Describe your biggest mess

[Zealous61]

I'll start beacuse I think I have dementia setting in to be able to have 2 within a week.

I do 15g batches in conicals. I have adopted a technique, using a sight glass chamber I attach to the 3" dump port at the bottom of my conical. Usually it makes for a no mess trub/yeast dump. I hook up the sight glass, put a few pounds of CO2 on top of the fermentor, open the valve and let it fill. Then close the valve and carefully remove the sight glass, taking care to slowly vent pressure so no mess.

Well, a few days ago I was doing it and my mind was elsewhere. Instead of unscrewing the triclamp on the sight glass distal to the valve, I unscrewed the triclamp proximal to the valve. I was rewarded with a firehose of beer into my face. Somehow with beer blasting on me through a 3" dump port under pressure, I partially covered the outflow with my hand and fished out the gasket and triclamp out of a pool of beer and reattached. I probably lost 6 gallons of beer onto my garage floor. This is my man cave so I have a carpet and pool table on other side of garage. I grabbed 10 or so beach towels and managed to save the carpet from soaking and only took me 2-3 hours to clean up the mess. Wheww, glad I'll never do that again.

3 days later, went to dump yeast after cold crashing my other fermentor. Mind elsewhere again I guess (have had a lot of family health issues), and was very careful to unscrew the right tricamp this time. All well and good, but forgot to close the valve. Firehose of hops and yeast in my face. Much worse mess this time. Have hops on the ceiling, beer and hops on my new pool table felt, and pretty much everywhere. I am taking a break from cleaning right now. The only plus was only lost 2 gallons or so of beer this time. Well, I guess I'll never do that again.

 

[GPP33]

My biggest mess right now is probably my kitchen......sorry to hear of your loss, 6 gal is an entire batch for me.

 

[Yooper]

I flooded my kitchen and much of my basement. With water.

It was my worst mistake ever, and the funny thing is I "forgot" to tell my husband about it and then he read about it years later in a magazine! (Lesson #2- because it's not the only one): https://beerandbrewing.com/homebrew-disaster-relief/

 

[SEndorf]

January 2016
Glass carboy. Lifted it. The base was all that was left.
Beer all over the floor. No more glass fermenter for me after that

 

[mashinary]

I pitched a yeast cake in to a double IPA with too little head space. I also thought it would be a good idea to put the bucket in the linen closet since I was doing some construction/remodeling on my house and the closet was clean. About a day later, when I got home and my house smelled like a hop bailing machine. The airlock clogged, and when it finally blew out of the lid, there must of been a pretty awesome fountain of krausen and hops. On the bright side, that beer was fantastic!

 

[Jag75]

January 2016
Glass carboy. Lifted it. The base was all that was left.
Beer all over the floor. No more glass fermenter for me after thatView attachment 571878

that would be horrible. Hopefully it wasnt on carpet. My worst mess up was pouring some orangesicle cream ale into my conical through a strainer and cheese cloth by myself ....big mistake . The strainer tilted it spilled over the side but i couldnt figure out why there was so much wort on the floor until I realized I left the collection ball off and the valve was open . Thankfully I only wasted about 1/4 to 1/2 a gallon. Lesson learned .....slow down and double check .

 

[NitrogenWidget]

January 2016
Glass carboy. Lifted it. The base was all that was left.
Beer all over the floor. No more glass fermenter for me after thatView attachment 571878

people keep saying "get a milk crate to carry those" i'm leaning towards that.

 

[NitrogenWidget]

worst was first few batches into it I was brewing a 5 gal batch in a 15 gal pot on my stove top.
Left the lid on to bring it to boil and got the equivalent of a baking soda volcano all over my stove top before i could run across the house to get to it.

It took forever to get the burned on worth off the stove top.

I REALLY REALLY REALLY like brewing outside on my burner for BIAB now.

 

[mongoose33]

I'll start beacuse I think I have dementia setting in to be able to have 2 within a week.

I do 15g batches in conicals. I have adopted a technique, using a sight glass chamber I attach to the 3" dump port at the bottom of my conical. Usually it makes for a no mess trub/yeast dump. I hook up the sight glass, put a few pounds of CO2 on top of the fermentor, open the valve and let it fill. Then close the valve and carefully remove the sight glass, taking care to slowly vent pressure so no mess.

Well, a few days ago I was doing it and my mind was elsewhere. Instead of unscrewing the triclamp on the sight glass distal to the valve, I unscrewed the triclamp proximal to the valve. I was rewarded with a firehose of beer into my face. Somehow with beer blasting on me through a 3" dump port under pressure, I partially covered the outflow with my hand and fished out the gasket and triclamp out of a pool of beer and reattached. I probably lost 6 gallons of beer onto my garage floor. This is my man cave so I have a carpet and pool table on other side of garage. I grabbed 10 or so beach towels and managed to save the carpet from soaking and only took me 2-3 hours to clean up the mess. Wheww, glad I'll never do that again.

