How have you screwed up your brew day?

[Prezioso85]

I wasn't sure if there was a forum like this, so I decided to make one. Decided to brew last minute yesterday. Starting off it was going to be a short yeast starter but figured a 8-10 hour starter was better than no starter till I realized I ran out of dme. But that's not the bad part. Brewing more beers soulless hop pale ale with a grain bill of, 11lb 2 row, 1.5lb Munich, .5lb 60 and .5lb carapils. I bought their prepackaged kit that has the 60, carapils and .5lb Munich already milled, then bagged the 2row and 1lb of Munich myself. I started heating the strike water while milling the grain I bagged. Started my mash, everything was going good. I sparged then got the boil rolling. Reached over to grab the first hop addition only see the prepackaged bags of milled Munich, carapils and 60 that I left out of the mash. I realized I screwed up pretty bad at that point and called it quits. So, how have you screwed up your brew day?

 

[beergolf]

You should have just finished up with what you had. You only were missing 1/2 lb of munich, c60 and carapils. I never use carapils in pale ales, and a 1/2 lb munich will not do too much for the brew. I like pale ales without caramel malts so dropping the c60 would not bother me. It would just be a lighter brew. Now you just wasted the time for mashing, sparging and getting to a boil, plus you wasted the grains used for that.

 

[Transamguy77]

I agree with always letting it ride, just like 2 weeks ago when I forgot to close the valve on my boil kettle and started my sparge and went inside for the next half hour. Came back out to a lovely stream of wort running down my driveway. Sparged more water to get my volume up, and added 2 cups of sugar to bring up the gravity. Glad it was a 10 gallon batch and that I'm adding fruit to help boost the abv as well.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Been once or twice I've started my sparge and walked away without noticing that I left the ball valve on my kettle open.

Very profanities. So anger. Wow.

 

[Prezioso85]

It always amazes me how angry I can get with a brew mistake, I thought about letting it ride but after loosing all my beer when my keezer took a crap I didn't want to take a chance of it not turning out right. Since it's my first brew after starting over.

 

[unionrdr]

I wondered why the mash water wasn't heating very fast at all? Didn't pay attention to the little circles in squares on the knobs to see that I had the wrong element on! Wasted a lot of time to get the mash finished, sparged & chilled. I'm filming all of this & using Moviemaker in between times to get video part 2 done at the same time. Fightin' time on sunlight in the brewery/man cave.

 

[beergolf]

How did you lose all your beer when your keezer took a crap?

 

[Michigan_Wolfman]

About the worst flub up I've had while brewing was the inevitable catastrophic, volcanic eruption type boil over when I thought to myself "I know what I'm doing, it can't happen to me." I turned my back for one second while getting the last hop addition ready to go into the pot and the next thing I know, there's a foamy, sticky mess all over the stovetop. Since it was already pretty late when I started brewing, I was up til about 5 AM scrubbing the mess off the stovetop and the outside of my brewpot with a Scotch-Brite pad and a can of Comet after getting the wort cooled down and into the fermenter.

 

[foam_top]

My first ever brew I had LME bottles in a warm water bath for easier pouring. The buoyancy overtook one of the containers, when I returned most of the syrup was mixed with the water. I dumped the water in with my boil. My SG was fine but my hop distribution was likely off. I also vacuumed bleach from the airlock that same batch. Lessons lived are lessons learned.

 

[Prezioso85]

How did you lose all your beer when your keezer took a crap?

Had been about a day and a half before I realized my keezer went out, and co2 tank ran out at the same time, figured there was no saving hot flat beer. It was only a half a keg of blond and a keg of wheat so I wasn't too concerned.my stone ipa clone ran out the week before.

 

[beergolf]

As long as the kegs were sealed there was absolutely no reason to give up on them. A few days of getting warm is no reason to give up on a beer. Temp is not a problem. I often take kegs of of the kegerator with no problems. Just because they got warm was not a reason to dump them. So you dumped a keg and a half of beer without even giving them a chance. Once they were cooled down and put under pressure they would have been fine.

Lighten up. and you will save a lot of beer.

 

[Prezioso85]

Good to know now, I actually still haven't dumped them.

