Major brewing disaster

[mithion]

This last Saturday, I was planning on brewing a batch of KingBrianI's excellent Common Room ESB. It was my second batch of this brew and I had made a bunch of corrections to improve it. I was also particularly excited since the LHBS just happened to receive a fresh shipment of EKG and fuggles whole leaf hops which they rarely carry.

So everything was going great. I had gotten through my mash just fine and had almost 15mins left to the boil. At that point, I inserted the wort chiller in the boiling beer to sanitize it and since I had 5 minutes before my next addition, I decided to go ahead and hook up the hoses to save some time. Then, I notice the hose is all kinked so I decide and go ahead and try to straighten it out while it's still hooked up to the chiller sitting in the beer. I'm almost done with undoing the kinks when I feel a slight tug in the hose. I just lifted my head in time to see the whole pot of wort come crashing down and spilling the wort all over the patio. You know, I've been brewing for 3 years and I've never done anything this stupid. Anyhow, it was a pretty sad day in homebrewing. I can still see the hop flowers on the patio and I just wonder if they felt anything as they fell to their death.

Just wanted to share my horrible experience and to again prove murphy's law that if "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

 

[Ragutis]

That's the saddest story I've heard all day. I swear I teared up a little there at the end.

 

[Dr_Gordon_Freeman]

I am sorry for your loss.

 

[rmullins]

It's not often around here that a thread about a major brewing disaster is actually a catastrophe. Normally we can say RDWHAHB and go on with our lives.

But this definitely hurts on the inside. My first time using a chiller I was undoing a kink and saw my chiller start to tip a bit, but I was lucky that I hadn't put it in my kettle yet, and it was just on a table.

I think this is something I am going to add to my brewday checklist

 

[homeslice]

I'm speechless. I haven't cried this much since Titanic.

 

[herbler]

Reminds me of the Exxon Valdez... I hope no wildlife was harmed in the process.
Licking fresh wort off water-fowl sounds unpleasant!
Please brew another in rememberance...

 

[Random_Guy]

Reminds me of when my drunk friend fell off my porch with 3 gallons of hot mash and spilled everywhere. Talk about a sad day.......

 

[brrman]

and I thought my keggle boilover was a bad thing today... damn bro I feel sorry for ya

 

[AnthonyD]

All I can say is, at least it wasn't in the house!

 

[mithion]

Thanks for all the support. I can least come away from this with two positives. First, I learned an important lesson this weekend. I don't know if that lesson is more or less valuable than the beer I would have made had this not happened, but at least I know better now. Second, my brew buddy decided to step in and finance the next brew so I'll be able to brew again this week. It's not twice the beer, but it's at least twice the planning and executing which is always fun. Cheers!

 

[chrisgray]

Insanely HUGE BUMMER, I'm so sorry.

 

[Richabt]

Man that is a sad story! Your yeast will have have to go hungry for a few more days until you start over. Good luck on round two.

 

[smmcdermott]

your biggest lesson, just disconnect the hose....

 

[MikeG]

I had a brew where I looked back in horror as the kettle started to tilt as I was pulling on the hose connected to the IC. Luckily it settled back down and I was safe but lesson learned. Luckily for me the easy way.

Sorry to hear about that.

 

[electric_beer]

That totally sucks! At least you weren't hurt during the ordeal though. Could have ended up with 3rd degree burns...