3 days later, went to dump yeast after cold crashing my other fermentor. Mind elsewhere again I guess (have had a lot of family health issues), and was very careful to unscrew the right tricamp this time. All well and good, but forgot to close the valve. Firehose of hops and yeast in my face. Much worse mess this time. Have hops on the ceiling, beer and hops on my new pool table felt, and pretty much everywhere. I am taking a break from cleaning right now. The only plus was only lost 2 gallons or so of beer this time. Well, I guess I'll never do that again.

I wasn't sure whether I should "Like" this post--or look for the "Recoil in Horror" button.

I've done a couple less-intelligent things like disconnect a camlock from a mash tun without turning off the valve to which it was connected. I still had the locking clip on the valve so i was struggling to get the valve closed to stop the stream of beautiful wort onto my garage floor. (BTW, that clip has since been removed ).

I've also started to clean my conical and forgot to close the dump valve on the bottom. That was interesting....

Every time I make a mistake, I get a little smarter. I figure that by now, I must be one of the smartest brewers posting here.

 

[NitrogenWidget]

I wasn't sure whether I should "Like" this post--or look for the "Recoil in Horror" button.

I've done a couple less-intelligent things like disconnect a camlock from a mash tun without turning off the valve to which it was connected. I still had the locking clip on the valve so i was struggling to get the valve closed to stop the stream of beautiful wort onto my garage floor. (BTW, that clip has since been removed ).

I've also started to clean my conical and forgot to close the dump valve on the bottom. That was interesting....

Every time I make a mistake, I get a little smarter. I figure that by now, I must be one of the smartest brewers posting here.

eh.
Not a mess but 6 months after owning it I still forget to put my wort chiller in the boil to sanitize. ugh.
so still kind of dumb here.

 

[Elijah Hutchinson]

I've brewed a lot in dorm room kitchens. (My friends and I are all legal and it we checked with the University first in case anyone was concerned.) Try brewing 6 gallon all grain batches on an electric stovetop. Used a brew bag and colander instead of a mash tun setup. We destroyed that kitchen. Sticky beer wort was everywhere. We did this many times too.

 

[seatazzz]

Other than the sticky nasty mess that my carboys are right now after both of them blowing the airlocks out, the worst mess I had was a few brews after I started using a pump. Was transferring from the mash tun to the brew kettle, and didn't have the hose clamped tight enough. Turned on the pump, and hot wort fountain. I now have some VERY interesting burn scars on my belly and left boob, and the wort mess on the floor (not to mention my hair and clothes) took a few hours to clean up. Only lost about 1/2 gallon.

 

[KingsX]

Three stories.

1. Glass carboy, while lagering in a temperature controlled freezer, broke...beer was contained in freezer, batch lost. Not a huge mess.

2. Spilled an entire F pack (wine back sweetener juice) onto my hardwood floors. I shudder to think how much sugar is under my hardwoods.

3. This wasn't me...but my bro in law. For whatever reason, he thought when racking wine, the hose should be taut. Not only that, but he left the room while it was racking. One of his children came up from the basement saying liquid was dripping out of the air vents. Needless to say, the hose popped out of the receiving carboy, and it was "racking" onto his kitchen floor. As it was slowly pouring onto the floor, it drained into one of the floor heat/ac vents...into his ducting...out the ceiling mounted vents for the basement. Pretty much an entire 5-6 gallon batch of wine, resided in his air ducting. When the heat or ac would come on...it smelled like a nice glass of Pinot Noir for MONTHS. lol

 

[snoman6115]

2, only 1 was actually my fault though.
1. I used to keep brewing stuff in our spare bedroom, door was left open and our curious dog decided to sniff out a bag of wine flavor, think 1 gallon of honey, and tear it open and drag all over the house, but only the carpeted areas. Took days to finally clean it all.

2. This one was my fault. Was brewing and at the time I mashed and sparge inside the kitchen and boiled out on the deck. I would drain into a 2 gal pot and carry outside to the 10 gal kettle. Had a cold or flu or something and not once, but twice, let it drain too long before taking the pot outside and overflowed about 1 gal of early running wort onto the kitchen floor. 2nd time happened while I was still cleaning the first spill up

 

[Teromous]

1. My plate chiller has an inlet for a water hose and and outlet that dumps hot water through a hose into the driveway. The wort inlet comes from the brew kettle and the outlet recirculates back into the brew kettle. I switched inlets by accident one time. I ended up filling my kettle with water and dumping my precious wort into the driveway. I've learned to check and double check my setup.

