What was you biggest boneheaded rookie mistake?

dutch101st · Mar 14, 2009

After I had about 8 brews under my belt, I went to bottle and plum forgot the primeing sugar.

Needless to say, I was rather proud of my endeavour and handed out a few bottles, not knowing it was flatter than Quincy's girlfriend's rearend.

nealf · Mar 14, 2009

I've done that before; had to uncap them all and dump them all back into the bottling bucket with the priming sugar.

Worst mistake: Getting drunk while brewing, it could definitely become a waste of a $50 batch.

CaptYesterday · Mar 14, 2009

My roommate and I have been brewing together for over a year now. When we went AG we hastily built ourselves a Zapap lauter tun and used it without testing it. Obviously we got a stuck mash.

Biggest rookie mistake made that day?

My buddy decided he could stick his hand into the bucket and clear the blockage. I think right about the time he got his hand to the bottom of the mash he realized what a terrible idea it was.

Nuff said.

Endovelico · Mar 14, 2009

Probably adding the malt (extract) after adding the first hops at 60 min. Many boilovers ocured that day.

HotbreakHotel · Mar 14, 2009

I did the priming sugar thing too -- unfortunately I wasn't still a newbie then.

A couple of my dumb moves:

1) Tried to harvest Bell's yeast. Didn't see any activity for six days and was delighted when it finally started. Didn't smell or taste the liquid, just dumped the sediment into my next batch of wort. Dumped it a month later.

2) Got concentrated Star San on my high gloss formica countertop, and it caused irreversible damage.

Evan · Mar 14, 2009

just throwing grains, malt and hops together without any real thought, i guess one in a hundred you might get lucky, but i never seemed to. oh and getting drunk while brewing, always a mistake, last week i got so drunk i forgot when i started the boil!?!?!?

Christian · Mar 14, 2009

Drunk brewing hands down and i am not talking slightly buzzed or fairly intoxicated...no...no....i'm talking about fall down drunk!!! :drunk:

Lets just say that equipment was ruined, broken, destroyed, melted (yes i said melted) and everything you can possibly think could go wrong did.

Luckily i do not remember much about the night (other than my wife laughing at me while she watched), i just remember waking up to the horrible mess and making a mental note to never ever do that again.

brian_g · Mar 14, 2009

I made several mistakes:

1) I boiled my "no-boil" kit and it boiled over. Wife not happy.

2) I forgot to close the tap in my fermenter and wort ran everywhere.

3) I shook my bottles on several different day to get it to carbonate faster. The result. It broke up the sediment into little chunks that never settled down properly. That was last summer. I still have one bottle left and there is still sediment floating in the bottle.

rtichota · Mar 15, 2009

First batch ever - I added my extract, put my hops in, and knew I was close to having my first batch...then at the end of the boil I put a carboy in an ice bath and dumped the boiling wort into it! It didn't shatter, but when I tried to lift it out of the sink it came apart in two pieces. A full batch of beer all over the kitchen floor...my roommates dubbed my response, "The F-bomb heard round the world."

RICLARK · Mar 15, 2009

2nd batch I made was a coopers APA can. I left it on the stove and sat in the chair and fell asleep for an hour and a half. I woke up and there was about 2 gallons left in the pot and the Wort was burned into an awful charcoal taste.

bob1852 · Mar 15, 2009

I forgot the priming sugar also -- thankfully it was a batch of Apfelwein, so I didn't care - and I was making some mead at the same time so I threw the sugar water into the must (I had actually boiled the priming sugar -- just forgot to add it to the Apfelwein during bottling!)

eager_brewer · Mar 15, 2009

My first all grain batch I sparged with about a gallon of water for 12 lbs of grain I wort that was useless!

Sucram · Mar 18, 2009

A few years back, a friend and I were making an imperial stout. There was so much beautiful inky, black runoff from the steeping grains that we saved it (unboiled) and used it to top off the batch in the fermenter. It tasted like plum and charcoal.

BeaverBrewer · Mar 18, 2009

Definitely getting drunk while brewing.

