Here are some of my greatest hits (most are common):
- Ran a good half gallon or so of hose water into brewkettle.
- Dunked all sorts of unsanitary things into chilled wort (some intentionally, some not).
- Pushed a stopper through the neck of primary. I had no spare, so I spent about 30 minutes trying to fish the thing out with a straightened coat hanger. I finally gave up and drove to the LHBS for another. Three guys gave me experienced, sympathetic nods and suggested I buy one a half-size larger. I took their suggestion, and I bought another spare.
- Measured my mash temperature after doughing-in. When it read 165F, I freaked and added ice to get it down to the 150 I wanted. After 45 minutes, I had virtually no conversion and thought I must've killed off my amylases, even though it had only been a few minutes. After ten minutes of fretting, I measured the mash temperature with another thermometer, which read 140F. Yet another thermometer confirmed the second reading. Without time for a decoction, I quickly heated my already 180F sparge water to boiling and added whatever it took to get up to 150F (at least a gallon). The soupy mash converted fine.
- Added 9.5% Centennial hops when I thought I was adding 5% Cascades, and visa versa.
- Added boiling water for the second part of a split batch sparge and a grain bed that was already around 170F.
- Completely forgot about yeast until after chilling wort, so yeast went straight from the WL vial in the fridge into 80F wort. It was Summer, and the days before I had a pre-chiller.
- Yeah, I had the boiling IC exhast water run down my leg, too.
All those beers were, at least drinkable. Nearly all of them were actually quite good, even if some took a little longer to round out (like the boiling sparge one). I hope I never have to scrape yeast off the counter, though!
TL