Ah Sh$t, I Did It Too......

[mthelm85]

If you've ever forgotten to add your priming sugar to the bottling bucket and searched for similar experiences here on HBT, you know that it has happened to many of us. Here's my story:

I racked 5 gallons of a delicious Brown Ale into my bottling bucket and filled about seven 22 oz. bottles before I looked up and saw my priming solution sitting in my covered pot on the stove. My first thought, of course, was "ah, sh$t, you gotta be f%^king kidding me. I cannot believe I did that." I've only been brewing for about a year but this is the first time I've ever made a mistake like this.

My solution? I sanitized an eye dropper and guesstimated the amount of solution to add to each of the seven bottles and then very gently dumped the rest into my bottling bucket and slowwwwwly stirred it in. I didn't want to stir too much for obvious reasons but I stirred it for about 30 seconds so hopefully I'll get good consistency with those bottles.

As soon as I've had a few I'll update the thread to let you guys know how it turned out. Hopefully all will end well and I can then tell those of you who are bound to make this same mistake some time in the future that you need not worry.

Nonetheless, no matter how many stories there are about people doing the same thing and their beer turning out fine, I can't help but to be really pissed at myself for taking great care to hand craft a beautiful beer and patiently waiting weeks for it to mature only to jeopardize the final quality by forgetting a simple step.

Hopefully this will be my last, "Ah Sh$t, I Did It Too" post, lol

 

[Cosper123]

Damn man that sucks but I'm sure it will turn out fine. Worse case senario at least a few should turn out and surely the ones you bottled after the discovery. And hey if nothing else it's certainly something you'll never forget in the future...and I'm more likely to remember now so thank you.

 

[jonmohno]

Actually its a good kill step if you primary in a bottleing bucket.Something i thought of when beginning brewing but never adapted it as i always rack to my bucket with preboiled priming sugar.If i were in that situation i probably would have done the same, i would rather do that than dump them back in,which probably would have been ok if you fill along the side,i do this from my bucket every last beer i cant get out. Pour from the bucket in my last beer bottle,im getting good at it,seems hard to do but its a challange i can still win with plus its my first beer to check anyways after carbonation.

 

[tuskenraider]

You could have just left them alone as they would just be a bit less carbonated. I purposely did that to a few bottles of one of my batches just to see the difference. It was kinda of like a "cask" version of the beer, which I liked very much.

 

[mthelm85]

You could have just left them alone as they would just be a bit less carbonated. I purposely did that to a few bottles of one of my batches just to see the difference. It was kinda of like a "cask" version of the beer, which I liked very much.

In hindsight, that's what I would have done but in the moment I was so pissed at myself that I wasn't thinking straight - I was freaking out lol

I'll definitely not start drinking before I bottle next time because my thought process was definitely under the influence. Wanna know how dumb I really am? I had some coopers tabs from a long time ago in my brew closet so I could have just filled all of the bottles and then dropped one in each and I would have been just fine. But hey, hindsight is 20/20.