Mishaps you are embarrassed to admit...but can here, we're all friends.

[Andrew J-Beer]

When you sanitize a glass carbide under your hose outside and it is slippery and you sort of stumble on the paver sidewalk as you are making your way back inside and the carbide slips out of your hands like a hot potato, let me tell you that glass carbide makes a hell of racket when it lands on those pavers and explodes in a thousand glass shards that even the NCIS would be hard pressed to reconstruct the crime scene- very fortunate no one was nearby and the carbide was not full of beer...my glass carbide has handles now so that can't happen again

 

[Andrew J-Beer]

I broke a glass carboy by filling it with hot wort and setting in a cold in-ground swimming pool. It's easy to convince yourself that these things will work, but in the end you find yourself in the wee hours of a cold January night, standing in a pool wearing pajama shorts and tennis shoes and flashlight, wading around looking for shards of glass and praying your wife doesn't catch you.

I had a similar glass carbide mishap below. Those things can be challenging. Most of my brew friends have moved away from them entirely and that is why I have inherited their unused ones which is fortunate since I lost the one I had

 

[BrewZer]

So it's time for another Seatazzz Silly Post of the Week, or When I Get Around To It. I will start, although this one makes me cringe.

I have a four-tap kegerator, that I recently upgraded to duotight fittings and evabarrier line. Taps are old, and I religiously run cleaner through the lines every other keg change, or if a line has stood idle for a while. Today I received an order from Amazon of those cool little brush-type tap caps; I'd been using the black rubber ones for years (yes I cleaned them regularly). A few times in the last few weeks I'll be sipping on a homebrew, and suddenly a burst of flavor in my mouth of nasty mold. Nothing visible in the glass; cleaned the lines again, but it happened again a few pints later. Fast forward to today; installed the little brushes and admired how nice they look. Until I went to pull a pint; took the brush out and IT WAS BLACK with gunk. I've been drinking that. Scrubbed the hell out of each tap, much better now. Holy crap I'm ashamed of that.

As for me, I learnt the hard way not to microwave fine Czech glassware with gold foil on the rims and in the design. Had a beautiful Budvar glass in which I decided to warm up some sake...

About 7 seconds into the heat, I heard a pop and some tinkle, and wound up having to wipe out the microwave to mop up spilt sake. The metal in the glass heated, expanded, and broke it into a couple of large pieces.

 

[BrewZer]

Another embarrassing post; I just sent four entries to a fairly big competition, BEFORE I found the nasty black gunk in the taps. Have to think some got in the competition bottles. Kicking myself vigorously in the kiester for that.

Just tell them it's "Kombucha-style Lager" and it's a feature, not a defect!

 

[BrewZer]

Early on, I always primed kegs... I would go in there and turn it down a pound or two to let it slowly come down and keep doing that until it got down to 30psi.

I used to use the 5-liter kegs for aging/dispensing, priming and aging in the kegs. One batch, I miscalculated the priming sugar and wound up creasing the tops of 3 of the kegs. One of the kegs breached, but all it vented was CO2 -- fortunately, I stored the kegs bung-up.

I quit using the 5-liter kegs after that.

 

[passedpawn]

As for me, I learnt the hard way not to microwave fine Czech glassware with gold foil on the rims and in the design. Had a beautiful Budvar glass in which I decided to warm up some sake...

About 7 seconds into the heat, I heard a pop and some tinkle, and wound up having to wipe out the microwave to mop up spilt sake. The metal in the glass heated, expanded, and broke it into a couple of large pieces.

Kitchen messes are to be avoided at all cost if you value your marriage. For example, if your 4L flask cracks and dumps its sticky malt extract contents all over your stove and floor, and seconds later your 2L does the same thing, you clean and re-clean all night before the wife discovers it. Picture below is after the 4L burst - if you look closely, you can see the crack starting on the 2L. Imagine my surprise when it dumped right after I took this picture. Argggh. (BTW, the reason for this mishap was that the DME wasn't fuly dissolved before I put the flasks onto the heat).

 

[wepeeler]

After watching a video of a certain brewery saying they blend their batches to help with consistency, I figured I'd give it a shot. I use 2 SSBrewtech buckets and figured I'd go back and forth to each fermentor with the auto siphon to blend into the kegs. Ended up just pumping straight oxygen into each keg a few times

 

[bwible]

When you sanitize a glass carbide under your hose outside and it is slippery and you sort of stumble on the paver sidewalk as you are making your way back inside and the carbide slips out of your hands like a hot potato, let me tell you that glass carbide makes a hell of racket when it lands on those pavers and explodes in a thousand glass shards that even the NCIS would be hard pressed to reconstruct the crime scene- very fortunate no one was nearby and the carbide was not full of beer...my glass carbide has handles now so that can't happen again

Hopefully not one of those screw on orange carboy handles. They put stress on the neck and can snap the neck off your carboy, especially if you have it on a full carboy. Thos are only supposed to be used to move empty carboys.

The best solution is if you have a plastic milk crate the carboy will fit in.

 

[passedpawn]

Add your own caption. I could do this all night

 

[AzOr]

A couple of years ago I was checking my air locks in three different Carboys out in the garage. A mix between ciders and meads. I was bending down next to one of them stealing a sample. I stood up to walk away and I had my work keys on one of those lanyard things (so I wouldn’t lose them).
Sure enough, the lanyard had looped over the top of a carboy and in slow mo, the whole thing tipped over and I had to clean up 5 gallons of mead on my garage floor.
Of course I was on my way to work.
Since then, I keep my Carboys inside of milk crates for protection. And I stuff that lanyard all the way into my pockets too.

