Great Facepalm Moments in Home Brewing

[jcoxen]

That moment when you think to yourself, "You know, I don't recall the last time I calibrated my thermometer."

...and you discover that a glass of ice water measures 50 degrees F. :smack:

 

[Remmy]

The only face-palm moment I've had on brew day is not remembering how many beers I've hammered. Otherwise, everything goes smoothly.

 

[unionrdr]

The time I was brewing another experimental batch of my hybrid lager & passed out after the bittering addition. An hour & some 45 minutes later, I decided to finish the boil. Beer came out a bit clearer than usual!

 

[ZebulonBrewer]

The first couple times I used my bottling bucket from my starter kit (Brewer's Best), I didn't know I needed one o-ring on each side of the bucket for the valve.

I am a mechanical engineer, and my biomedical engineer (now)wife had to inform me.



(and I was relatively sober)

 

[Psylocide]

Was siphoning to the bottling bucket, thought air was coming up into the racking cane (saw lots of "bubbles") figured the end came out of the beer, stuck it further down... oh, that's all the further it goes, oh... OH ****! TRUB, I'M SUCKING TRUB!!!

Spoiler alert: it wasn't air bubbles in the line.

Luckily I had my "waste bucket" right next to my bottling bucket and let that crap go in there.

 

[CarbonTom]

I was making my 2nd beer and planning on entering it into the long shot comp. It was a #9 clone but with lychee puree and tea. I was rushed so I threw in the lychees (canned) in the primary about halfway through fermentation and just the tea leaves in as a.sort of dry hop. Well fermentation immediately stopped I went to my brewer friends and told them what happened. "What's sodium benzoate?". I pitched 2 packets of dry yeast in to try and power through. It came out a bit sweet but ended up being delicious and got a 30 or so.


I need to make that again but with real lychees.....

 

[m00ps]

Biggest moment I had was when I was brewing 3 batches on consecutive days for a wedding. I had all the grain bills and hops laid out in bags and was on my first brew. After the first hop addition, I was going to start milling the 2nd and noticed torrified wheat amongst the grains. Its a pretty distinctive looking grain and I thought to myself, tomorrows brew doesn't have torrified wheat...OH F&&K. I was brewing the wrong beer entirely! Luckily, it was just an American Wheat vs a Pale Ale, so the mash routine was pretty similar and I had only done the bittering hops addition. I scrambled and got myself back together and was able to salvage the brew. Luckily, no one noticed at the wedding, and both beers were gone quickly. I never told the bride and groom that I messed up my beers they requested...

 

[acidrain]

Went to the LHBS and picked up the grains, went home and dumped them in the strike water and noticed I forgot to mill them first. Doh :smack:

 

[bergy]

Was going to brew a porter so I went to the LHBS, measured the base malt, dumped it into the hopper. Then I measured out the specialty grains. I milled the malt, picked up the yeast and hops and went home. I was halfway through the boil when I wondered why the wort was pale and it hit me: I forgot to dump the specialty grains ( chocolate, brown and crystal malts) into the hopper to get milled!

Anyway I ended up with a very nice (but lower ABV) pale ale that was pleasant to drink and went with most foods. The really nice thing about the story was that the clerk at the LHBS remembered me when I went in the next time for the same recipe and didn't charge me for the specialty grains.

 

[atoughram]

Having a few too many hop soda's and forgetting to clean out the MLT.... It goes sour overnight and starts growing what looks like penicillin mold in a couple of days....

 

[user 198378]

Went to the LHBS and picked up the grains, went home and dumped them in the strike water and noticed I forgot to mill them first. Doh :smack:

Haha! Awesome

 

[msa8967]

Tried brewing yesterday because temps were in the low 50s and thought I could run my wort chiller off of the garden hose w/o problems. Boy was I wrong. After brewing 15 gallons of higher gravity stout I set the chiller in the wort for the last 20 minutes of the boil turned on the chill water and nothing seemed to flow through. Went back to check the faucet and the pipes inside the house in case I had sprung a leak only to come back and see volume of liquid in my kettle increasing. Double face palm when I realized why.

 

[sumbrewindude]

Forgot to close the valve on the mash tun for the batch sparge.

Amazing how fast that little 2qt catch pitcher can fill up before you realize your toes are getting hot.