Homebrew facepalms

[Safa]

The only thing that tops that is realizing you were worried all day and made several posts about your mistake, then realizing your hydrometer only goes up to 1.17 and 1.2 is simply impossible . Like an idiot I was probably readint 1.12.

Long week...I need a beer.

Definitely sounds like one of my brew days!


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[Hopzilla]

I've lost count of how many hydrometers and thermometers I've broken. Melted a hose for my wort chiller. Melted the bottom of my bag for biab. I suggest digital thermometers. And that fancy refractometer, I forget what it is called. Always use a false bottom.

 

[gbarker121]

This thread always makes me laugh. Like when I lost a hydrometer and found it a few weeks later when going to rack a batch of strawberry blonde off the strawberries.

The only one that actually made me LOL. Byootiful!

 

[soccerdad]

^
Yep - did that sunday

 

[Brew_Dude41]

Brewed my first lager last night. Got the wort chilled, pitched the yeast, and popped it into the freezer with the STC controller. Set it for 11 C degrees then cleaned up and went to bed. Checked on it before heading to work and the temp is under 5 C(right where I had set it when I cold crashed my Kolsch before kegging). Apparently I forgot to hit the power button to set the temp that I programed.
Lucky for me it was on the cold side and not warm, yeasties are back up and working now.
So far that is the worst of it so far, but I am sure that there are some great ones coming....

 

[phug]

I'd been doing one gallon batches using a spare glass carboy as a bottling bucket so to speak. Then I got greedy and used the spare as a fermenter, leaving me with a hastily grabbed 1 gallon plastic water jug to mix in the priming solution. Half way through bottling the weight of the mini auto siphon now outweighs the plastic jug, cider on my head. Lesson learned, I taped weights to the bucket to prevent a repeat. Works great.

Months later I start my first 5 gallon batch on a day that I help a friend shop for gear for a 1 gallon setup. The store doesn't have the mini siphon. No worries " we'll just get the big one, I'll use it and you can have the mini"

Next bottling day is a one gallon batch, using my trusty weighted jug that has serve me well. Apparently the weight is only calibrated for the small siphon. Halfway done bottling and over it goes, on top of me and the floor.

Multitasking brew day. I decided to do some bottling on a brew day. Started filling a bomber and turns around to check for signs of a boil over and by the time I looked at the bottle It had filled it about 3 times more than it could hold. Fortunately it was sitting in a basin that I had kinda sorta sanitized. I finished bottling the contents of the bucket, capped the full bottles and then bottled the overflow into specially marked bottles. I was a one gallon batch and I couldn't stand to dump it.


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[Teromous]

Brewed my first lager last night. Got the wort chilled, pitched the yeast, and popped it into the freezer with the STC controller. Set it for 11 C degrees then cleaned up and went to bed. Checked on it before heading to work and the temp is under 5 C(right where I had set it when I cold crashed my Kolsch before kegging). Apparently I forgot to hit the power button to set the temp that I programed.
Lucky for me it was on the cold side and not warm, yeasties are back up and working now.
So far that is the worst of it so far, but I am sure that there are some great ones coming....

LOL I just did this. I set my fridge to 4C so cold crash a yeast starter for decanting. I brewed today and set it in my fridge and set it for 18C but forgot to hit the power button to save. After reading your post I figured I'd check on mine which is when I noticed it. Fortunately it was caught early but still...it's been a long brew day...

 

[hou_me]

Left the ball valve open on a kettle while filling it in the kitchen.

I did this only on my mash tun. 160°+ water sprayed all over my bits and pieces. I never stripped off a pair of jeans so fast! And of course this happened in my driveway. Natch.

-ben

 

[NathPowe]

Last weekend I made a big IPA to clean some hops out of the freezer. Thought I'd try mash hopping for the first time. I usually measure out my hops during the mash. I think you see where this is going - I definitely weighed out a little bowl of mash hops... during the mash. Oof.

Luckily I realized my folly only about 15 minutes into the mash, so I just threw them in and gave a stir. Smelled really nice and worked out fine but my god, I felt like a dumba$$.

Cheers.

 

[Auger]

Set up my all-grain system and did 4 batches before figuring out I needed to calibrate the thermometers in the BK and MLT, after banging my head agaisnt a wall trying to figure out why I was having such issues hitting mash temps.

I also dumped all my grain into the MLT and started mash-in before noticing the bazooka screen sitting on the table on my last brew. Dumb dumb dumb.

 

[jorgeft]

Was quite sleppy while bottling and misscalculated my priming sugar amount, resulting in a 2.9 co2 vol. Lets see if the bottles will hold the pressure...

 

[Zepth]

Was quite sleppy while bottling and misscalculated my priming sugar amount, resulting in a 2.9 co2 vol. Lets see if the bottles will hold the pressure...

I think I've done 2.8 in standard pry top glass bottles without exploding them. Just make sure they're chilled a good long while before opening or you'll wear most of it.

