Vamptrump
Well-Known Member
After my brew/bottle day yesterday, I felt like sharing and hearing other peoples brew day horror stories. I will start:
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It all started on a warm humid Sunday morning, the birds were chirping, sun was shinning, everyone was happy, because it was BREW DAY. Today was a good day, I was preparing to bottle an Irish Red that was sitting for 4 weeks. Per request I was going to split the batch 50/50. 2 gallons normal and 2 gallons with strawberry extract.
The car was packed up with my mash tun, grain mill, bottles, yeasties, and everything else I needed...so I thought. I show up to my friend's house to start brewing at 10 AM and start unpacking everything to realize I forgot the strawberry extract! "Not a big deal, I'll just do 4 gallons plain Irish Red", I told myself. I moved on and started to collect everything for bottling. "Have you seen my bottle caps I left here last time", I asked my friend to a dumbfounded response. At this point, I had the luxury of waiting until 11 AM for a local store to open so I could buy caps (again). While I was out and about, I went ahead and grabbed the strawberry extract while I was at it.
When I got back, I knew we could start bottling without any problems. I was out for a half hour, so figured everything else would be prepped while I was gone. Nope. Not that big of a deal, and I moved onto cleaning/sanitizing everything. Everyone jokes about how glass as a magical attraction to concrete, and I got to experience that first hand. Down went my floating thermometer that was sitting on a lid (not the smartest placement I could have picked). My friend ran out to get a new one while I was getting everything else ready. It was only fair, he broke two of my hydrometers in the past.
The new Irish Red was brought out to start bottling and I popped the airlock off to get a huge smell of rye. After siphoning I took a sample, wow that rye bitterness just sat in my mouth for what felt like forever. Not a big deal, I brewed this per a request for someone else, I was probably going to give most of it away anyway. Time to start bottling. Another friend was filling the bottles while I was adding the carbonation tablets (love them!) and capping (on concrete, dumb). After I capped about a quarter of the bottles, I realized that I completely forgot to put tablets in some of the bottles. Time to play "Can you find the tablet!". I managed to pinpoint 4 bottles that I forgot tablets and addressed that.
My friend returns back with multiple thermometers, in case we break them again. Now that I can monitor my water, time to start heating up my strike water and mill the grains. I went searching for my bucket I mill into and couldn't find it. I found out they had used it to ferment cider two weeks ago. That's fine, I just cleaned the bottling bucket and used it instead. I grunted away milling my 12.5 lbs of grain by hand, only managing to smash my thumb once (success).
Water at temperature, grains milled, IT'S MASHING TIME! Stirred the mash a little bit and closed up the cooler. What's that dripping from the spout? You've got to be kidding me, the mash tun is leaking and I have a 75 min rest, this won't do! I immediately assess the situation and deem that my hand must be stuck into the mash to tighten the spout that somehow loosened.
** Warning: Don't stick your hand into a hot mash, it burns. **
Obviously sticking my hand in wasn't going to work, without serious damage to my hand and arm. Time to pour out everything into the bottling bucket I just used for grains. Once everything was tightened back up, I was able to start the mash again...except I had lost too much temperature at this point. Time to play the game of thermodynamics and heat up more water to raise the temperature.
This is the point where I could sit down and finally enjoy some beer while prepping my sparge water.
Quick sparge, filled the boil kettle and started heat up for the boil...I sat down to relax again. "CRAP", I yelled, running to my hops. I forgot to add my FWH when catching the wort from the sparge!
Crisis averted, time to enjoy more beer. I look over to my friend, he looks back at me thinking the same thing, "Did the temperature just drop quickly and it get dark?" We both bolt out of the garage to get the equipment on the driveway, right before a thunderstorm rolled in.
Everything else finished smoothly (aside from forgetting my OG reading), I ended up yielding 6 gallons instead of 5, but just threw a blowoff tube on the 6.5 gallon carboy and called it a day. The entire time we kept joking about when the carboy was going to shatter to finish off the day. I'm glad that didn't happen.
