Mistakes. Read one, leave one.

[joyceman]

I got 12 oz of whole hops from Williams with my last hop order and decided to do an all whole hop steam batch. Id only dryhopped with whole before, never boiled and usually used a paint strainer bag to dryhop. I thought it would be a great idea to use the bag in the boil also.

The foam never seemed to drop with the bag in the pot, In fact it seemed to climb up the bag. Meanwhile I was a little over volume and the whole hops seemed to take up alot of the remaining space on top of the pot.

Multiple boilovers cost me alot of wort. I need a bigger pot or some fermcap.

 

[m3n00b]

Ferm cap is awesome! I boil 4.5 gallons in my 5 gal kettle.

 

[Ilan34]

I have to throw out my love for Fermcap too. I do a split boil in two 2 gallon pots, and I have about 1.85 gallons boiling in each. Granted, I do have to stand there with a spray bottle for the hot break, but twenty one batches in, I haven't had a single boil over.

 

[gometz]

I haven't tried Fermcap, but I wish I heard about it before getting my current kettle.

Actually my kettle was a happy mistake: ordered a 10 gallon and they sent me a 16 gallon!

 

[unionrdr]

From the first time for everything department; My mash water heated up a lot faster than usual,& hit 170F. Damn. I pulled it off the heat to cool,& proceeded to weigh out my hops. By the time I finished that,the mash tun was 152F,perfect! I then started stiring in the 5.5lbs of grains,& it promptly went down to 149F. Then 148F. I turn it up to 8.5...little change. 10 minutes of this,& I'm afraid of cookin enzymes,so I say F'it & wrap it up in my winter hunting coat as usual with 2 pot holders under it & the hood over the top before wrapin up the sides & tyin off the sleeves. It usually gains 1 degree over the 1 hour mash. But last time,it lost some 3 degrees. Damnit,now my malt flavor is going to be off a bit.
Note to self...stick around the stove when heating room temp water in mash tun.

 

[MindenMan]

I haven't tried Fermcap, but I wish I heard about it before getting my current kettle.

Actually my kettle was a happy mistake: ordered a 10 gallon and they sent me a 16 gallon!

You lucky dog you. Did they email and ask if you would send the wrong pot back free of charge? I ask because I have known of that exact thing happening.
I do kinda feel sorry for the guy that got your 10 gallon pot...

My mistake is, I walked away from a new aluminum pot being seasoned with cooking oil. It started to smoke, and left an ugly fatty acid mess on the the bottom. I then decided to wash out the veg oil, and season by boiling. I only got aluminum oxide coating the bottom and not the sides. Arrgh! Now what?

 

[markstache]

My mash water heated up a lot faster than usual,& hit 170F. ...the mash tun was 152F... it promptly went down to 149F. Then 148F. I turn it up ...

I had a similar experience, but I compounded my error by throwing in ice, overshooting on the low end, hitting the heat, overshooting on the high end, and back and forth. Eventually, I said, "floc it" and just threw in the grains. I'm guessing I ended up on the high end as the result was medium to full bodied, which was just perfect for the session beer I was aiming for.

 

[unionrdr]

Yeah,mine got a shot from God too...the temp went up to 156F from 148F over the course of the 1 hour mash. Which is great for an IPA anyway. The bittering addition is doin' it's thing now. So with all fresh NZ hops this time,the flavors should be a lot better!

 

[Beergazzi]

Mistake: Trusting and not double checking the free beer app on my phones priming calculator...making some foamy bottles for a few months (not gushers thank god) and finally thinking...gee, I should try another calculator.

Lesson: Use Northern Brewers Priming tool.

 

[gometz]

You lucky dog you. Did they email and ask if you would send the wrong pot back free of charge? I ask because I have known of that exact thing happening.
I do kinda feel sorry for the guy that got your 10 gallon pot...

Nope. At first I was a little annoyed for some reason. I was specifically looking for a out that would fit on a single burner on my arrive (live in an apartment), and this one is HUGE (need to use the big burner and a small one). I even called Amazon asking what to do. I was using it that day and told them that. They aid if i wanted to they would contact the seller Bayou Classic if I wanted them to, but they probably wouldn't take back a used pot.

Never heard anything back. Now I love it and am trying to figure out if I should but a 10 gallon hot water pot so I can brew a double batch (I always use a refrigerator for fermentation, but with winter coming up I could do it without, or get a controller for my keg fridge).

