Homebrew facepalms

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"Whiskey bottles are NOT made for carbonated beverages" says me after and Evan Williams bottle explodes, soaking the inside of an Amish country cabinet
 
Filled and corked a entire batch of mead, then during cleanup found the acid blend that was supposed to be in the mead.

Using a pump to circulate ice water through my wort chiller when, as I walked by, the return hose "burped", rising up to shoot near boiling water all over my upper torso and right arm. The blisters took a while to heal.
 
kranak said:
I got my siphon ready to transfer beer to bottling bucket. Looked in the bucket and saw "liquid" in the bottom. Though I I left sanitizer in there. Quickly poured it out. Started syphoning and reached for my sugar water. Uhoh.
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That sounds awfully familiar!
 
TANSTAAFB....combining two of my favorite things; beer and Heinlein. Homebrew, the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived!
 
Thirdthorpe said:
TANSTAAFB....combining two of my favorite things; beer and Heinlein. Homebrew, the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived!
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Bravo! Nobody has ever gotten it...even after explanation most don't get it. It amazes me the number of people who've never read Heinlein!
 
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is probably one of my all time top favorite books. Its good stuff, and this thread is full of proof that there aint no such thing as a free beer.
 
Thirdthorpe said:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is probably one of my all time top favorite books. Its good stuff, and this thread is full of proof that there aint no such thing as a free beer.
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You have excellent taste my friend! I think that might be the best revolutionary book ever written (modern at least) and one of my favorites as well.
 
I live in Minnesota and had a late fall brewing session where I turned on the outside water supply to run my wort chiller (temps were near freezing at the time). Several weeks later, after many days and nights of below freezing temps, I realized that I forgot to turn off the outside supply. Oops. Fortunately, my pipes didn't completely freeze, and my brewing career lives to fight another day.
 
After imitating my good friends cheech and chong i forgot to add the priming sugar. but luckily i realised once i finished bottling:cross:
 
There is always the classic dumping of the stirbar in with the starter...first (& only =] ) time I did it I freaked out and went in to the elbow to grab it. No gloves. No sanitizer. Beer was fine. I now ALWAYS use a spare magnet to secure the stirbar to the flask, retrieve it, and store it stuck to my brew fridge!
 
TANSTAAFB said:
That sounds awfully familiar!
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Yup, also done this.
Also dumped my stir bar in with the yeast.
Also splashed maybe half a gallon of wort all over myself, the stove, and the floor while squeezing the bag during my second ever BIAB brew.
 
TANSTAAFB said:
There is always the classic dumping of the stirbar in with the starter...first (& only =] ) time I did it I freaked out and went in to the elbow to grab it. No gloves. No sanitizer. Beer was fine. I now ALWAYS use a spare magnet to secure the stirbar to the flask, retrieve it, and store it stuck to my brew fridge!
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Hell, I do that do often I consider it SOP. Usually retrieve it from the strainer of the kitchen sink, because I forget it's in the fermentor when I go to clean it.
 
Forgot to pitch yeast more than once. On my latest batchmy mash got stuck. I tried clearing it by blowing through the outlet with an air compressor. Don't do that. Unless you like cleaning hot sticky wort off the ceiling.
 
hou_me said:
Forgot to pitch yeast more than once. On my latest batchmy mash got stuck. I tried clearing it by blowing through the outlet with an air compressor. Don't do that. Unless you like cleaning hot sticky wort off the ceiling.
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Thanks a lot, now I'm cleaning hot sticky coffee and snot off my keyboard.:cross:
 
The most stupid thing I ever did. It started to pour and get windy, so I thought I'd clip a lightweight towel over the kettle to keep leaves and small birds from falling in. I didn't figure the towel would trap so much steam. I went to do a slick one handed move to flip the towel up, dump in some hops, and move on. Well, the jet of steam scorched the back of my hand and it blistered badly. I spent the rest of the brew day with one hand in ice water. All for a 2.5 gallon test batch. Turned it good in the end.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Home Brew mobile app
 
Sealed a keg lid at about 35 psi (first batch ever i believe). Reset to serving pressure then later hooked up gas connect to the liquid post by mistake. Beer backed up into the gas lines. Fortunately it didn't make it to the regulator body, but i did have to remove the lines for cleaning.
 
So not to be a thread necromancer or anything, but I just had myself a little facepalm action.

Yesterday I made my first leap into the world of all-grain brewing and as such I thought it would be a good idea to start with something simple and light in gravity. So naturally I chose a Belgian strong ale with 13.5 pounds of grain. Small and simple right? Any ways, this thing started into an ANGRY fermentation this morning and I just came home from class to find that krausen had clogged the airlock and the lid had been blown wide open. So I snapped the lid back in place and set off to go get an airlock and a blowoff tube. After about 15 minutes I came back down and heard the clogged airlock whistling from the pressure built up behind it promptly before pulling it out and getting a total krausen moneyshot. It didn't even buy me dinner first, either.