Me? Just last brew day I made a starter. And as I'm waiting for the elevator I think "That starter would likely be better off with some yeast in it." Of course, the door opens just as I'm about to walk away "Sorry, forgot to do something before leaving," is the message the passengers received. Luckily I did remember before it was too long in.

 

[balrog]

LOL I just did this. I set my fridge to 4C so cold crash a yeast starter for decanting. I brewed today and set it in my fridge and set it for 18C but forgot to hit the power button to save. After reading your post I figured I'd check on mine which is when I noticed it. Fortunately it was caught early but still...it's been a long brew day...

STC story here: using STC1000+ to control newly fashioned foam-board-mini-fridge chamber. All going well. Set up laptop with FuzzyWuzzy's BrewPi so I can log temperature (because, well, I can, darnit) requiring multi-outlet extension. Fast forward to Mother Nature squatting on my face doing a thunderstorm-gasm, and the power goes out, but only an hour. Thinking all is fine once power's back, I don't check for more than a day.

The power extension requires button reset when power returns. The timing naturally occurred during peak fermentation, so my carefully controlled 60° was more like 84°. Only batch I've ever dumped, but I've not been at this very long...

 

[jamsomito]

I just burned a hole in the bottom of my BIAB bag during the mash. All my grain ended up in my boil kettle. So, before the boil I had to filter everything through my funnel filter. Took about 45 mins to get it all through while using a spoon to brush the filter mesh to keep it from getting clogged.

 

[jayway]

Started two small fires in my kitchen. The first was the hoses on my IC, that smelled great. Second was a pile of grain I spilled by the burner doughing in caught fire, smelled like burnt toast but better than the burnt plastic. Typing this made me realize it would be a good idea to buy myself a fire extinguisher.

 

[PortlandBrewers]

Our first time brewing, we feared the foam and rinsed out the carboy with tap water in a moment of panic before transferring the wort. Everything turned out fine but we sure felt like idiots about half an hour later when we looked it up on here. Beer turned out fine and we learned to relax!

More recently, we had some friends over on brew day to show them how the brewing process works. While we were sitting around waiting for the mash to be over my husband was talking about a YouTube video/ad for StarSan he had seen where the inventor or CEO or someone was talking about how it was so safe you can drink it, and proceeded to replicate/test this by taking a full swig of it from the bottle... you can imagine how that one ended, he continued to taste it for the next week! Worst part is, we searched for the video that he was talking about later and never found it.

See a pattern here?

 

[wingedcoyote]

Our first time brewing, we feared the foam and rinsed out the carboy with tap water in a moment of panic before transferring the wort. Everything turned out fine but we sure felt like idiots about half an hour later when we looked it up on here. Beer turned out fine and we learned to relax!

More recently, we had some friends over on brew day to show them how the brewing process works. While we were sitting around waiting for the mash to be over my husband was talking about a YouTube video/ad for StarSan he had seen where the inventor or CEO or someone was talking about how it was so safe you can drink it, and proceeded to replicate/test this by taking a full swig of it from the bottle... you can imagine how that one ended, he continued to taste it for the next week! Worst part is, we searched for the video that he was talking about later and never found it.

See a pattern here?

Oh man, I'm glad he was okay! I'm pretty sure the original stunt involved drinking the diluted StarSan solution, not the concentrate.

 

[PortlandBrewers]

Oh man, I'm glad he was okay! I'm pretty sure the original stunt involved drinking the diluted StarSan solution, not the concentrate.

Yes, that was definitely the facepalm part of all of that, that he realized later!

 

[Drizzt]

Set up my all-grain system and did 4 batches before figuring out I needed to calibrate the thermometers in the BK and MLT, after banging my head agaisnt a wall trying to figure out why I was having such issues hitting mash temps.

I also dumped all my grain into the MLT and started mash-in before noticing the bazooka screen sitting on the table on my last brew. Dumb dumb dumb.

I have cocotte the screen 3 times in the last year and once knocked it off. I am a calamity of errors every brew day. Turns out on a group brew day I almost killed everyone because somehow the bolt that connected the hose to the burner loosened and was leaking. I have also got my keezer down to 1 degree Fahrenheit.


I'm not sure if my the flavors in my beer are off or complex 😳

 

[Brettomomyces]

First real "imperial" beer I made, almost the whole keg emptied through a leak in the out post and the entire pull out crisper drawer is FILLED (I had an upright fridge kegerator) with my big hoppy red. I got a half pour out of the keg. It was delicious too.

Cracked an erlenmeyer trying to heat it on an electric stove top

Burnt my first decoction..the beer tasted like bacon, but not in the fun way. We did end up drinking like 3/4's of all of that

Cracked an IC by leaving water in it during the winter

 

[Schmoogdaddy]

My first time dry hopping I cleaned and boiled some stainless steel bolts to put in the hops bag to weigh them down in the secondary. After bottling the batch and retrieving the bag from the carboy I noticed the bag was very discolored. When I opened the bag I found that my stainless steel bolts were actually plated steel. The beer had eaten the plating off the bolts. Heavy metal poisining seems like a particularly cruel way to die, so I dumped the batch...one bottle at a time.

