What are some of the mistakes you made...where your beer still turned out great!

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BPhad said:
Here's what I did wrong today
Forgot to add Irish moss (was wondering why had so much crap in fermentor then I saw it on the counter)
Forgot to add yeast nutrient
Got water from garden hose into wort

At least I got a name for my beer. "hose water ipa"
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irish moss is nice but not needed (try using whirlfloc)
yeast nutrient isn't needed in most cases
bah... its water. if it tastes good then it's ok. I have an RV water hose I use for my water...
 
Let's see, in the past year of brewing I have

Used a juicer on 150 lbs of apples, the thing kept on over heating and I ended up with a ton of pulp and only 3 gallons of juice. Strained the pulp with a pillow case. There was apple everywhere and my hands were torn to hell from coring/chopping apples for 3 hours. Fermentation started after I pitched twice and then we had a huge October snow storm that took out the power and heat for 7 days. Temps got down to almost freezing in my apartment. Cider came out great :)

Another batch of cider I keyed and put in 5 teaspoons of sulfite and 1/4 tsp of sorbate...a bit backwards...had to dump the whole keg.


Recently switched to all grain for beer and got an immersion chiller, the hot side didn't have a worm clamp on it and I sprayed myself in the face and arm with very very hot water....that same beer (named dumb blonde) had a 9 hour mash because my voltage converter was set to 220 instead of 110, also had a boil over...the beer came out good but my ball lock wasn't screwed tightly enough into the bev line and the entire keg emptied into my keezer. Now I know that beer was named after me...and not the beer.

My first beer was a extract version of caribou slobber...it came out very weak so I dumped a bottle of espresso vodka in it....best beer ever
 
when sealing the airlock to the lid using vaseline I put in the bathroom. my pregnant wife looked at it and asked why I was using it. I told her why and she said and I quote "but thats been up my bum". Turns out she used it to grease her hemorrhoids!!!!! Gaaaad sake!. A common pregnancy problem I'm told. She assured me she didn't double dip and i only smeared it round the outside of the airlock seal so none actually was in contact with the beer:drunk:. I got some sterilizing gel and cleaned it all out and bought a new bottle with a label saying "NOT FOR YOUR GRAPES!!".
Disgusting woman! .....I bet this brews sounding pretty appetizing now eh!.
Oh it seems fine though although I'll negate this story when friends pop round for a taste :cross:
 
My latest IPA, I mashed too high and the beer is a little more sweet than I would have liked it. It is still drinkable.
 
Briguy10 said:
The inlet hose to my immersion chiller came off 3 minutes into my chill. The hose was spraying tap water into my hot wort for about 40 seconds. I was really worried about infection.
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This same exact thing happened to me with my last batch. I didn't check to see if everything was held together tightly, and the hose popped off in the middle of my chill. It's still in the primary after 2.5 weeks and no infection, I'm transferring to secondary soon. Hopefully everything turns out ok!
 
I bottled half a batch, realized I forgot the priming sugar, "decanted" all the bottles back into the bottling bucket threw in the priming sugar not dissolved in water and stirred it up! Turned out ok.
 
avatar108070_1.gif


Can't be original, with your avatar I see. And in my own thread, no less. ;)
 
First batch, extract, hydrated nottingham yeast with hot tap water, topped off fermenter with cold tap water, drank it green, one of my favorite beers...Brewer's Best Kolsch kit.

Tried to partial mash flaked wheat and nothing else once...got about 0.5g. out of that "mash", had sticky trub that clogged autosiphon when racking to bottling bucket, had fermented warm, ended up with less in bottling bucket so that meant I overprimed...came out like a beautiful hoegaarden, albeit tons of trub/yeast in bottom of bottle.

Forgot aroma hops once, added to FV a day later after they sat out in basement that entire time before I saw them and realized what had happened.

