Homebrew facepalms

Yakima 728
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Was quite sleppy while bottling and misscalculated my priming sugar amount, resulting in a 2.9 co2 vol. Lets see if the bottles will hold the pressure...
 
jorgeft said:
Was quite sleppy while bottling and misscalculated my priming sugar amount, resulting in a 2.9 co2 vol. Lets see if the bottles will hold the pressure...
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I think I've done 2.8 in standard pry top glass bottles without exploding them. Just make sure they're chilled a good long while before opening or you'll wear most of it.

Me? Just last brew day I made a starter. And as I'm waiting for the elevator I think "That starter would likely be better off with some yeast in it." Of course, the door opens just as I'm about to walk away "Sorry, forgot to do something before leaving," is the message the passengers received. Luckily I did remember before it was too long in.
 
Teromous said:
LOL I just did this. I set my fridge to 4C so cold crash a yeast starter for decanting. I brewed today and set it in my fridge and set it for 18C but forgot to hit the power button to save. After reading your post I figured I'd check on mine which is when I noticed it. Fortunately it was caught early but still...it's been a long brew day...
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STC story here: using STC1000+ to control newly fashioned foam-board-mini-fridge chamber. All going well. Set up laptop with FuzzyWuzzy's BrewPi so I can log temperature (because, well, I can, darnit) requiring multi-outlet extension. Fast forward to Mother Nature squatting on my face doing a thunderstorm-gasm, and the power goes out, but only an hour. Thinking all is fine once power's back, I don't check for more than a day.

The power extension requires button reset when power returns. The timing naturally occurred during peak fermentation, so my carefully controlled 60° was more like 84°. Only batch I've ever dumped, but I've not been at this very long... :(
 
I just burned a hole in the bottom of my BIAB bag during the mash. All my grain ended up in my boil kettle. So, before the boil I had to filter everything through my funnel filter. Took about 45 mins to get it all through while using a spoon to brush the filter mesh to keep it from getting clogged.
 
Started two small fires in my kitchen. The first was the hoses on my IC, that smelled great. Second was a pile of grain I spilled by the burner doughing in caught fire, smelled like burnt toast but better than the burnt plastic. Typing this made me realize it would be a good idea to buy myself a fire extinguisher.
 
Our first time brewing, we feared the foam and rinsed out the carboy with tap water in a moment of panic before transferring the wort. Everything turned out fine but we sure felt like idiots about half an hour later when we looked it up on here. Beer turned out fine and we learned to relax!

More recently, we had some friends over on brew day to show them how the brewing process works. While we were sitting around waiting for the mash to be over my husband was talking about a YouTube video/ad for StarSan he had seen where the inventor or CEO or someone was talking about how it was so safe you can drink it, and proceeded to replicate/test this by taking a full swig of it from the bottle... you can imagine how that one ended, he continued to taste it for the next week! Worst part is, we searched for the video that he was talking about later and never found it.

See a pattern here? :p
 
PortlandBrewers said:
Our first time brewing, we feared the foam and rinsed out the carboy with tap water in a moment of panic before transferring the wort. Everything turned out fine but we sure felt like idiots about half an hour later when we looked it up on here. Beer turned out fine and we learned to relax!

More recently, we had some friends over on brew day to show them how the brewing process works. While we were sitting around waiting for the mash to be over my husband was talking about a YouTube video/ad for StarSan he had seen where the inventor or CEO or someone was talking about how it was so safe you can drink it, and proceeded to replicate/test this by taking a full swig of it from the bottle... you can imagine how that one ended, he continued to taste it for the next week! Worst part is, we searched for the video that he was talking about later and never found it.

See a pattern here? :p
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Oh man, I'm glad he was okay! I'm pretty sure the original stunt involved drinking the diluted StarSan solution, not the concentrate.
 
Auger said:
Set up my all-grain system and did 4 batches before figuring out I needed to calibrate the thermometers in the BK and MLT, after banging my head agaisnt a wall trying to figure out why I was having such issues hitting mash temps.

I also dumped all my grain into the MLT and started mash-in before noticing the bazooka screen sitting on the table on my last brew. Dumb dumb dumb.
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I have cocotte the screen 3 times in the last year and once knocked it off. I am a calamity of errors every brew day. Turns out on a group brew day I almost killed everyone because somehow the bolt that connected the hose to the burner loosened and was leaking. I have also got my keezer down to 1 degree Fahrenheit.