2. Another time I was mashing in my kitchen with a rectangle cooler, bazooka screen, and a valve. I left the valve open while I was pouring strike water and didn't realize it until I had gallons of hot water all over my counter and floor. I've learned to check all my valves.

3. At one point I got into filtering beer. I brewed a beer that had way too much cacao powder and it ended up clogging the 0.5 micron filter. I had to open the top of the filter canister which was full of beer and it got everywhere. There was this goopy mess of cacao all over the filter and it just added to the disaster. On top of that I didn't use any kind of thread-tape or nylon washers when connecting anything so the whole setup was leaking all over the place. I've learned that I don't really need to filter anything and to use additives sparingly.

 

[user 30639]

I've got a couple. Back in my old house when I was first starting I'd brew inside on the stove. It was a rainy Saturday and I had my wort boiling away on the stove. My wife comes in the kitchen and tells me the ceiling is leaking in the laundry room. It's not a monsoon or anything, but it's coming down pretty hard. I put on a waterproof jacket and my trusty cowboy hat to keep the rain off me, and go up on the roof to put a tarp down. By the time I get done and back in the kitchen, I've had a boil over and the wort is stuck to the stove. Tried everything to get it off. There were still some bits stuck on the stove when I sold the house a couple years later.

After selling the house, we moved and got an apartment. I would do my fermenting in a swamp cooler in the closet for the spare bedroom, which was actually in the spare bathroom. Did a batch, didn't use an blowoff tube...you can guess what happened. Thankfully, the airlock blew straight up, so wort didn't get everywhere. I cleaned it up, never told my wife, and thought that was it. Until a couple weeks later when she's looking for something in the closet, I hear her yell to me, "why the **** is there beer on the ceiling?!" From then on, I would ferment in the tub.

 

[Dcpcooks]

I'll start beacuse I think I have dementia setting in to be able to have 2 within a week.

I do 15g batches in conicals. I have adopted a technique, using a sight glass chamber I attach to the 3" dump port at the bottom of my conical. Usually it makes for a no mess trub/yeast dump. I hook up the sight glass, put a few pounds of CO2 on top of the fermentor, open the valve and let it fill. Then close the valve and carefully remove the sight glass, taking care to slowly vent pressure so no mess.

Well, a few days ago I was doing it and my mind was elsewhere. Instead of unscrewing the triclamp on the sight glass distal to the valve, I unscrewed the triclamp proximal to the valve. I was rewarded with a firehose of beer into my face. Somehow with beer blasting on me through a 3" dump port under pressure, I partially covered the outflow with my hand and fished out the gasket and triclamp out of a pool of beer and reattached. I probably lost 6 gallons of beer onto my garage floor. This is my man cave so I have a carpet and pool table on other side of garage. I grabbed 10 or so beach towels and managed to save the carpet from soaking and only took me 2-3 hours to clean up the mess. Wheww, glad I'll never do that again.

3 days later, went to dump yeast after cold crashing my other fermentor. Mind elsewhere again I guess (have had a lot of family health issues), and was very careful to unscrew the right tricamp this time. All well and good, but forgot to close the valve. Firehose of hops and yeast in my face. Much worse mess this time. Have hops on the ceiling, beer and hops on my new pool table felt, and pretty much everywhere. I am taking a break from cleaning right now. The only plus was only lost 2 gallons or so of beer this time. Well, I guess I'll never do that again.

My buddy brews professionally, he turned around the other day because he heard a huge rushing water sound to see one of the other brewers getting blasted with trub hops and beer. He pulled the wrong triclamp as you did and unleashed a torrent of beer from a 30 bbl fermentor. They lost about 5 bbls and had to spend 6 hours cleaning hops trub and beer off of the floors walls and ceiling.

I was amazed they could actually get the tri clamp reattached with all the pressure. He was covered from head to toe with green hop trub.

I think they will end up tossing the beer since they have no way of knowing how much yeast blew out.

 

[itsmymilkyway]

I brewed me a nice heavy peppermint chocolate porter while i was living with a friend. I had it fermenting in the closet and had a VERY violent fermentation.Blew up in the closet and covered all his wifes clothes, graduation gown, walls with chocolate porter.

 

[greywolf]

My first brew. I stepped out of the the room ,waiting for the boil. Boil over on stove, wife walks in. Now banned from the kitchen.

 

[JohnSand]

Blonde, blue eyes, killer figure. I met her in a laundromat. She was fun and sassy, just what I like. Later proved to be more of what I like. Then she spent years tearing my life to shreds.
I've spilled some beer too.

 

[day_trippr]

whoa!

 

[JohnSand]

I got over it. The girl, not the beer.