Brew day horror stories

So brew day today. Irish red. Total fiasco. Miscalculations, first stuck sparge(s) and 17 degree weather before windchill. Finally am at the chill 9 hours later. Compared to my first attempt at brewing, an alcohol fueled over zealous hard headed young mans pipe dream, this feels like Im head brewer at Sam Adams. All things considered got me to thinking, lets hear your brew day horror stories. Might cheer me up some knowing I'm not the only one out there.

I ran out of HB while brewing. had a friend run to the store to keep my buzz going. that and run out of propane during boil.

Also hop ball broke so spent time trying to strain out as much hop dust as possible.

Billy-Klubb said:

I ran out of HB while brewing. had a friend run to the store to keep my buzz going. that and run out of propane during boil.

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Damn man, that's rough. Always number one on my brew day check list: plenty of "right now beers."

Johnnyrhine said:

Damn man, that's rough. Always number one on my brew day check list: plenty of "right now beers."

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hahaha!! there was until I drank them all. then there wasn't enough.

tried to pour grain into a sack over the water and ended up pouring half in the sack and half in the water....

Had to build a makeshift windscreen with my truck and the deck table to keep the burner flame remotely steady, ran out of propane and had to go to Lowe's to get a new tank part of the way through the boil, immersion chiller froze... but the beer is now in the fermenter and all is good!

Last week I was filling a bucket with water on the kitchen counter. I went to the garage to check on the brew...forgot about the bucket. Flooded the kitchen and dining room. Took every towel in the house and then some. Water was dripping into the crawl space. I've had a space heater running under my house for the last week to dry it out. Oh yeah, a couple hours later I did it again, but not nearly as bad...my ADHD really kicks my butt sometimes.

A couple years ago I brewed a 12g barley wine for the first brew at our new house. I started the mash at 144f for the first 10min. When I went to raise the temp it would not recirculate. It took me a while to figure out that it was not a stuck sparge but my drain manifold had disconnected and the grain clogged up the ball-valve on my tun. I think I tried some form of modified decoction in order to get down to the drain and bring the mash up to mash out. This turned into a comedy of errors. On top of the overly fermentable wort I wasn't set up for temp control and while gone for a couple days the ferementer got up to 75F. NOT my best barley wine.

Yesterday went well, except one thing.

I'm doing 10g batches with starters. But I don't have 10g fermenters. What's a guy to do? Just split the yeast, right? Well, how does one do that evenly? Split it before the fermenters.

So I chill the wort to 70F. Swirl up the yeast real good in the gallon jug, dump it in. Ker-plunk! What the hell was that? *lightbulb* My stir bar just went into the boil kettle, and now it's sitting at the bottom of my keggle. No big deal, right? Wrong.

3-4 gallons poured into the fermenter, it starts draining super slow. Stir bar clogged the dip tube. Tired to free it with the mash paddle, no luck. Had to Star San my whole arm and go fishing for it. Couldn't find it. Realized it was *inside* the dip tube. Unscrewed the compression fitting by hand (thankfully not wrench tightened!), pulled off the dip tube, and we were back in business. Had to tilt the keg over to get as much out as possible, and lost about 1/4 gallon that just couldn't be coaxed out without turning it up-side-down.

Thankfully I'm not a very hairy man.

Oh man, I have a lot of stories. I suppose this works best as a "lessons learned" because I did learn quite a bit...let's see what I can remember.

Valve open on BK when running off the first wort from the MT...learned early on that I actually need to write "Check Valves" in my brewing steps or I will forget some valve somewhere.

Hop bag tied to the side of the BK with a really long piece of twine. It caught fire and the open hop bag fell in. Learned to cut the twine shorter.

PVC hop spider started to warp and get hot, then fell into the BK. I don't even know how to describe this...the bolts and stuff made it sort-of sag and it gave way. Learned to use a metal collar instead of PVC (the BYO article uses PVC...wonder how long that guy actually used his before writing the article).

Water leaking out of my immersion chiller where the hoses are clamped on. Learned that it's best to either weld barbs to the end, or bend the ends downward (water won't drip upwards).

Got the hoses mixed up my plate chiller. I ended up shooting hot wort into my garden and tap water into my BK. I learned to pay attention, and choose different looking hoses for the wort-side and water-side.

I saw smoke in my front yard when I went outside on brewday. I asked the guy near a truck what he was doing, and he told me that they were pumping this smoke stuff into the sewer system looking for cracks. Not the kind of stuff you want in the air during your brew day. I learned to read the stuff people hang on your door, and not just throw them away.