Last brew day I decided to be cheap AND lazy, used "wheat berries" instead of flaked wheat for a witbier...milled with barley, which is significantly larger kernel size...wheat berries never got crushed. Added another half pound of oats and the only other grain I had, honey malt (about a pound) and ended up with 5g of 1.044 OG beer. Will report on taste next week.

Also last brew day I had put a piece of vinyl hose between my MLT bulkhead and the hose-braid, since the hose would sag and reduce my deadspace...well I had hose-clamped it to two copper FPT couplings since I didn't have hose-barbs. Thought they were pretty snug until I poured strike water in and the ass'y came apart. Dumped strike into bucket, used latex-coated kevlar gloves to reassemble hot ass'y, heated a kettle of boiling water to fix strike temp, added strike, ass'y came apart AGAIN...rinse, repeat only this time I said F&$*k it and left the hose part out...that added a good hour to my brew day as I had to start over using some of my sparge water as new strike water due to losing so much temp.

I've pitched in the high 70's, fermented in basement when hot days of spring came and beer temp raised into 70's (blonde ale, ended up fruity/banana but not bad). Once dipped yeast mason-jar into cooled wort to slosh around and get every last bit of yeast pitched...unsanitary.

Regularly forget to sanitize mash paddle during cooling and then whirlpool with it. Overcarbed two kegs when fridge got down to below freezing and I raised temps after having the kegs on 25psi for 48 hours+shaking. Tried the hose-braid kettle screen DIY, ended up with arm in BK numerous times brushing hops off braid to get flow restarted.

Made a wit with oats instead of wheat and I think the ferm went from 80's to 70's after only a few days...tasted kinda sour, has been in bottles for a month or more since last tried...have to throw some in fridge and see what happened.

Never had to dump a batch although I have a keg with what I think is either stuck fermentation (finished around 1.012, started in 1.040's) or just that I forgot to cold-crash and has tons of crap in it...it looks like a light version of a stout or a dark-ass hefe...cloudy as heck like milkshake...tastes fine though. Kinda like an APA/IPA. Leaving it for a while to see if anything settles out.
 
Used a gym sock in lieu of a muslin bag years back and, two weeks later, reached to the bottom of the primary with my clearly un-sanitized arm to remove a glass that I accidentally dropped into it (not even sure I showered that day hahaha). One of the best beers we ever made (bourbon oaked stout).

We now have a running joke that we ferment with sweat and arm hair.
 
My first brew:
1. I only had a 2 gallon pot so it was around a 1.6 gallon boil.
2. I misread the directions and steeped for 20min at 168F-172F
3. I chilled with ice, directly into the wort and topped off with tap water
4. I fermented in the garage with no temp control, 58F-62F
5. I was in a rush so I bottled after just 14 days
6. I used all 5oz of corn sugar to prime instead of using a calculator
7. I couldn't get a good flow on the siphon and finally gave up and sucked on it. I did however "mouthwash" with sanitizer first.
8. Never siphoning before, I was surprised by the sudden beer in my mouth and reflexively spit it out... into the bottling bucket.


This batch was insanely popular and is the only one my friends have requested a re-brew of. When I re-brewed, I corrected all of the above and it didn't turn out as well.
 
bleme said:
My first brew:
1. I only had a 2 gallon pot so it was around a 1.6 gallon boil.
2. I misread the directions and steeped for 20min at 168F-172F
3. I chilled with ice, directly into the wort and topped off with tap water
4. I fermented in the garage with no temp control, 58F-62F
5. I was in a rush so I bottled after just 14 days
6. I used all 5oz of corn sugar to prime instead of using a calculator
7. I couldn't get a good flow on the siphon and finally gave up and sucked on it. I did however "mouthwash" with sanitizer first.
8. Never siphoning before, I was surprised by the sudden beer in my mouth and reflexively spit it out... into the bottling bucket.


This batch was insanely popular and is the only one my friends have requested a re-brew of. When I re-brewed, I corrected all of the above and it didn't turn out as well.
Click to expand...