 

[unionrdr]

Let me count the ways, geez. Had to fight the BC (Before Common sense) grain mill after taking it apart to clean the bushings, etc. Had to crush a second time, while on camera.
Shooting me & mill, kettle, whatever, rather than into object at hand. And after all the videos that inspired me to brew to begin with?! And being long-winded, rather than sort & sweet?
Kettle took 1 1/2-2 hours to finally boil for some reason on our new higher-powered, 3,600 watt stove? All this while 22lbs of ice melted some 30%. So I couldn't get the wort chilled down past 130F or so.
So videos aren't well received thus far, my bad there. Gotta do a wrap-up today, recapping plants, herbs, etc. And after re-arranging Brewvision playlist to put all the Mumme' videos together at the top of the list...another oops fixed. Gotta go through all info links & recap findings that'll, hopefully, clear up lack of info streaming while showing how to brew this gruit ale. Besides showing how I do PM/PB BIAB for those that don't know how yet.
I must attempt to redeem myself today...:smack:

 

[K2brewfisher]

multiple times hydrometers and thermometers have been in a Sanitizer bucket that gets kicked over onto the patio, or gets something hard thrown into it....and so we end up with no o.g, f.g, or both for a batch of beer. Needless to say, the beer came out good, I just don't no if I hit my marks or what % it is

 

[Bbeck8386]

Just yesterday I had big issues with my sight glass from Bobby M. It began leaking from where the sight glass goes into the stainless T. Attempted to tighten it, only to damage the O ring where the T attaches to the kettle. Had to drain 13 gallons of 180 degree wort into my 10 gallon HLT and a cleaned corny keg. I happened to have an extra gasket around, so I put a closed ball valve in place of the sight glass and began reheating to a boil.

 

[Prezioso85]

I've broken a couple hydrometers as well.

 

[madscientist451]

So, how have you screwed up your brew day?

My mistake: answering the phone when my ex called, the former SWMBO
has a real knack for putting a damper on an otherwise fun day.

 

[brewbama]

My mistake: answering the phone when my ex called, the former SWMBO

has a real knack for putting a damper on an otherwise fun day.

Oh hell no. Caller ID bro. F that!

 

[ncsuwerewolf]

Broke a floating thermometer in my strike water, had to stop clean the kettle and start again. All on a well below average november day. Also had my temp probe fall out of my fermenter only to freeze and float all the alcohol from 10 gallons of pale ale after the lids dislodged.

 

[JJack887]

Didn't ruin the day, but my bulkhead is CPVC pipe with a hose barb and ball valve put though a cooler. Back then, I kept the cooler on a chair until after the mash was done for ease of pouring the hot water in. My tubing was a bit too long and bubbled the hell out of my running wort in the past, so I lifted the entire cooler onto my counter for a smoother siphon, except my bulkhead slipped right off when I turned the valve on (valve also came off) because it the edge of the counter ever so slightly. 160-some degree sticky wort blasting all over the hardwood for a good 8 seconds, with me burning my hands and arms trying to slide the bulkhead back on. Now I know better.

 

[NewJersey]

I have ruined my brew day in SO many different ways so I'm just going to talk about the last one. I use a plate chiller now and it usually works pretty good. I run water through 50ft immersion chiller that sits in a bucket of ice water and that feeds into the plate chiller. I'll usually run the water and wort though on full blast for 2 minutes without the ice bath fed water and run the wort back into the bk before I start the chilled water.
I recently brewed a big DIPA and did not use my hop spider. Huge late hop additions and FO whirlpool addition. Maybe my brain was in IC mode . This was my first brew of the year.
Totally clogged the plate chiller.
Had to just get it into the fermentation chamber and let it chill overnight. My first time ever having to do this.
Two ten gallon containers filled with ice wasted.
I'm confident the beer will turn out great anyways

 

[UndeadFred]

Let me count the ways...

I don't think I've ever had a brew day go 100% perfect. Pretty close once.. but... seriously, this is why being able to tweak as you go along is a good thing... never actually ruined a batch, though.

 

[unionrdr]

Well, like the song Celluloid Heroes, " Success walks hand-in-hand with failure..." Dang WY1275 pouches I was sold were dated Nov 2015, good up to 6 months later, according to them, which was this past May. Pitched both in Mumme' at 12:20PM yesterday in 1.074 wort. As of now, nada, Zippo, zilch. JW Dover closed for the 4th through today, would've been open till 8PM, Son works all day tomorrow when they're open...I'm fooked.
** Talked to Gabe @ Midwest, pouches inflated when they got to me no nevermind, I waited to long. Let life get in the way with weight & all. He said US-05 similar to WY1275? Idk about that?,,,