Brewing Incidents and other oops's

So I did a search to see if there was an old thread on brewing incidents, and found only a single short old one, so I decided to start another.

I'm curious of anyone's stories of incidents, accidents, and general oops's during brewing, or wine making?

I have one, that was my brother in law, making wine - the first time he's made anything, wine or beer. While racking from one carboy to another, he for some reason thought the siphon hose was supposed to be taut, AND he also figured it was okay to leave this process unattended. (everyone reading this just did a collective "oh no") He's sitting in his living room, while racking and one of his kids comes up from the basement, and says, something's leaking downstairs daddy...he goes into the kitchen, and to his horror, he's been siphoning wine onto the kitchen floor, about 2/3 of a 5 gallon batch. It started leaking into the heating ventilation, which is why it started leaking in the basement.

That nearly ended his home brew hobby, but he kept going and learned a very valuable lesson!

Sorry guys! I meant to post this in "General" and not this beginner forum...sorry about that, perhaps it should be moved? Or maybe not...as often times, incidents happen when beginning...I'll let you guys decide. My apologies.

The beginners forum is not a bad place for this. There are a bunch of threads out there that are a great read for new Brewers.

think-you-ruined-your-beer-set-your-fears-aside

what-some-mistakes-you-made-where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great

That's cool, but what I was more alluding to, was not so much mistakes made in the brew process, whether because of inexperience etc, but more "accidents" and "incidents". For example, if your dog knocked over your carboy. Or, like me, I dropped an F pack on my hardwoods and it leaked half the bag all over...

I guillotined off the end of my finger once trying to adjust my husband's weight bench in the garage so I could comfortably sit and watch the kettle. Had to cut the boil short a few minutes and it was also my first and only experience with no chill (ER visits take a long time). I think that qualifies as an accident. The beer was fine.

I dropped a pair of scissors I wanted sanitized into my fermentor full of beer thinking it was the starsan bucket today. In the end, it was one of those Coopers kits, so it can be OK if it fails.

I was trying to take a sample from my brew kettle a few months ago by using my ball valve. This brew was my first experience with whole leave hops. Some hops clogged the valve but once I opened it enough, they rushed out with a fair amount of near-boiling wort... all over my hand. Decided to take a sample after cooling from now on just in case.

I brewed a Rauchbier. I brought the carboy out to the garage to rack the wort into it. Being paranoid about carboys cracking and breaking, I'm meticulous about never setting it directly onto the concrete floor. So I looked in my recycle bin and grabbed an empty cardboard box about the size of a computer laid it on its side, and set the carboy on top of it. Sanitized the autosiphon and began racking.

I turned my back and was cleaning up other things, when I heard a loud crash and explosion. As the wort filled the carboy, it got heavier and sunk into the box unevenly, tipping over and shattering all over my garage floor. What a mess.

It was a hot july day in colorado, and I was using my wort Chiller to cool the wort down. My wife let the dogs out on the deck (where I was brewing). My attention was drawn off of my wort and onto the dogs. About 20 sec. had gone by, and I noticed my hose/wort chiller water was going directly into my chocolate stout wort. If you can imagine the taste of hose water on a july afternoon, I was bummed. Turned out to be my best tasting brew so far.

Wow...some of those are BAD! lol

Only used 2% rice hulls in a recipe that had 25% cereal (rolled oats and barley). The mash tun kept draining really slow, and a couple attempts at stir/settle/restart wasn't changing the issue, so I quickly drove to the store to get another bag of rice hulls to mix in.

Apparently I had left the mash tun valve slightly open when I left, collecting 12G of wort into 5G buckets. Luckily I think that only 1/2 to 1 gallon had overflowed when I got back, but that could have been REALLY bad. Spend a half hour taking care of that and cleaning up the garage floor.

Lesson: never walk away while a draining vessel could theoretically contain more liquid than the collection vessel could hold.

Lesson 2: keep an absorption media on hand for cleaning up spills.

Lesson 3: keep rice hulls on hand, and use 5%+ in sticky mashes.

Friend of mine was brewing up a stout. He mashed in and headed out to the wood shop. Decided to go ahead and make a new mash paddle. Ended up cutting his thumb off in the table saw. That batch of stout was named Stumpy Stout.

Was brewing up an IPA with my buddy a few nights before his wedding. Didn't realize his 'fermenting closet' had been taken over by the bridesmaids' dresses. 5.5 gallons in a 6.7 gallon bucket. No blow off tube.

NadoHawk said:

I dropped a pair of scissors I wanted sanitized into my fermentor full of beer thinking it was the starsan bucket today. In the end, it was one of those Coopers kits, so it can be OK if it fails.

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This weekend I dropped my stir spoon in 30qt of boiling wort, it was gone man. Took 10 min to get it out, hot as f. Time to spring for the long one.

Frilock said:

Was brewing up an IPA with my buddy a few nights before his wedding. Didn't realize his 'fermenting closet' had been taken over by the bridesmaids' dresses. 5.5 gallons in a 6.7 gallon bucket. No blow off tube.

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Need pics.

Frilock said:

Was brewing up an IPA with my buddy a few nights before his wedding. Didn't realize his 'fermenting closet' had been taken over by the bridesmaids' dresses. 5.5 gallons in a 6.7 gallon bucket. No blow off tube.

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If what happened what I think happened, I would have immediately left town and gotten into the witness protection program. Hell hath no fury like a bride with a ruined dress.