So have you gone back, and re-recreated the original messed up yet excellent version?
 
Had a yard of top soil in my driveway to start my front lawn project. A huge gust of wind blew a some of it right into my kettle during the boil. Turned out great!

Racking cane kept getting clogged on the leaf hops used to dry hop. Turned the carboy over and used my hand to hold the hops in while pouring the rest into the bottling bucket. One of my best batches ever!

Boil over boil over damn boil over!

Fermented a Belgian over 80° and was super hot. 2 years later it was a great beer.

Lots of little mistakes but everything works out. Cheers!
 
The only mistakes that have ever made a difference were underpitching and allowing fermentation temps to climb too high. I once pitched one vial of old WLP001 into a 1.080 wort. It tasted like sulphur! Additionally, every beer I made was too sweet until I started pitching correctly.

Another time, I fermented WLP550 Achouffe without temp control in the summer -- got up into the upper 80's and tasted like nail polish remover! I pitched a lager yeast at 62F and then cooled it down to 48F. Tasted fruity, not like a lager.

Seriously, these two things -- pitching rate and temp control, do make a difference. But here's a whole list of things that don't:

Sanitization. How many stories on this thread of beer / sweaty man arm contact that didn't result in an infection! Just pitch at the right rate and drink your beer within a month or two, and you'll never have a problem. I have reached into my beer countless times. What they don't tell you is that EVERY batch of beer is infected. The yeast simply outcompete everything else. If you have poor sanitization every time, and you brew every week, then eventually some bugs like Lactobacillus or Pediococcus that can compete with yeast will emerge, and then you'll have an actual problem. But this only happens to very regular brewers who practice poor hygiene, i.e., some commercial breweries. Don't worry about the occasional contamination.

Oxidation. Ok, this actually matters if you're aging your beer, but most of the time you're going to drink it within a few months of when it's brewed. Splish splash, esepcially when yeast are still in suspension. They'll reduce whatever oxidized fatty acids you create, and your beer will taste great. I have racked with the wrong size tubing and aerated an entire batch like it was in a bong. Tasted awesome.

Lots of ingredients / taboo combinations -- I've tasted some pretty bad commercial recipes, but at home, I've never had a bad batch from experimenting with the recipe. Go ahead and combine hops from the German / English / American families. Go ahead and use 13 malts. Go ahead and add all your hops in the whirlpool! Just think about the flavors you're using, and TASTE YOUR INGREDIENTS beforehand. You'll never make a bad batch as long as you're pitching the right amount at the right temperature.

If you make a beer that's not hoppy enough, boil some hops in water and toss it in. If your beer doesn't have enough body, boil some maltodextrin and toss it in. If the beer isn't dark enough, steep some carafa and toss it in. Underattenuated? Do a champagne yeast starter and toss it in! You can fix just about anything you don't like about a beer.
 
bleme said:
My first brew:
1. I only had a 2 gallon pot so it was around a 1.6 gallon boil.
2. I misread the directions and steeped for 20min at 168F-172F
.....
.....

This batch was insanely popular and is the only one my friends have requested a re-brew of. When I re-brewed, I corrected all of the above and it didn't turn out as well.
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:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

I would definitely like to know what "Dr. Bamforth" would say about that !!!

Every time someone asks him to give the best piece of advice for Homebrewers , he says :

" Hygiene , Hygiene , Hygiene "

Hector
 
hector said:
:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

I would definitely like to know what "Dr. Bamforth" would say about that !!!

Every time someone asks him to give the best piece of advice for Homebrewers , he says :

" Hygiene , Hygiene , Hygiene "

Hector
Click to expand...

I bet Dr. Bamforth doesn't brew at home very frequently. He's spent his career diagnosing problems in commercial breweries with lots of hard-to-clean nooks and crannies that are exposed to wort several times every day, where it's much easier to develop a persistent strain of spoilage bacteria.

