Mishaps you are embarrassed to admit...but can here, we're all friends.

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My best brewing flop was last summer. I made an IPA right at the beginning and ended up being sent out on a big fire by Tahoe for close to two months. The airlock dried up on my conical and ruined the batch. It made the whole house smell like stagnant waterlogged cardboard that took forever to air out.. just gross.
 
For the last 20 batches, I get slight Lactic infection in every other batch.
IDK WTF. I nuke all my brewing gear with industrial-grade Peracetic Acid. And still I have this mishap.
 
Protos said:
For the last 20 batches, I get slight Lactic infection in every other batch.
IDK WTF. I nuke all my brewing gear with industrial-grade Peracetic Acid. And still I have this mishap.
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Interesting pattern. Associated with a specific FV or keg? I had an issue that I managed to trace back to a specific corny keg. I think it might have had an infection source lurking in the bottom seam that even survived iodophor. Gave it a good scrub with a stiff brush in hot PBW. Problem disappeared. One of the reasons I started switching over to slimline sankey kegs is they don't have seams inside.
 
McMullan said:
But every year, on the dot, for six months? In the dark. With Norwegians. The novelty wanes after a week or two 😱
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Yea, I used to live with the freeze. Move to Florida 30 yrs ago. Never looked back. You guys can have all of that. I'll take the heat. Outdoor brewing is always on the schedule down here.
 
So I just had a mishap yesterday. Bought some sous vide magnets last week so I could try the no-oxygen dry hop trick that's been making the rounds. Beer in the fermenter, yeast pitched, time to attach the hop bag with the magnets! Well. Turns out the magnets are pretty strong, but maybe not strong enough for 7oz of hops in ONE bag, with another magnet and some marbles for weight. Plop!! Dry hops dropped before fermentation even started. It's bubbling away happily this morning, that blasted swollen dry hop bag floating in the middle. I'm sure it will be fine, but man was I disappointed. Even set a reminder on my phone to remove the magnet on Wednesday.
 
I think I have a mishap happening right now. I'm brewing a rauchbier and was targeting a rich, red, color in the glass so I added just a couple ounces of roasted barley thinking that a little burnt flavor would complement the smoke.... Well, judging from the mash color I think I overshot red and landed right in light brown. I've made accidentally brown beer before and though it tasted pretty good there's nothing appealing about a beer that looks like mud in a glass.
 
seatazzz said:
So I just had a mishap yesterday. Bought some sous vide magnets last week so I could try the no-oxygen dry hop trick that's been making the rounds. Beer in the fermenter, yeast pitched, time to attach the hop bag with the magnets! Well. Turns out the magnets are pretty strong, but maybe not strong enough for 7oz of hops in ONE bag, with another magnet and some marbles for weight. Plop!! Dry hops dropped before fermentation even started. It's bubbling away happily this morning, that blasted swollen dry hop bag floating in the middle. I'm sure it will be fine, but man was I disappointed. Even set a reminder on my phone to remove the magnet on Wednesday.
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Strong rare earth magnets sealed in a tiny food-safe vaccum capsule.
 
I recently cleaned some kegs that had been waiting *ahem* for, um, months?

Leia Smell.jpg
 
A few months ago I replaced some wiring in my control panel, specifically the wires from the PIDs to the SSRs. The elements got hot like they were supposed to, but this past weekend when I went to brew for the first time since I found that my mash element wouldn't shut off. I think my mash got too hot and now I'm concerned about fermentation.
The next day after swapping SSRs to no avail and tracing wires, I found that I had wired the mash PID to the boil SSR and vice versa.
 
Thanks to all for the things to avoid!!!

My fail is forgetting to close the ball valve all the way on my cooler mash tun, and the kettle (anvil 6.5).

(I usually leave them 50% open after cleaning/rinsing)

Prolly done it a dozen times thru 20 batches.

I catch it fast enuf, but the repetition is aggravating
 
I boiled some large glass marbles to sanitize them for weighing down my dry hop bag. They shattered into a million tiny razor sharp slithers.
There was no harm done, but a couple of months later I did see a highly respected brewer advising people to do this on his site.
Another case of giving advice when never having done it yourself.
 
Gilbert Spinning Horse said:
I boiled some large glass marbles to sanitize them for weighing down my dry hop bag. They shattered into a million tiny razor sharp slithers.
There was no harm done, but a couple of months later I did see a highly respected brewer advising people to do this on his site.
Another case of giving advice when never having done it yourself.
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Did you heat them and the water together, or drop into already boiling water?

I'd've thought the former would heat them evenly without undue stress from thermal expansion; whereas the latter could cause uneven heating leading to uneven thermal expansion and hence the fracturing.
 
Drewch said:
Did you heat them with the water or drop into already boiling water?

I'd've thought the former would heat them evenly without undue stress from thermal expansion; whereas the latter could cause uneven heating leading to uneven thermal expansion and hence the fracturing.
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I heated them with the water as it is rather obviously not a good idea to drop cold glass into boiling water.
I did contact the brewer in question, who admitted that he'd never actually done it himself as he uses a metal dry hop tube.
 