As other people have mentioned, I've learned to make sure I have enough propane. I find that having two bottles on hand alleviates any problems.

I've done a bunch of smaller things as well...forgotten to add hops, missed the gravity, dropped a glass thermometer too hard into a pot and broke it, boil-overs, left a MT out to clean the next day (holy crap :cross, made bad recipes, relied on online retailers for stuff to arrive (make yeast starters after you receive everything), this list could probably go on forever...

Hmm worst ever ===stuck sparge (twice--think some too finely ground wheat), and after burning the hell out of my hand I finally dumped the whole mess into a large pot to remove, clear and reset my braided stainless toilet line (and that was the final time I ever used it-next day got busy with a hacksaw and 1/2 copper) then ran out of gas (oh yeah my ballcock was open on brewpot when I finally got mash tun flowing-I can only imagine how sticky the floor is way, way under that workbench to this day), of course so flustered forgot salts, whirrfloc, and ran hops sequence ass-backwards.

Result-some of the tastiest red ale I have ever made. I mean you would want to go work in the attic and then cut lawn in July to guzzle some of this stuff. Clear as a bell, nuthin' fancy but just a real good simple refreshing drinking ale. Now if I could only remember what the hell I did.

I mean-if it came out that tasty-did I really do anything WRONG??

Oh yeah-did I mention I always have TWO bottles of propane as well as co2 on hand to this day?

I was brewing last night, I do partial boil extract brewing. I got my wort made and it was cooling in an ice bath. I had just went to my outside storage to get two gallons of spring water to fill the bucket up with. I realized I didn't sanitize my yeast package or the scissors I was going to use to open it. So I throw the yeast into my starsan bucket and then proceed to slip while carrying the scissors. I didn't want to fall with them so I throw them at the bucket while falling. Yep, they end up cutting a hole into the yeast package. I panic and realize my water to rehydrate is way to hot so I just dumped the packet into the bucket. I didn't rehydrate or take the temp of the wort before I threw in the yeast dry.

I stopped the slippery slope of mistakes and took the wort temp and it was actually at 64 so it was an ok pitch temp. I am still mad at myself for not rehydrating. After I think about it, the yeast was most likely fine, it was covered in starsan and there was no need for me to pitch like I did.

I know it's not a huge mistake, but I am pretty new to this all.

Didn't check my hose for my immersion chiller... Turns out it was frozen solid. With about 5 mind left in boil I came up with this idea:



Somehow I managed not to burn out whatever pump is in my fridge! I ran around 10gals of water through my IC and it cooled the wort from boiling to 75F in about 20mins.

Oh, let's see...

-The recent swarms of yellow jackets attacking my brew.

-Finished a 5.5 gallon batch and was carrying it to it's storage spot, ran out of energy after a long brew day, dropped it. Somehow caught it in time to save 3/4 of it. Unfortunately, that was a yellow jacket attack day and since I propped the front door open to carry it in, then got distracted.... You can guess, yellow jackets in the house. They hovered around the windows for about 24 hours then all eventually died. Some drowned in the spilled wort.

-The fire. My first all grain batch and stupidly decided I could do it on the electric stove top. The weight of the larger kettle pushed the burner into the old stove, tons of grease down there and fire. Now missing the largest burner on the kitchen stove. Got the fire out with old blankets which luckily were close by in the hallway. Took hours to air the house out, very smoky.

-Leaky propane tank. But at least it was pre-boil so no big deal to get a new tank hooked up.

I'm sure there were other disasters so traumatic that I've blocked them from my memory....

Ran out of propane during the boil, TWICE. First time it was with 2-3 minutes left so I just let it go. 2nd was right in the middle and had to disconnect and run to the store. I TOO now have a 2nd tank.

Completely forgot to pitch yeast on an extract early on. I had definitely RDWHAHBed that brew night. Checked the airlock the next day and nothing. Checked before bed and still nothing!?!?!? Walked by the kitchen counter and saw the yeast package and went cold from head to toe. OMG moment. Physically got the chills thinking WTH HAVE I DONE!!!!! Sanitized the packet and myself and a stirrer etc etc. Pitched yeast and fermentation started within 24 hours. Beer tasted awesome as well.

I've given up on my hops basket. 2 times I have tried brewing and both it ended up at the bottom of the BK. It will be a nice little decoration in my bar.

As many have said, I'm sure I could add a few more.