Just this morning I discovered a pellicle atop the thin layer of beer I left in the carboy from my most recent brew to protect the sedimented yeast. I was planning to save this yeast and re-pitch, but I hadn't got around to putting it in the fridge yet. It's only been a week, so I guess my beer had an infection! But can you taste it? Nope, not at all. There just wasn't enough oxygen present in the beer for these O2-lovers to make their character known.

Now that the beer is carbonated and at 4C, those bugs will never have a chance to rear their ugly heads. I'd probably have to keep the keg at room temp for another 6 months to notice the infection.

That's why noobs don't need to worry. Even infected beers will usually taste like uninfected beer.
 
drummstikk said:
I bet Dr. Bamforth doesn't brew at home very frequently.
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I listened recently to a Webinar which he had taken part in .

He said at the end :

"I don't brew at home . If I was a brain surgeon , I wouldn't operate on my wife , either ."

Hector
 
hector said:
I listened recently to a Webinar which he had taken part in .

He said at the end :

"I don't brew at home . If I was a brain surgeon , I wouldn't operate on my wife , either ."

Hector
Click to expand...

Uhh, right. I brew at home, hence I call it a hobby. If I were going pro in any capacity (including teaching/speaking about brewing for $$$), I wouldn't brew at home either. Just saying' guys/gals, don't make it more than it needs to be. Otherwise you may end up despising it. Cheers
 
With my first AG batch - APA with caramel based on "Classic Recipes" (with some hops substitution done at LHBS by looking at hop profiles and changing numbers):

1. I also started mashing at 154 as book suggested, but dropped to 148 after an hour - I guess I cooled to 154 by stirring before grain got warmed up (1st AG - next 4 batches I had no more than 2 degrees loss)
2. I used a hydrometer which I later discovered reads 6 points low and calculated the amount of DME to "fix" my OG, but bought 2lbs of light DME only 2 days later and added after a short hesitation all of it in a fermenting wort (boiled in water).

3. FG is 1.01 (with hydrometer correction) (expected was higher, but 1.01 was perfect)

This beer become very popular (really hopy "APA" of ~7% ABV) that I am trying to figure out how to duplicate all of the mistakes I made on a regular basis :) Well maybe with a slightly lower ABV as this beer causes severe giggling during tasting sessions
 
ak-71 said:
With my first AG batch - APA with caramel based on "Classic Recipes" (with some hops substitution done at LHBS by looking at hop profiles and changing numbers):

1. I also started mashing at 154 as book suggested, but dropped to 148 after an hour - I guess I cooled to 154 by stirring before grain got warmed up (1st AG - next 4 batches I had no more than 2 degrees loss)
2. I used a hydrometer which I later discovered reads 6 points low and calculated the amount of DME to "fix" my OG, but bought 2lbs of light DME only 2 days later and added after a short hesitation all of it in a fermenting wort (boiled in water).

3. FG is 1.01 (with hydrometer correction) (expected was higher, but 1.01 was perfect)

This beer become very popular (really hopy "APA" of ~7% ABV) that I am trying to figure out how to duplicate all of the mistakes I made on a regular basis :) Well maybe with a slightly lower ABV as this beer causes severe giggling during tasting sessions
Click to expand...

Sounds like an IPA to me! ;-)
 
tgmartin000 said:
I bottled a batch of mighty arrow using old mighty arrow bottles (new Belgium ).that I bought. The catch - I left all the labels on the old bottles. Just threw them in a bucket with Sanitizer. Labels, glue, everything. Pulled them out and filled them! I dont know what I was thinking! Beer turned out decent.
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I know this post is a few months old but I wanted to chime in and say I do this all the time. Also, I never clean my bottles, I just rinse and sanitize. Never had a gusher or a spoiled bottle.

Also, I never aerate before pitch, nor do I worry about splashing when bottling. I figure let the problems come to me before I worry about taking every precaution.