That dead guy clone was sneaky... :drunk:

ctdenney · Mar 18, 2009

My thermometer, after it reaches 100F starts over, so that 120F is just labeled 20

So on my first brew, since i did not have any cooling equipment, I was letting it cool on its own(first mistake) After a while i checked the temp and it was at 85, good enough! i thought, and pitched the yeast. 10 minutes later i discovered that it was in fact 185 and i had killed my yeast. I had to rush to the brewery supply store the next to buy more yeast. That first batch had a funny after taste that I have since attributed to wild yeast taking a slight hold in the day the wort sat without yeast.

llazy_llama · Mar 18, 2009

I think we've all forgotten to add priming sugar at least once. My biggest flaw is that I forget 75% of the time. So far I've gotten lucky and caught it after 1-6 bottles each time. No blood, no foul.

Honestly though, my biggest mistake (and I think many will agree with me here) is not doing a dry-run first when I get new equipment. It always takes a few batches to dial in your process, and as has been said before, that resets with each change to your equipment. My first attempt at a full boil with a turkey fryer met with near disaster due to constant 10-15 mph winds in my area. HURR DURR! Since then, I moved to the garage and never looked back.

Another all too common mistake is complacency. Well heck, my last few batches didn't boil over when I used a fan to dissipate surface tension, so this one won't either. Ask my wife how that one turned out, or walk bare-foot in my kitchen to learn first hand.

GregR · Mar 18, 2009

my very first brew came with a 1 pound pack of priming sugar. we added all of it to the 5 gallon batch. talk about over carbing! we lost probably over half the bottles to the tops popping off. the ones that didnt pop gushed like old faithful and we got maybe 1/2 a beer from each 22 oz bottle.

also forgot to add the priming sugar once. to this day that is one of big "are we SURE we did this" things during bottling day.

for the first few batches I had NO idea how to use a hydrometer and didn't even touch it.

I'm sure I could think of more bonehead thing I did but those top the list.

danorocks17 · Mar 18, 2009

I decided it would be a good idea to put my boil pot on the back burner. I was doing a 90 minute boil and my wife said she could smell something burning. I couldn't smell it but i was hearing this crackling sounds, but didnt think anything of it. So after my boil is done I take the pot off the stove and I had burned what looked like a smiley face on the back of my counter. Luckly, we haven't re-done our kitchen yet, so she wasn't too pissed.

Oh, and dont get hammered on brew day till, AFTER everything is done.

conpewter · Mar 18, 2009

On my first batch I had a 5 gallon carboy... for a 5 gallon batch. There was not room in there to shake the fermenter like the instructions said so I got an air mattress pump and blew air into it for about 5 minutes.... that batch got infected really bad. Luckily my next batch was not so bad.

While mashing in the kitchen I started draining my wort into my new keggle. I started to eat supper while it drained, turned around a minute later to see the floor covered with wort from the open spigot. (That batch was really tasty in the end)

tolip_ck1 · Mar 18, 2009

Grabbed a hold of my copper piping during a liquid transfer, 200 deg F will ABSOLUTELLY melt your finger prints, way before you feel it!!

Revvy · Mar 18, 2009

You might find these stories amusing

We did a huge "bare our souls for the skittish new brewers so they know we're fallable" thread at the beginning of the year...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

But I have learned an important lesson (at teach a neighbor to brew day in front of some hbt'ers) You know those metal legs on your turkey fryer? The ones attached to the metal frame that the burner flame touches? You don't wanna grab the leg to move it around after it's been burning for and hour...*owie*

jacksonbrown · Mar 18, 2009

My very first brew was on my stove-top brew, of course. While waiting for a boil I decided to get some dishes cleaned. Big mistake! Huge boil over, wort caramelized wort all over my range, bellow the burners, even some on the floor. That was a B!TCH to clean.

rjhockey · Mar 18, 2009

The best bone headed mistake i've ever made was sometime early last year I started brewing a nice blue moon clone.