 

[CRAFTBEERKING]

The young-buck brewer I was, I thought it would be a great fun time to bottle some of my batch in growlers. Well, little did I know this is a no-go. Massive, earth shattering explosions ensued. The best part you may ask? Oh, I'll tell you... I had them sitting in a cooler-that is until we needed the cooler for a grill-out. Sure enough, the very same day...KABOOM! Beer and glass all over the storage room...the carpeted storage room. Glass shards imbedded in the wall and everything... Needless to say, that was the first earth-moving ass-chewing i've gotten from my wife.

 

[Zepth]

I have also got my keezer down to 1 degree Fahrenheit.

There was a short while where my keezer maintained temperatures by manually cycling it once in the morning once in the evening. Kegs on one side, glass bottles on the hump. Let's just say things went poorly one day and that thing sat unplugged until my STC arrived in the mail a week later.

The young-buck brewer I was, I thought it would be a great fun time to bottle some of my batch in growlers. Well, little did I know this is a no-go. Massive, earth shattering explosions ensued. The best part you may ask? Oh, I'll tell you... I had them sitting in a cooler-that is until we needed the cooler for a grill-out. Sure enough, the very same day...KABOOM! Beer and glass all over the storage room...the carpeted storage room. Glass shards imbedded in the wall and everything... Needless to say, that was the first earth-moving ass-chewing i've gotten from my wife.

Usually a facepalm is not used as a defensive position. Whatever works for you though. Glad to hear nobody got physically damaged.

 

[Thirdthorpe]

I continue to shoot myself in the foot using yeast energizer/ nutrient. Was making a big yeast starter in a 2000mL Erlenmeyer flask on the stove top and immediately after removing from the flames I tossed in the pre-measured amount of nutrient and energizer. Yet another science-fair volcano in my kitchen.

 

[Smeato]

My first brew I had a Coopers starter kit. It has a huge big warning on it telling you to pitch the yeast AS SOON AS POSSIBLE IN CASE THE WORT GETS CONTAMINATED. Needless to say pitching at 40C murdered my yeasties (1.040 to 1.022 after two weeks) and what alcohol was in it tasted like paint stripper.

Bloody kit instructions.

Yesterday I realised I'd added half the amount of DME as my recipe had stated due to a mix up in the shop. I proceeded to dump what I'd missed into my rather small FV mid fermentation.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

I continue to shoot myself in the foot using yeast energizer/ nutrient. Was making a big yeast starter in a 2000mL Erlenmeyer flask on the stove top and immediately after removing from the flames I tossed in the pre-measured amount of nutrient and energizer. Yet another science-fair volcano in my kitchen.

I wish I kept track of how many times I got burned with nutrient and energizer. It seems like that shi!t goes on foreeeevvvveeeeerrrrr as you watch your brew go directly down the drain.

 

[j1n]

I continue to shoot myself in the foot using yeast energizer/ nutrient. Was making a big yeast starter in a 2000mL Erlenmeyer flask on the stove top and immediately after removing from the flames I tossed in the pre-measured amount of nutrient and energizer. Yet another science-fair volcano in my kitchen.

Use Fermacps for foam control. I will add the water, DME and yeast nutrient along with fermcaps and i get 0 foam when making my starter in the flask. That stuff has saved my ass from boil overs sooo many times when making starters.

 

[Thirdthorpe]

Thanks for the tip, j1. I'll try that for my next brew...I've been scheming up my next brew for the past week or so. With fall and winter at the door I think it's time for a RIS or a barleywine.

 

[cjens19]

Left spigot open on bottling bucket while siphoning from fermenter. Luckily I did not have music playing, so i could hear it. I thought our boxer was wizzing on the kitchen tile, as he is wont to do, so I stormed in there ready to unleash the beast on him. Thankfully, it was only a batch of Oktoberfest that I had burnt from boiling way too long. My boxer was like 'see, I'm not the only one'


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[jrgtr42]

The young-buck brewer I was, I thought it would be a great fun time to bottle some of my batch in growlers. Well, little did I know this is a no-go. Massive, earth shattering explosions ensued. The best part you may ask? Oh, I'll tell you... I had them sitting in a cooler-that is until we needed the cooler for a grill-out. Sure enough, the very same day...KABOOM! Beer and glass all over the storage room...the carpeted storage room. Glass shards imbedded in the wall and everything... Needless to say, that was the first earth-moving ass-chewing i've gotten from my wife.

Interesting. I've been bottling in growlers on and off through my whole homebrewing career. I've only ever had one blow on me, and it was more the bottom let go about an inch and a half up. Ended up with a half-gallon of hefeweizen all over my kitchen floor. (I was in a small apartment and the cabinet under the sink doubled as my cellar.)