Now I'm just hoping that nothing crawled into that bucket while the lid was open, but its winter here and most critters are dead or sleeping so I'm not too concerned.
 
When I was using a 70qt coleman as my mash tun I had fabricated a cpvc pipe manifold that sat at the bottom. After our last batch we had taken the manifold out for cleaning and I had it out on its own to air out.

Well, we were making a new batch and we doughed in and I went over to the bucket that the mainfold was sitting on top of and was holding the manifold for a good 5 minutes before I realized we had doughed in without the manifold attached in the mash tun. We had to perform emergency surgery to try and get it attached with 160+ degree water and mash sloshing around on our hands.
 
Where to begin?

First partial mash, had no idea what I was doing and mashed the grains at some ridiculously low temperature.

On other batches, (recently enough to know better) left the kettle valve open and spilled first runnings onto the ground. Got boiling immersion chiller discharge on my sandal-clad foot. On a winter brewday, let the March pump and QR fittings freeze. Shorted my grain bill by 30% and couldn't figure out why my figures were way off. Didn't clean my kettle valve and, voila! discovered that the ball and fittings were encrusted in black carbonized sugar.

EDIT: I don't know what I did, but I messed up harvesting some 1450 yeast back in November. I think the batch must not have been ready for kegging and harvesting (I just dump the yeast cake into beer bottles per Papazian) Anyway, it must have been too early to seal the yeast/trub into a bottle because, when I opened one on Saturday, Kablooie! It blasted all over the walls like Champagne in the World Series winner's locker room. Took the second bottle into the back yard and popped it open. It too blasted off with enough force to send yeast flying about three feet and - seriously, the bottle had a recoil when it opened. Cripes.
 
Oh man, where to start.

I've left the valve open so many times that I have "flood control towels."

That being said... guess who got a pump? Yup. This guy. I've forgotten to attach my outflow hose to my RIMS tube a couple of times...I've forgotten to close the valve on the kettle after disconnecting the pump....a couple of times.

So. I have flood control towels for the kitchen and now I have a wet vac for the living room (Amazing how much force those pumps generate).

P.S. I've hooked up the Gas line on my keggerator without having a faucet attached.
 
Just in my brew day yesterday: everything went super smooth until the end when my numbers were looking really funky. Double checked and it was still off. 49% efficiency where normally I'm in the low 80s.

Turns out I forgot to check the crush on the grain. The set screws on my mill loosened probably in the beginning and the rollers opened up to 0.045 to 0.067in. Face palm.

That damn monster mill. I should know better by now.
 
WissaBrewGuy said:
Removed a keggle mash tun right after doing a step on my burner and brought it inside to keep it warm. The valve was leaking a little so I put the keggle down on my carpet to grab a plastic bag to prevent the leak from staining the carpet. I picked the keggle up and the carpet came with it. I put the keggle down on the plastic bag and looked at the carpet to find a giant burned O where the keggle sat. Looked over and the plastic bag was melted to the bottom of the keggle. You should have put it on a wood board says SWMBO... "Thanks for the 20/20 hindsight."
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Have done this. Thankfully on a free strip of carpet I just use in my garage so the floor isn't too cold when hanging out in there!
I named the beer Rugged Pale Ale :)
 
Thirdthorpe said:
After about 15 minutes I came back down and heard the clogged airlock whistling from the pressure built up behind it promptly before pulling it out and getting a total krausen moneyshot. It didn't even buy me dinner first, either.
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Laughed loud and long at this mental image...I'm really glad I hadn't just taken a drink!
 
Black Island Brewer said:
Hell, I do that do often I consider it SOP. Usually retrieve it from the strainer of the kitchen sink, because I forget it's in the fermentor when I go to clean it.
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I wasn't thinking when I cleaned my flask and dumped the stirbar down unbeknownst to me. Until, My garbage disposal stopped working and I had to work on it and clean out my torn up stir bar... ha ha at least the garbage disposal didn't break!
 
3 weeks ago I racked 4 gallons of a nice nut brown directly on to 1 gallon of starsan that was in the keg. Didn't realize until the keg was about to overflow and I still had a lot in the carboy. Then it hit me.

Long story short: I got distracted & had thought I'd already emptied that keg.
 
I'd say something about these, but knowing myself and my karma, I'd do exactly the same thing.
Closest I came was when doing a double bottle session (a batch of dubbel that I split half and half and aged on part with bourbon oak.) I left the spigot on the bottle bucket open and dumped a goodly portion of the bourbon aged all over the floor.
SWMBO was thankful that I mopped 3 times to get it all up and non-sticky.
 