I mashed in at 5pm on a Sunday, everything went perfect got about 76% efficency which was my target. Dead on Preboil Gravity, perfect boil no spills, chilled down in under 15 minutes, not a thing wrong.

So I have this perfect batch of wort sitting in my kitchen transfering to the carboy. I go into my brew supply room to get the yeast, but wait... NO YEAST. I forgot to buy yeast for the brew. So silly me I capped up the carboy, and let it sit over night stopped at the LHBS on the way way home, only to find that i'm not the only organism that like the wort. Chalk that up to a wasted night and a wasted brew.

I now buy my yeast in bulk, hopefully soon I'll be able to start culturing it.

conpewter · Mar 18, 2009

Revvy said:
But I have learned an important lesson (at teach a neighbor to brew day in front of some hbt'ers) You know those metal legs on your turkey fryer? The ones attached to the metal frame that the burner flame touches? You don't wanna grab the leg to move it around after it's been burning for and hour...*owie*

That reminds me! After draining my keggle one time I picked it up by the bottom rim and top rim... OUCH that bottom rim stays HOT.

Also I took my keggle off the burner one time when it blew out, and when I put it back on I noticed a nice ring shape melted into my plastic welcome mat by the back door....

Tenchiro · Mar 18, 2009

My last batch of cider that I was happily bottling only to realize that after I added the priming sugar to the bottling bucket I had forgotten to dissolve it in water. Every bottle in that batch had sugar in the bottom of them and were all poorly carbed.

Bernie Brewer · Mar 18, 2009

Revvy said:
But I have learned an important lesson (at teach a neighbor to brew day in front of some hbt'ers) You know those metal legs on your turkey fryer? The ones attached to the metal frame that the burner flame touches? You don't wanna grab the leg to move it around after it's been burning for and hour...*owie*

conpewter said:
That reminds me! After draining my keggle one time I picked it up by the bottom rim and top rim... OUCH that bottom rim stays HOT.

Let me tell that the ******* moves don't stop even if you don't consider yourself a noob. Just last month at the brew-together at Cookiebaggs' place I did the same thing. Short Drive needed help lifting his keggle, so I volunteered. I couldn't get a good grip on the handle, so without thinking I reached down and grabbed it from the bottom. I could literally hear my fingers sizzle. I ran my fingers under the cold tap for a few minutes, and spent the remainder of the day with a fresh cold brew in that hand....:cross:

BTW my blisters have healed nicely by now.....

Hegh · Mar 18, 2009

Just last night I was racking some Apfelwein, and there was what looked like a bubble between the autosiphon and the tubing. I kept letting off little bubbles, but I figured it would be okay, since that tiny amount of air can't really aerate the whole batch.

Near the end of the transfer, I grab onto the autosiphon where the tubing attaches... and the bubbling stops. It had been sucking fresh air into the tube that whole time, probably aerating the entire batch... We'll see how it turns out. I was very excited for this, but now I'm worried that I ruined it.

TurboBrew · Mar 18, 2009

I've forgotten the priming sugar so many times I bought kegs.

The most boneheaded thing I've done is think that my beer is fragile and delicate. On batch number 3 I believe, my friend took the airlock out to see what it smelled like and I about fainted. Of course it was fine.

Numerous burns. Brewing in wind sucks.

It doesn't matter how awesome you think it is, if they've been drinking BMC for 10 years or it's your condescending older brother
(or both), they won't like it.

Jumbo82 · Mar 18, 2009

I've done most of the mistakes mentioned. Boiled over on stove. Forgot priming sugar. Broken carboys, most recently with hot cleaner into cold glass. Dumped a batch out from primary because it burned my nose when I put my head in the bucket to smell it (pure co2, probably my dumbest mistake). The list is too long, I'm going to stop there.

Llama · Mar 18, 2009

For one of my first brews, I was brewing indoors and the stove was on an island. I didn't notice that my girlfriend had put my computer by behind the kettle. The screen melted and bulged outwards. Luckily the lcd didn't break, but I was never able to close the lid of that laptop again.

What was you biggest boneheaded rookie mistake?

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