I'm not sure if my the flavors in my beer are off or complex 😳
 
First real "imperial" beer I made, almost the whole keg emptied through a leak in the out post and the entire pull out crisper drawer is FILLED (I had an upright fridge kegerator) with my big hoppy red. I got a half pour out of the keg. It was delicious too.

Cracked an erlenmeyer trying to heat it on an electric stove top

Burnt my first decoction..the beer tasted like bacon, but not in the fun way. We did end up drinking like 3/4's of all of that

Cracked an IC by leaving water in it during the winter
 
My first time dry hopping I cleaned and boiled some stainless steel bolts to put in the hops bag to weigh them down in the secondary. After bottling the batch and retrieving the bag from the carboy I noticed the bag was very discolored. When I opened the bag I found that my stainless steel bolts were actually plated steel. The beer had eaten the plating off the bolts. Heavy metal poisining seems like a particularly cruel way to die, so I dumped the batch...one bottle at a time.
 
The young-buck brewer I was, I thought it would be a great fun time to bottle some of my batch in growlers. Well, little did I know this is a no-go. Massive, earth shattering explosions ensued. The best part you may ask? Oh, I'll tell you... I had them sitting in a cooler-that is until we needed the cooler for a grill-out. Sure enough, the very same day...KABOOM! Beer and glass all over the storage room...the carpeted storage room. Glass shards imbedded in the wall and everything... Needless to say, that was the first earth-moving ass-chewing i've gotten from my wife.

photo-2.jpg
 
Drizzt said:
I have also got my keezer down to 1 degree Fahrenheit.
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There was a short while where my keezer maintained temperatures by manually cycling it once in the morning once in the evening. Kegs on one side, glass bottles on the hump. Let's just say things went poorly one day and that thing sat unplugged until my STC arrived in the mail a week later.
CRAFTBEERKING said:
The young-buck brewer I was, I thought it would be a great fun time to bottle some of my batch in growlers. Well, little did I know this is a no-go. Massive, earth shattering explosions ensued. The best part you may ask? Oh, I'll tell you... I had them sitting in a cooler-that is until we needed the cooler for a grill-out. Sure enough, the very same day...KABOOM! Beer and glass all over the storage room...the carpeted storage room. Glass shards imbedded in the wall and everything... Needless to say, that was the first earth-moving ass-chewing i've gotten from my wife.
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Usually a facepalm is not used as a defensive position. Whatever works for you though. Glad to hear nobody got physically damaged.
 
I continue to shoot myself in the foot using yeast energizer/ nutrient. Was making a big yeast starter in a 2000mL Erlenmeyer flask on the stove top and immediately after removing from the flames I tossed in the pre-measured amount of nutrient and energizer. Yet another science-fair volcano in my kitchen.
 
My first brew I had a Coopers starter kit. It has a huge big warning on it telling you to pitch the yeast AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IN CASE THE WORT GETS CONTAMINATED. Needless to say pitching at 40C murdered my yeasties (1.040 to 1.022 after two weeks) and what alcohol was in it tasted like paint stripper.

Bloody kit instructions. :p

Yesterday I realised I'd added half the amount of DME as my recipe had stated due to a mix up in the shop. I proceeded to dump what I'd missed into my rather small FV mid fermentation.

diet_coke_and_mentos.jpg
 
Thirdthorpe said:
I continue to shoot myself in the foot using yeast energizer/ nutrient. Was making a big yeast starter in a 2000mL Erlenmeyer flask on the stove top and immediately after removing from the flames I tossed in the pre-measured amount of nutrient and energizer. Yet another science-fair volcano in my kitchen.
Click to expand...

I wish I kept track of how many times I got burned with nutrient and energizer. It seems like that shi!t goes on foreeeevvvveeeeerrrrr as you watch your brew go directly down the drain.
 
Thirdthorpe said:
I continue to shoot myself in the foot using yeast energizer/ nutrient. Was making a big yeast starter in a 2000mL Erlenmeyer flask on the stove top and immediately after removing from the flames I tossed in the pre-measured amount of nutrient and energizer. Yet another science-fair volcano in my kitchen.
Click to expand...

