking it was 32 qt. I couldn't figure out why I was "boiling off" so much. One day I decided to make a measuring stick to really get more accurate. So as I'm filling up the pot with water and marking my stick I come up to 30 qts! *******!!!! :cross:

Joining this site. . . . now I have no money and no time.

Seriously, It was letting myself get out of control with equipment. No matter how good a deal appears, if you don't NEED the equipment for a specific project and don't have the money for it, don't buy it.

Standing in Morebeer's showroom with a 15 gallon welded pot in my hands that was their deal of the day, and saying "Nah, I'll never brew 10 gallon batches!" and then paying $159 for an 8 gallon pot that was used 6 times and is now gathering dust in the garage.

Mine was forgetting to buy my yeast on brew day and after brewing being to lazy to go to the store to buy the yeast. So I waited till the next day to buy and pitch.

Actually, did not ruin the beer. Gave it a nice bitter flavor that worked well in an IPA. But, still stupid.

Mine was mashing at 170+ forgetting I had preheated the mash tun with my first batch that day. It was at 6 PM so I decided to go get some beano, let it sit overnight and boil the next day. I ended up letting it sit about 20 hours...when I opened it up to sparge it smelled like vomit.

I said phuck it, sparged and put it on the burner. I took the lid off when it got to 205 degrees and the smell made me gag three times on the spot. That batch go dumped in the garden.

A few days later someone on a thread about spent grains smellin up their compost and I learned the smell is caused by aneorobic bacteria and the boil might have driven them off. So I might have been able to save it if I had a gas mask handy.

I finished a batch at midnight and let it sit overnight (covered) to cool cause I was too tired. Finished it in the morning, and the beer totally awesome. Just wanted to share...

so far my dumbest has been the 2 hydrometers I have dropped and shattered. Currently on my 3rd LOL

Mine was buying "How to Brew" thinking I needed to read it before going AG. Turns out it wasn't that big a deal.

Do you want a list.......:cross:

I have had some good karma with this hobby. but I did use beno one time. NEVER use beno if you bottle.

not doing something about my fermentation temperatures and waiting until i was 6 batches deep to finally make that decision

I stressed out about every step in the process while brewing my first batch. Every step. I was convinced that I was screwing something up. Duh. What an A**! Didn't do anything perfectly, but who cares. Worst case was that I'd have dumped it. It worked out fine. Now it's totally relaxed and fun and I so can't wait to brew and brew and brew.

@NNatic what do you do now? Swamp cooler or something more controlled?

taking 5gals out of the brew pot to put in smaller pots to cool in an ice bath in the bathroom, being to too cheap to buy a wort chiller. That in and of itself isn't too bad, but I put the smaller pots in the tub before putting in the remaining 5gals in the original kettle... the water overflowed into the smaller pots and instantly lost half the batch...

You would have thought I was watching my dog getting run over by a car the way I screamed "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!"

not cleaning my bottles to sight just sanitizing and filling turns out about 10 of the batch were full of mold in the bottom.

Decided to use hose water to top off to 5 gal. in my first brew. Wound up tasting somewhere between gutter water and tea steeped with Bermuda grass.

Overheating my sparge water to 180F and then missing my HLT and pouring the water directly on my foot. The swelling and blistering have finally gone down enough where it no longer painful to put a shoe on my foot.

I thought I would be slick when I was racking to my bottling bucket and I attached the racking cane/tubing to the bottling bucket spigot instead of putting the tubing directly into the bucket. I failed to notice that there is a small vent hole in the front of the spigot that is exposed when the spigot is in the off position. It shot a stream of beer across my kitchen all over the front of my refrigerator.

Just realized I did not sanitize my ferment bucket that a smashing pumpkin brew just went into Saturday night. OOPS

Lepersquatch said:

Just realized I did not sanitize my ferment bucket that a smashing pumpkin brew just went into Saturday night. OOPS

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Might still be okay.

Lepersquatch said:

Just realized I did not sanitize my ferment bucket that a smashing pumpkin brew just went into Saturday night. OOPS

Click to expand...

I've done that one. Beer turned out fine.

Buying 2 brand new beer bottle cases for 19 bucks each because I could not wait to bottle my first extract brew...

Now I find it hard to handle the several bottles I got from craigslist and bars for a fraction of the price or, more often, for free!

Not necessarily brewing, but preparation.
Without giving it a second thought, I put my Thermo-hydrometer in the dishwasher.

Ruined.

I don't even know why. I know better than to put airlocks and such in there.
I guess everyone has their moments.

Tried to level my burner out, with a pot of boiling wort. Needless to say 2nd degree burns on my arm and hand from when it splashed out. No fun!

Breaking my floating thermometer in the pot while steeping. (getting readyto bottle soon)

I poured my first running's into the BK and had the valve open. Only ~152* but it was HOT when it streamed on my foot.

I also dropped my wort chiller down into the boiling wort without connecting it to the water supply first...when the water that was retained in it from the last use hit the boiling wort, it shot out right onto my foot. it was HOTTTTT!!!

steeped my grains AFTER doing the boil.... DOH

got a nasty infection that ruined a plastic fermenter too.

IrregularPulse said:

Mine was saying "Most Dumb" once instead of "dumbest".

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Love it!

First batch: I rehydrated my yeast in cold water, then read it was supposed to be 70-75F. Freaked out and through it in the microwave for 15 seconds (yeast still in the water mind you). Popped out at a 100 degrees or so. Talk about frying your yeast. Fermentation took 4.5 days to get going.

Not getting into the hobby earlier.

I drank just a few too many while bottling my first brew. Got it racked into the bottling bucket, had half of the bottles filled...then realized I'd left the priming sugar on the stove. Ooops

ffmedic said:

I drank just a few too many while bottling my first brew. Got it racked into the bottling bucket, had half of the bottles filled...then realized I'd left the priming sugar on the stove. Ooops

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heh. first time i bottled i made up the priming sugar, but forgot to add it to the bottling bucket until after i had racked it. no biggie, just mixed it in and beer came out fine.

however, my biggest faux pas so far (only been at it since mid-december) was filling the bottling bucket on another batch and forgetting to close the valve. DOH! lost two beers worth on the towel before i realized it. *******!!!

(dis)honorable mention: after a few beers while brewing one night i "set" my thermometer down on the counter in the clean up staging area -- from 4" or 5" high. broken glass everywhere. this came one week after breaking my first hydrometer (heh. on my third now -- why can't they make this **** outta plastic?

Mine was (and I actually made a thread about it because it was so sad) plugging the kegerator into the wall instead of the temp control after cleaning it, causing my just kegged chocolate cherry stout (which was the biggest PITA to brew) to freeze. I corrected the plug issue, ramped up the PSI to see if I could push the icy sludge out of the faucet, but it was a no-go so I turned the PSI back down. I forgot to close the faucet though. The next morning I came into the garage to check on it and found 4.5 gallons of my hardest brew ever on the floor. Most expensive brew too I think.

Joining in 2005 then waiting until 2008 to start brewing.