My biggest mistake recently was pitching a witbier (3944) smack pack into my smoked porter (grabbed the wrong pack from the fridge). I realized my mistake a week later when I was brewing my witbier and couldn't find my yeast! Turned out awesome. The clove taste from the yeast really worked with the peated malt.
 
i am perfect and i have never made a mistake!!!! JK, i have only done one brew and not sure what my mistake was. the beer ended up with a watered down (like a coorslight taste) on teh front end and then that went away and it actually was pretty good. but the OG was suppose to be 1.056 and it was only 1.044. so still processing adn going thru my notes to find something.
 
I dumped the priming sugar in the bucket without mixing it with water and boiling it first...none of the bottles have exploded yet...but I've sampled the goods and it carbonated fine and tasted great.
 
I brewed up a nice chocolate stout last fall. First my floating thermometer broke in the wort. Then a heavy storm blew in out of nowhere right in the middle of my boil. So it became a chocolate, glass, steel and rainwater stout. It turned out to be probably the tastiest beer I've yet brewed. I did my best to filter out the little steel balls and the glass and I don't think I drank any glass but maybe I did. Either way it all turned out fine.
 
I accidentally took 4 hits of acid and mistook my fermenting stout for the bodily fluids of my mini-van, so I emptied all of the oil out of the engine and syphoned in my stout.

When I came down I realized my mistake, I drained the stout by bottling straight from the engine to save time.

The beer turned out GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT!!!!
 
cheezydemon3 said:
I accidentally took 4 hits of acid and mistook my fermenting stout for the bodily fluids of my mini-van, so I emptied all of the oil out of the engine and syphoned in my stout.

When I came down I realized my mistake, I drained the stout by bottling straight from the engine to save time.

The beer turned out GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREAT!!!!
Click to expand...


Pssst!! Who hasn't done that?
 
I just bottled yesterday and realized I forgot to sanitize the outside of my bottle filler. I'm pretty sure I'll be fine since it is already at about 7% ABV but I guess I wont know for sure for a few more weeks. Thoughts?

My worst mistake was a few batches back when I had a few too many Belgians while brewing and added a gallon or Star San to my wort for top off. That batched ended up ruined from that mistake and adding way too much orange marmalade to my honey wheat. Nasty, nasty beer. From now on I clearly label my Star Stan gallon since I use empty bottled water containers.
 
My very first batch of beer was a exercise in futility. First, the starter kit I bought didn't come with sanitizer and the homebrew store was closed for the night. We had already started the boil, so I decided that I could use hydrogen peroxide as a substitute. On top of that, my stove struggled for almost 30 minutes to bring 2.5 gallons of water to a steeping temp. Then after steeping the grains I had to wait another crazy long time to bring it to a boil. Finally, I went off recipe and added some extra hops for 'flavor'. The next big disaster came from the lack of a good dry run. I had assumed the kettle would fit in my sink, but it was too wide. So I had to carry 2.5 gallons of boiling wort up stairs to my bathroom tub to attempt to cool it (I at least had the forethought to buy bagged ice). I then decided the best way to cool the beer was to slosh it around my tub full of water and ice which not only caused the beer to slosh around, but I'm fairly sure got a little of that tub water in my beer.

Once the wort cooled, I dumped it into the bucket, carried that down stairs and topped it off with bottled spring water. I tore the top off the packet of yeast and dumped it in and slapped the lid on the bucket. I carried the beer down the basement and attempted to push the airlock into the grommet on the lid. If you guess that the little rubber grommet poped out of the lid and into the wort, you were 100% right. So after spending a few minutes with the plastic paddle trying to find it, I resorted to rubbing my arm down with peroxide and going bicep deep into 5 gallons of beer. I recovered the part, finished installing the airlock and filled it with tap water.