Use Fermacps for foam control. I will add the water, DME and yeast nutrient along with fermcaps and i get 0 foam when making my starter in the flask. That stuff has saved my ass from boil overs sooo many times when making starters.
 
Thanks for the tip, j1. I'll try that for my next brew...I've been scheming up my next brew for the past week or so. With fall and winter at the door I think it's time for a RIS or a barleywine.
 
Left spigot open on bottling bucket while siphoning from fermenter. Luckily I did not have music playing, so i could hear it. I thought our boxer was wizzing on the kitchen tile, as he is wont to do, so I stormed in there ready to unleash the beast on him. Thankfully, it was only a batch of Oktoberfest that I had burnt from boiling way too long. My boxer was like 'see, I'm not the only one'


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew
 
CRAFTBEERKING said:
The young-buck brewer I was, I thought it would be a great fun time to bottle some of my batch in growlers. Well, little did I know this is a no-go. Massive, earth shattering explosions ensued. The best part you may ask? Oh, I'll tell you... I had them sitting in a cooler-that is until we needed the cooler for a grill-out. Sure enough, the very same day...KABOOM! Beer and glass all over the storage room...the carpeted storage room. Glass shards imbedded in the wall and everything... Needless to say, that was the first earth-moving ass-chewing i've gotten from my wife.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I've been bottling in growlers on and off through my whole homebrewing career. I've only ever had one blow on me, and it was more the bottom let go about an inch and a half up. Ended up with a half-gallon of hefeweizen all over my kitchen floor. (I was in a small apartment and the cabinet under the sink doubled as my cellar.)
 
jrgtr42 said:
Interesting. I've been bottling in growlers on and off through my whole homebrewing career. I've only ever had one blow on me, and it was more the bottom let go about an inch and a half up. Ended up with a half-gallon of hefeweizen all over my kitchen floor. (I was in a small apartment and the cabinet under the sink doubled as my cellar.)
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Yup, there was nothing larger than a quarter left of the growler. Beer was pretty good though, based on the ones that survived. My first thought was over-carbonation, but it didn't seem so when I opened them.
 
masonsjax said:
Sealed a keg lid at about 35 psi (first batch ever i believe). Reset to serving pressure then later hooked up gas connect to the liquid post by mistake. Beer backed up into the gas lines. Fortunately it didn't make it to the regulator body, but i did have to remove the lines for cleaning.
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Been there. Now I have them marked so I can see it. If I remember correctly the posts were opposite of what it said on top.
 
After 17 years of brewing, I forgot to fill the airlock on yesterdays brew. Caught it this morning. 15hrs. At least it's in a small enclosed temp controlled space.

 
Was out of town for a week after brewing an amber ale that was just sitting in my ferm chamber. Analog temp controller failed and the freezer turned on full. My roommate came home to this...and ants as it popped out the drain plug...

image.jpg
 
ArkotRamathorn said:
I don't know man, that sounds a lot like the start of a homebrewer themed porno.

One very recent only a couple weeks ago, I was doing quick honey wheat extract kit my dad purchased at home (live in an apartment so its not feasible for me to use my propane burner at home) on an electric stove. While I was in the middle of the boil I was doing dishes as my way of bribing SWMBO to let me brew at home instead of having to go over to her parents (because I "always" break something or make a mess...). I had set one of the dishes to the side since it was too big to go in the dish drying rack, on a cork trivet (one of those things you set hot pans on to not melt your counters) so, wet dish on a cork trivet.

Fast forward to near end of boil and I have put most of the dishes away to make room on the counter, take boiling pot of wort off electric burner and place it on the wet cork trivet on the counter (cause I'm smart and wasn't going to melt the counter top). Add the rest of the LME to the pot, stir like crazy. Put the pot back on the stove, turn back around to do a few more dishes while the last couple minutes of the boil tick down. "Ah I'll dry off that trivet and put it away since I'm super smart and will make the kitchen look cleaner than when I started". No trivet... Why is the kitchen so smokey? There's no way the pot boiled over in only the course of 40 seconds...