 

[anotherbeerplease]

In my earlier days of brewing I figured I like both Lucky Charms and saison, why not make a Lucky Charms sasion! Well let me tell you the mystery dark green beer that came out of it was pretty nasty stuff.... not everything goes well together, as it turns out

 

[jcfontario]

My duh moment,

On my first batch using a partial mash, I added my grain to my kettle, mashed it at the suggested temperature, boiled with hops for an hour, topped to 5 gallons with water. When I checked my SG, it was very low, like about 1.03 instead of over 1.050. I added a lot of DME to bring it close to the desired OG, but couldnt figure out how I missed by so much.

A little research uncovered my problem.....what do you mean you have to grind the grain?!?! Nobody told me that part.....Doh!...

 

[JAReeves]

When I started out, I was brewing on the stovetop. My 1st or 2nd BIAB AG batch was a DIPA, and when I went to take the grain bag out, given the height of the stove, the weight of the wet grains, etc., I dropped it back into the wort at least twice before I was able to lift it high enough to get the strainer in between the bag and the lip of the kettle so it could drain. There are still spots of wort on the ceiling and I have no idea what the space between the stove and the counter looks like. SWMBO decided I needed an outdoor propane burner after that mess.

 

[Beerstein]

Just last night I brewed a chocolate stout where I threw my toasted cocoa nibs right into my spike brew pot. I didn't think about the fact they would get sucked into my recirc/cooling loop and gum up the works. I mean really gum up the works. Next time I'm going to use the SS hop balls I have.

 

[bracconiere]

i drank a michelob ultra at the diner for lunch...


and i tried to look cool doing it, by getting big head on the glass. couldn't pull it off

 

[Dr_Jeff]

I just got some throw up in the back of my throat.

i drank a michelob ultra at the diner for lunch...

 

[bracconiere]

I just got some throw up in the back of my throat.

i thought we wern't suppose to judge in this thread?

 

[Dr_Jeff]

i thought we wern't suppose to judge in this thread?

Who's judging?

 

[bracconiere]

Who's judging?

well at least you kept it in the back of your throat. i was impressed it was easier to drink then the glass of water with 'ice' in it?

 

[Dr_Jeff]

well at least you kept it in the back of your throat. i was impressed it was easier to drink then the glass of water with 'ice' in it?

Brac, I will come clean, I drank a couple of Budweiser at a fund raiser several weeks back and thought, "This isn't as bad as I expected it to be". lol

 

[bracconiere]

Brac, I will come clean, I drank a couple of Budweiser at a fund raiser several weeks back and thought, "This isn't as bad as I expected it to be". lol

i'll come clean too, the only reason i ordered it is because i asked what beers do you have. and the waitress started naming the usuals. bud lite, couple of macro lites, then there was michelob ultra... honestly it was my first time! i'm not sure if there will ever be a second, but it WAS better then ice water. i mean now if they served the glass of water without the ice, and a lemon wedge, i'd go for the water!

 

[Sam_92]

At least you know the beer was free of harmful organisms, the same could not be said about the water or especially the ice.

 

[hotbeer]

New 3 gallon FastFermenter. Several weeks ago I was ready to bottle and when unscrewing the mason jar collection adapter from the valve body the core of the valve also unscrewed letting the ball fall out and my 2+ gallons of ready to bottle beer with it.

Yesterday was another brew day and I had sense enough to play around with it prior to play around with the valve and adapter to see how to avoid having that happen again.

Fast Ferment says to be sure to tighten it enough so the core doesn't unscrew. However elsewhere they say not to tighten the core too much. There is no guidance on what is the proper amount to tighten it.

So from what I found, if you tighten the core too much, the o-ring on the core won't seal to the mason jar adapter and it leaks. If you leave the core loose enough then no leak between the valve body and the adapter. But when you try to unscrew the mason jar adapter which also unscrews the valve core you get a leak. And the valve core has less threads. So it's completely unscrewed before the adapter is.

Which leaves me screwed... so to speak!

Perhaps they should have made their hose barb work with the mason jar adapter instead of requiring the adapter to be removed to install the hose barb.

Sadly FastFerment isn't responding to my inquiry. I guess I'll send them another.

Also not sure if the topic of this thread applies to me or FastFerment!

 

[bracconiere]

Fast Ferment says to be sure to tighten it enough so the core doesn't unscrew. However elsewhere they say not to tighten the core too much. There is no guidance on what is the proper amount to tighten it.

if you need to use a tension wrench for a fermenter, beer doesn't belong anywhere near it!

 

[bwible]

i drank a michelob ultra at the diner for lunch...


and i tried to look cool doing it, by getting big head on the glass. couldn't pull it off

No shame in counting carbs and calories.

“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

 

[bracconiere]

No shame in counting carbs and calories.

“Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

i just try to make sure the bills get paid without having a mountain of debt....or in this case, not weighing 300lbs, and not even meeting my basic nutrition needs....

 

[SFC Rudy]

I was stationed in Germany from 2001-2010. I was home on leave at a restaurant and saw Michelob Ultra on the menu. I thought "Michelob used to be kinda tasty. I'll try one of those. After years of drinking German bier I thought I was drinking water!

 

[bracconiere]

I thought I was drinking water!

glad someone agrees, but at least you didn't have to fight for a sip through ice cubes, huh?

 

[thomer]

I set up my new BIAB electric kettle with topsflow pump and loc-line coming out under the lid. I was very proud of myself. I was cleaning the system with PBW. I hung the lid on the kettle handle while I was doing other stuff. I switched the pump on to recirculate the PBW through the system and immediately went into the garage to do other stuff. I suddenly look round and there was a flood of water coming from under the door. The pump was pumping all the PBW through the loc-line all over the floor...... another night in the doghouse.

 

[Dr_Jeff]

another night in the doghouse.

Seems like it is a familiar place, lol