Two weeks later we racked to a secondary (with starsan this time) and 1 week after that we bottled. We dubbed the brew longarm and it was a hit with everyone who tried it. I have a few friends and my wife still asking me to brew it again. Unfortunately, I have no notes and I'm not sure if I can recreate all the happy accidents that go with making something great out of a kit beer. I went all grain this spring and I'm on my 3rd all grain batch now and recently brewed my first all grain hop heavy IPA (It tastes so good out of the bottling bucket I could drink it flat). Hopefully this beer will finally top the mystique of "Hey, you have any more of that great beer you stuck your arm in?"

Another scare we had was with our chocolate oatmeal stout. It was an extract beer and we added 90% cocoa bar chocolate during the last 5 minutes of the boil as well as a few oz in the secondary. The fats from the chocolate caused this oily film to appear on the beer and I was sure that I screwed up and it was infected. I took pictures and was about to post my first "Is this infected?" post. Luckily I decided to wait and see. We bottled it and everyone enjoyed it (wasn't my favorite, but everyone else likes it). Had I gotten nervous and dumped it, I would have wasted good beer.

I also learned the dangers of drinking and bottling with that beer. I was drinking one of my rye pale ales and I picked it up mindlessly and filled it with stout and gave it to my friend to cap. A few seconds later I was really confused trying to find my beer. Turns out, that combo made a ok half and half.

I'm a little over a year into this new passion of mine. Every brew brings new improvements to the process and new tricks to improving the quality of my beers. I've gone from a 3 gallon pot and a bucket to a 10 gallon all grain setup and will be kegging my next beer and buying a large freezer to collar (I want 4 taps). I can't wait to see how much my brewing improves as the years go on.
 
gandalfiii said:
I brewed up a nice chocolate stout last fall. First my floating thermometer broke in the wort. Then a heavy storm blew in out of nowhere right in the middle of my boil. So it became a chocolate, glass, steel and rainwater stout. It turned out to be probably the tastiest beer I've yet brewed. I did my best to filter out the little steel balls and the glass and I don't think I drank any glass but maybe I did. Either way it all turned out fine.
Click to expand...

I sincerely hope you are just bull****ting us on this one. Seems likely. But just in case, folks, thermometers generally have mercury in them. Highly toxic. Your high school chemistry teacher uses special gloves and a special vacuum to deal with a broken thermometer.

I know you are just f-ing with us, but if your thermometer breaks in the brew, it's a dumper.
 
Dgonza9 said:
I sincerely hope you are just bull****ting us on this one. Seems likely. But just in case, folks, thermometers generally have mercury in them. Highly toxic. Your high school chemistry teacher uses special gloves and a special vacuum to deal with a broken thermometer.

I know you are just f-ing with us, but if your thermometer breaks in the brew, it's a dumper.
Click to expand...

Most modern glass thermometers use alcohol, actually.
 
No BS, true story. But as mentioned above, thermometers use alcohol these days. I was actually more concerned that the weights were lead balls but found out that they are just steel balls so no worries there. My biggest concern at that point was broken glass, but as I said it turned out fine.
 
gandalfiii said:
No BS, true story. But as mentioned above, thermometers use alcohol these days. I was actually more concerned that the weights were lead balls but found out that they are just steel balls so no worries there. My biggest concern at that point was broken glass, but as I said it turned out fine.
Click to expand...

maybe not ethyl alcohol either, but it probably boiled off real fast.
 
Most thermometers now a days use alcohol instead of mercury. At least that's what I've come to understand.
 
Typicaly it is not hard to see what you have in your thermometer, right? :). Mercury looks nothing like any colored alcohol, can't mistake it
 
go digital.. no worries about broken glass or anything toxic :)

now for my contribution... after brewing for many years (since 1999) I forgot to drain about 4 ounces of starsan out of a cream ale last sunday. its fermenting nicely so I suspect that it didn't do any harm. I'll let ya know when the keg goes dry after taking it to a party :)
 

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