Learned a lovely attribute of cork when it's wet it will stick to things, particularly when you pick the pot up and put it on the stove and the cork doesn't start on fire, it just smolders and fills your house with smoke. I'm sure if anyone was looking when I opened the door to our patio a huge plume of smoke came out and it looked like we had Cheech and Chong over for dinner. (wrote in my log book since the beer was very delicious, burn cork during boil)
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I was laughing so hard the kitty SWMBO got to keep me company while I am laid up just freaked out and started meowing at me and I have tears in my eyes! Now the kitty is sitting on my chest and won't leave.

On another note ..... "smoky notes" do not come from smoking the wort, especially using cork. :D:

Then again. .... has anyone tried smoking a brew?
 
Was brewing a winter spice ale that called for black treacle. Looked all aver the city and finally found a British shop that sold it. Considering the effort I put into finding it (and the fact that it was sitting on the counter as I started brewing that day) you'd think I'd remember to put it in along with the extract as per the instruction. I didn't notice until like 5 minutes till the end of the boil after I added the Whirlfloc tablet. Oops. That one was a recent mistake so I'm still not sure how the extra long boil I ended up doing to accommodate adding the treacle so late is going to impact me. I tried one last night and let's say I wasn't thrilled at the results, hoping time will help undo some of my dumbassness.
 
hou_me said:
I did this only on my mash tun. 160°+ water sprayed all over my bits and pieces. I never stripped off a pair of jeans so fast! And of course this happened in my driveway. Natch.

-ben
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The kitty is eye balling me again. Just glad no body is here to see the tears in my eyes.

After reading this entire thread I am not going to be able to do a Damm thing cousin the shoulder hurts too much from laughing.
 
jrgtr42 said:
Interesting. I've been bottling in growlers on and off through my whole homebrewing career.
Click to expand...

German pubs regularly send customers home with unfiltered bier in growlers (krug in German). Beer that continues to carb while it's in the krug... Never had one explode on me.
 
podz said:
German pubs regularly send customers home with unfiltered bier in growlers (krug in German). Beer that continues to carb while it's in the krug... Never had one explode on me.
Click to expand...

Same here...Ive done a few growlers myself and no issues. Ive heard to fill to the 64oz mark thats lower down because it leaves more headspace and room for carb.

Mike
 
Third brew on the new electric rig...I lost about 1.5g due to blow off. I was trying to boil a little harder to shave 15 mins off...just made a mess in the end. Hop pellets stuck to my plate chiller, wort in the thermometer, hop pellets basically everywhere. And we were running off to a movie so I had to wait till this morning to clean up. Thank you PBW recipe from HBT. I had saved 6qt of the last runnings, and was able to throw that in at least. Things I have learned...never go above 70% on my PID duty cycle. I actually hold a solid boil at 63, but anything above 70 went nuts.
 
Just realized now, laying in bed, that I pitched my stir bar two days ago. Just popped into my brain out of the blue.
 
Had a close call about an hour ago. Put IC into kettle with 5 mins left to sanitize. Then hook it up since I'm there. Then forgot to put in irish moss and other 5 minute additions. Then turn the tap on.

Caught it at 85C ~185F. Good thing I turned around and saw the measured container of 5 minute stuff. Few minutes lost and the batch rescued from certain disaster. Safe to say that it could have been worse.
 
Back in college I didn't have a proper wort chiller so I icebathed it in my sink, was waiting for the temp to drop when I fell asleep for like 10 hours (it was a real late night brew) woke up to some cold wort in my kitchen
 
Homebrewing taught me that there are three times in the process to watch for boil overs.
1) At the start of the boil, for hot break
2) When adding large amounts of hops
3) Every time I think it's safe to look away
 
brewfun said:
Homebrewing taught me that there are three times in the process to watch for boil overs.
1) At the start of the boil, for hot break
2) When adding large amounts of hops
3) Every time I think it's safe to look away
Click to expand...

A watched pot never boils, an unwatched pot ALWAYS boils over.

Ran out of propane 20 minutes into my boil
 
Didn't know I needed to clean out my ball valves.

I had 3 gusher infections before I realized I needed to replace my bottling and racking equipment.

Buying a keg before I had a minifridge.

Going all grain before making a fermentation chamber.
 

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