TANSTAAFB said:
Laughed loud and long at this mental image...I'm really glad I hadn't just taken a drink!
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Have done this before.... Just got home late at night after work, still white dress shirt and tie on and everything. I noticed that my 10g fermentor was clogged up with a huge dark as night IRS. I went to try and slowly loosen the airlock rubber stopper and it just blew up ALL over the place, insluding all over my dress clothes, ceiling, ferm chamber, everything! So, after a super stressful day, I had to take the time to clean everything around 2am in the morning, and try to laugh and wish I had it on film!

**Don't know why it didn't quote the first part, but i'm sure you all get the picture**
 
So I thought I'd try my hand at in-bottle pasteurization of a bottle conditioned hard cider, using the water bath technique here on the forums. Got the water up to 190, put in 7 bottles, set the timer, and at 8 minutes 1 blows up. It's in my pressure cooker with the lid sealed, so no other problems. Hoped it was a fluke, did 7 more, had one more blow. So I tried the alternative method of warming them lower in hot tap water, then putting them into 170F water, putting 12 in. Seven more blow, only the increased volume in the cooker brought the water level nearer to the top, so when the first one went, it came out of the pressure relief port just like Old Faithful. Holy hell it was a nightmare!

The happy ending is that I uncapped the rest, set a sanitized lid on top, let it off gas for 20 minutes, recapped and finished up, losing "only" two more. Decided to name it "Exploding Apples Sparkling Hard Cider".
 
NickTheGreat said:
Not that long ago I put my IC into my wort with 15 minutes left like normal. I didn't really think about the tubing and melted the **** out of it. I'd used the silly thing probably half a dozen times before this too. Luckily it was on the outlet, so it wasn't the end of the world.
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Did this just the weekend before last. during the last 15 minutes the outflow hose was resting against my burners frame. Luckily there is still just enough remaining for itto be useable, ilbeit barely. Gotta remember to replace that before my next brew.
 
While making my first extract brew, I got to about 1/2 way through the boil, then thought - oh man, am I supposed to have the lid on the kettle? So I put the lid on..."this way I don't evaporate a lot of my wort", says I, feeling quite wise! Then I watched for a while, and turned my back just as a surge of foam pushed the lid up and poured down the sides of the kettle, burning on the stove surface and smelling horrible.
 
WissaBrewGuy said:
Removed a keggle mash tun right after doing a step on my burner and brought it inside to keep it warm. The valve was leaking a little so I put the keggle down on my carpet to grab a plastic bag to prevent the leak from staining the carpet. I picked the keggle up and the carpet came with it. I put the keggle down on the plastic bag and looked at the carpet to find a giant burned O where the keggle sat. Looked over and the plastic bag was melted to the bottom of the keggle. You should have put it on a wood board says SWMBO... "Thanks for the 20/20 hindsight."
Click to expand...

The carpet from the garage to laundry (brew) room has the big O burnt in. Heat water in garage, then carry in to MLT in laundry. Door was latched so I sat down keggle to open it.... Here's your sign.:p
 
DrunkleJon said:
Did this just the weekend before last. during the last 15 minutes the outflow hose was resting against my burners frame. Luckily there is still just enough remaining for itto be useable, ilbeit barely. Gotta remember to replace that before my next brew.
Click to expand...

At least yours was the outlet hose. I tossed in my chiller at 15min to sanitize. At Flameout I connect the inlet hose and open the valve at the hose end. No water... walk to spigot... it's on... find kink in hose. Unkink SPHHHHH!!!! Hose had laid against burner frame and with no water flowing it melted a hole in the supply hose :p :cross: At least the melted hole was about 2ft from the end so I didn't lose much hose length.
 
stonecutter2 said:
While making my first extract brew, I got to about 1/2 way through the boil, then thought - oh man, am I supposed to have the lid on the kettle? So I put the lid on..."this way I don't evaporate a lot of my wort", says I, feeling quite wise! Then I watched for a while, and turned my back just as a surge of foam pushed the lid up and poured down the sides of the kettle, burning on the stove surface and smelling horrible.
Click to expand...

Third or fourth batch I did the exact same thing, only I put the lid on, sat down, popped a beer and thought "man! This is going really smoothly!" just as the boilover hit.
 
johngaltsmotor said:
At least yours was the outlet hose. I tossed in my chiller at 15min to sanitize. At Flameout I connect the inlet hose and open the valve at the hose end. No water... walk to spigot... it's on... find kink in hose. Unkink SPHHHHH!!!! Hose had laid against burner frame and with no water flowing it melted a hole in the supply hose :p :cross: At least the melted hole was about 2ft from the end so I didn't lose much hose length.
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Anti-like. That sucks.
 

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