Gilbert Spinning Horse said:
I heated them with the water as it is rather obviously not a good idea to drop cold glass into boiling water.
I did contact the brewer in question, who admitted that he'd never actually done it himself as he uses a metal dry hop tube.
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That's interesting --- makes one wonder what in the marble-making process leaves them vulnerable to that kind of failure. My long-atrophied undergrad materials science courses are running in overdrive....
 
Drewch said:
That's interesting --- makes one wonder what in the marble-making process leaves them vulnerable to that kind of failure. My long-atrophied undergrad materials science courses are running in overdrive....
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It may have been due to a combination of them being boiling hot and bounced around in a metal pan by the boiling water.
 
Erik the Anglophile said:
Tbh, I could never imagine living somewhere where there is not actually winter during winter... Any place not seeing at least -20c and a meter of snow can just F off!
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you can F Off! it's like 60-70f here year round! sometimes 105f...but i won't diss, cuss, that now.....
 
Scout said:
How were they cooled? If you threw them in cold water that is likely why.

BTW , you could buy some chrome pkated pinball on ebay for not much.
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They weren't cooled, they shattered while boiling.

bracconiere said:
were they clear? or maybe have plastic melted into them for color?
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I really can't remember, but they could have been coloured. That might be it.
 
When I was brewing my latest APA batch, I decided to make a last minute recipe change in Brewfather while waiting for my water to get up to strike temp. Little did I know that I accidentally edited the wrong line in Misc additions, making me to double the amount of gypsum in the mash water.

While some of it might be attributable to a green beer taste, what resulted was a beer with a malty and sweet kick from the Verdant IPA yeast, combined with a weird, salty aftertaste and a lingering tongue-coating bitterness.

Let's see if it's drinkable in 3 weeks!
 
Past weekend was adding wort to my fermenter after a long day brewing, would of been fine had I closed the fermenter drain valve before....batch went from ~ 6 gal to ~ 5 gal before I realized.. Another time, cold crashing my fermenter I left blow off tube on and in startan. The result was the fermenter sucking up about 4 or 5 cups of starstan/water. Learned from this as I dumped the batch whilst crying:)
 
Gilbert Spinning Horse said:
I boiled some large glass marbles to sanitize them for weighing down my dry hop bag. They shattered into a million tiny razor sharp slithers.
There was no harm done, but a couple of months later I did see a highly respected brewer advising people to do this on his site.
Another case of giving advice when never having done it yourself.
Click to expand...

I would just clean them well and coat them with sanitizer before use. It's good enough for everything else.
 
Just finished the boil on a Weissbier. As I was retrieving my IC I realized that the furniture dolly that I use to move the hot BK from the brewery to the utility room to chill was absent. My son had loaned it out to a friend. It’s only about 10 feet but that’s a long way for an old guy to carry 50, or so, pounds of boiling liquid. I decided to carry it as low as possible, with my hands at about knee level. All went well until just as I went through the door to the utility room and I looked down and saw that the valve was open. Apparently, the handle had snagged the cuff of my pants.

Got the chiller started, washed down the concrete, and surveyed the loss. About a gallon. Oh well, a 4 gallon batch is better than no HB.
 
grampamark said:
Just finished the boil on a Weissbier. As I was retrieving my IC I realized that the furniture dolly that I use to move the hot BK from the brewery to the utility room to chill was absent. My son had loaned it out to a friend. It’s only about 10 feet but that’s a long way for an old guy to carry 50, or so, pounds of boiling liquid. I decided to carry it as low as possible, with my hands at about knee level. All went well until just as I went through the door to the utility room and I looked down and saw that the valve was open. Apparently, the handle had snagged the cuff of my pants.

Got the chiller started, washed down the concrete, and surveyed the loss. About a gallon. Oh well, a 4 gallon batch is better than no HB.
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Our local hardware store (not HD) had those furniture dollies on sale a few months back for $20 each; I snagged two. Next time I had to move my fermenter from the garage brewery to the room where I ferment my kveiks it was soooooooo easy.
 
seatazzz said:
Our local hardware store (not HD) had those furniture dollies on sale a few months back for $20 each; I snagged two. Next time I had to move my fermenter from the garage brewery to the room where I ferment my kveiks it was soooooooo easy.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I have two of them as well. They work great. One of my son’s friends has a pizza joint down the street from my son’s store in the little town south of our farm. He got a new pizza oven last month and was looking for a way to roll it in his back door after it was unloaded behind his shop. My son loaned him the dollies and they haven’t come back yet.
 
Just had a very silly mishap. One of my kegs is slightly overcarbed, so I decided to use @fastricky's trick (stickied in the kegging/bottling forum by the way). Did everything right, got the connectors back on, proud of myself. Until I looked again at which tap the line was connected to. Oops, just degassed the hell out of my hefeweizen instead of the Pale. Looks like it's finally time to tape-label the beer lines. Oops.
 
seatazzz said:
Just had a very silly mishap. One of my kegs is slightly overcarbed, so I decided to use @fastricky's trick (stickied in the kegging/bottling forum by the way). Did everything right, got the connectors back on, proud of myself. Until I looked again at which tap the line was connected to. Oops, just degassed the hell out of my hefeweizen instead of the Pale. Looks like it's finally time to tape-label the beer lines. Oops.
Click to expand...

That method is awesome btw. It does work.
 

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