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So now that you have made it through the story. Share your horror stories, hopefully they all at least end in a happy ending.
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It all started on a warm humid Sunday morning, the birds were chirping, sun was shinning, everyone was happy, because it was BREW DAY. Today was a good day, I was preparing to bottle an Irish Red that was sitting for 4 weeks. Per request I was going to split the batch 50/50. 2 gallons normal and 2 gallons with strawberry extract.
The car was packed up with my mash tun, grain mill, bottles, yeasties, and everything else I needed...so I thought. I show up to my friend's house to start brewing at 10 AM and start unpacking everything to realize I forgot the strawberry extract! "Not a big deal, I'll just do 4 gallons plain Irish Red", I told myself. I moved on and started to collect everything for bottling. "Have you seen my bottle caps I left here last time", I asked my friend to a dumbfounded response. At this point, I had the luxury of waiting until 11 AM for a local store to open so I could buy caps (again). While I was out and about, I went ahead and grabbed the strawberry extract while I was at it.
When I got back, I knew we could start bottling without any problems. I was out for a half hour, so figured everything else would be prepped while I was gone. Nope. Not that big of a deal, and I moved onto cleaning/sanitizing everything. Everyone jokes about how glass as a magical attraction to concrete, and I got to experience that first hand. Down went my floating thermometer that was sitting on a lid (not the smartest placement I could have picked). My friend ran out to get a new one while I was getting everything else ready. It was only fair, he broke two of my hydrometers in the past.
The new Irish Red was brought out to start bottling and I popped the airlock off to get a huge smell of rye. After siphoning I took a sample, wow that rye bitterness just sat in my mouth for what felt like forever. Not a big deal, I brewed this per a request for someone else, I was probably going to give most of it away anyway. Time to start bottling. Another friend was filling the bottles while I was adding the carbonation tablets (love them!) and capping (on concrete, dumb). After I capped about a quarter of the bottles, I realized that I completely forgot to put tablets in some of the bottles. Time to play "Can you find the tablet!". I managed to pinpoint 4 bottles that I forgot tablets and addressed that.
My friend returns back with multiple thermometers, in case we break them again. Now that I can monitor my water, time to start heating up my strike water and mill the grains. I went searching for my bucket I mill into and couldn't find it. I found out they had used it to ferment cider two weeks ago. That's fine, I just cleaned the bottling bucket and used it instead. I grunted away milling my 12.5 lbs of grain by hand, only managing to smash my thumb once (success).
Water at temperature, grains milled, IT'S MASHING TIME! Stirred the mash a little bit and closed up the cooler. What's that dripping from the spout? You've got to be kidding me, the mash tun is leaking and I have a 75 min rest, this won't do! I immediately assess the situation and deem that my hand must be stuck into the mash to tighten the spout that somehow loosened.
** Warning: Don't stick your hand into a hot mash, it burns. **
Obviously sticking my hand in wasn't going to work, without serious damage to my hand and arm. Time to pour out everything into the bottling bucket I just used for grains. Once everything was tightened back up, I was able to start the mash again...except I had lost too much temperature at this point. Time to play the game of thermodynamics and heat up more water to raise the temperature.
This is the point where I could sit down and finally enjoy some beer while prepping my sparge water.
Quick sparge, filled the boil kettle and started heat up for the boil...I sat down to relax again. "CRAP", I yelled, running to my hops. I forgot to add my FWH when catching the wort from the sparge!
Crisis averted, time to enjoy more beer. I look over to my friend, he looks back at me thinking the same thing, "Did the temperature just drop quickly and it get dark?" We both bolt out of the garage to get the equipment on the driveway, right before a thunderstorm rolled in.
Everything else finished smoothly (aside from forgetting my OG reading), I ended up yielding 6 gallons instead of 5, but just threw a blowoff tube on the 6.5 gallon carboy and called it a day. The entire time we kept joking about when the carboy was going to shatter to finish off the day. I'm glad that didn't happen.
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So now that you have made it through the story. Share your horror stories, hopefully they all at least end in a happy ending.
