Got a brewday disaster story?

[Denny]

You know how it goes. Drop a carboy, burn the mash, put 3 eyes of newt instead of 1. What's your disaster story? OK, we've all had those brewing days where nothing seems to go right. Not just running out of propane...you know, the kind of day where you wonder why you're doing this! But we power through and keep brewing. For our April Fools show, we're looking for stories of brew days gone wrong..really wrong. Something to make us all feel better about our own brewdays from Hell! Email your brewday disaster stories to [email protected] or call our Beer Hotline at 626.765.1ALE and tell us your story!

 

[kh54s10]

I am sure mine won't make the cut. Other than the usual, the worst of mine was overflowing the kitchen sink while cooling an extract batch. I was in the basement on HBT when I heard water dripping. Fortunately it came through at a beam and did not soak the ceiling tiles. Just mopping up some water.

 

[jodell]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=599265


That's mine...

 

[NadoHawk]

Flooded my garage with beer after my siphon tubing had enough torque to knock over my brew bucket during bottling.

 

[mprowland]

I was about to finish my boil and I placed my wort chiller in for the last 5-10 minutes. When I hit "0" minutes, I cranked on the water and came back 10 minutes later to check on it. Little did I know that I didn't quite get all the water out of the chiller when I brewed last(I drain it every time). There was a small split in the copper tubing due to freezing water that was left inside. Needless to say, I cooled my wort by adding a few gallons of well water directly into my wort!! I now bring my new chiller inside every time!

 

[oylerck]

I was about to finish my boil and I placed my wort chiller in for the last 5-10 minutes. When I hit "0" minutes, I cranked on the water and came back 10 minutes later to check on it. Little did I know that I didn't quite get all the water out of the chiller when I brewed last(I drain it every time). There was a small split in the copper tubing due to freezing water that was left inside. Needless to say, I cooled my wort by adding a few gallons of well water directly into my wort!! I now bring my new chiller inside every time!

Just did the same thing yesterday but it was only a gallon. Also when I went to sanitize it in the boiling wort The water must have thaw and it came out of the hose and landed on my foot .this is also the batch that I decided to hand mill my grains and ended up with a 46 mash efficiency. This was all yesterday and I thought my new green mill should've been there on Monday but I miss read the date and it was actually next Monday. However after I finished boiling the grain mill showed up.

I also transferred a beer from primary to the keg and tried to pour it through just testing it chilled and force carbed and it clogged with hop matter.

All in all rough day for brewing.

 

[hedge_87]

I have bottom drain keggles on my set up and when I go to clean up I use a 2.5 gallon drywall bucket with a sump pump underneath them to pump the clean up water out of the garage via the doggy door and into the vegetable garden. This winter it was freezing ass cold outside so I didn't want the garden hose to freeze up while I was running my second batch so I pulled the hose end back into the garage. after brew number 2 was completed I started in cleaning by plugging in the pump and started washing everything down. I never put the hose back outside and had what looked like 30 gallons of sticky grainy clean up water all over the garage floor. luckily I have a BIG mop.

 

[clone63]

Not exactly a disaster but the first extract stout I did was when I didn't have a thermometer yet but was waiting for one in the mail. Was just going with the ol' hand-guess and a spare thermostat placed beside it for ambient temps. Well, it had not cooled quite to room temp, just judging from my touch but impatience prevailed and I figured eehhh, pitch it.
Thermometer showed up 2 days in and I stuck it on the side of the carboy to reveal... 28C. Uuhg... I knew fermentation started rigorously but poop. Sample was near FG and a great fragrant, bubble gum stout. A not bad ice-cold-drink-a-few-quickly-and-they-taste-ok beer.

 

[jpakstis]

We had moved out of our house for a major renovation from September to January so no brewing for the past four months. I recently upgraded from BIAB to a cooler-based AG setup so I was all excited to test that out and get back to brewing, on Super Bowl Sunday no less. And on our new deck. So I heat the water up to strike temp and pour into the cooler via the kettle ball valve and mash. Everything's going great so far.

When the mash is done, I go to sparge and drain back into the kettle, so I do that, still looking great. I go back into to play a board game with the kids when after about 5 minutes I look out and see the wort draining out of the kettle. I completely forgot to close the kettle ball valve after heating mash water! I probably lost about 1/2 gallon, so probably not the worst in the world, but my OG dropped from an expected 1.061 to around 1.048, so it'll become a session IPA I guess!