 

[OkashiiBrew]

AC died when I was fermentating my Irish Red. Was too lazy to put in a water bath with ice. 2 days at 80 degrees! I thought maybe I should let it go another 3 weeks to clean up any off flavors. Bottled it without a care. Well 3 weeks later, banana city. Smells like bananas and taste like plastic. Too lazy to open all 46 remaining bottles and dump. I think I will let it age and hope my beer gets better or that awful taste grows on me. If you are ever in my neck of the woods, come on over and have a brew.

 

[j_ettar]

I brewed my second batch of beer 1 week after my first batch (electric all grain). Almost everything went well, except the big spill of cooling water left alone when i was cleaning my fermenter in another room. But this isnt counted as a mistake.

The mistake is that i ordered a #6 and a #7 stopper, because i didn't know the size to use with my glass carboys. The #6 was on my fermenting batch in my keezer. So i took the #7 and after 30 min of trying to fit it in my second glass carboy, i manage to push it down the neck! Dang i was happy.

Two day later, my keezer top opened because my fermenter exploded under pressure. There was glass everywhere in my room -_-
God im lucky to have fermented in a keezer.

La morale de cette histoire : Always use the right size of stopper with glass carboys!

 

[clarksc4]

Finished bottling a batch of bourbon vanilla imperial porter. Then proceeded to open the bourbon and pour a glass to reward myself for the hard work.
Yup. Face palm. Literal face palm.

 

[Shadowtheweak]

I bottled some of my mead in 1.75 swing top vodka bottles... Apparently it was not done fermenting... I had them on a top shelf in a closet and it blew the doors open and knocked a 70lb safe onto the floor along with a few other bottles. Luckily I wasn't home at the time or in the process of going into the closet lol. That was quite the cleanup, there was glass and sticky mead everywhere.

 

[ilikeguns]

my mistakes are pretty benign..

1. accidentally dumped my stirbar into the fermentation bucket.
2. ran out of propane w/o a back up
3. Opened the tap on the kegerator and nothing came out.. opened it up and realized that my kegerator was set too low and froze my tap lines. I left the door open to help it thaw and a little later I heard a noise coming from the general area.. turned out I left the tap open and once the ice thawed, it dumped a few pints over the top of my kegerator. Thankfully I was close by...

 

[Dan]

I can think of two. One was just carelessness and stupidity.. No, both were.

First beer I ever brewed was fermented in a glass carboy and dry hopped with a few ounces of leaf cascade. What a PITA to get 2 ounces of beer swollen leafs out of a carboy.. maybe if I give the mouth of the GLASS carboy a little tap on the toilet I'm dumping the trub into the hops will come out easier. Fail. One tap and the carboy came apart.

Second, I thought I read somewhere that tossing your stir bar into a flask of boiliing starter was a good way to sanitize the stir bar. So, I did. Everything was fine. Once the starter was finished boiling I cooled it, pitched the yeast and put it on my stir plate. There was a strange metallic clanking sound, like metal on glass. I didn't worry about it. A few hours later the sound was louder and the stirbar kept getting thrown. The starter looked strange, cloudier than normal. I investigated. The teflon coating, or what ever was used to coat the stir bar had melted off during the boil. Six dollar bottle of yeast and some dry malt extract down the drain. The flask was pretty easy to clean out but I didn't try the bump it method this time.

 

[IanJ]

While using Better Bottles for one of my first extract batches I didn't bother considering temperature maximums for the plastic. Anyway, as the story goes... I was heating up 2 or 3 gallons of addition water and poured it in straight from the kettle after a short boil... I'm sure you can guess the chaos that followed.

Melting and warping BB. Luckily it didn't overflow and burn me. Stupidest thing I've ever done regarding beer

 

[catdaddy66]

My first IPA went well on brew day but made an error on bottling day. Had about .5-1 gallon more volume so I tried to estimate what I would need in addition to the normal 4.5 oz priming sugar. Had some light DME on hand so I used... 1/4 cup! I effectively doubled the priming amount and now my IPA has a head that resembles the washing machine on the Brady Bunch when Bobby put in the whole box of detergent! Lol

I may need to drink it fast to avoid bottle bombs...


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[Rotgut]

I moved to a new house. My wort chiller had the wrong thread adapter for the faucets in my new house. By the time I realized this, I was a bottle of mead in to the day and couldn't drive to the store for ice or another adapter. So every ice pack, ice cube and other expendable frozen item when into a tub of cold water to chill the wort.

 

[quincy07]

I miscalculated the volume for my last batch and primed for 3.5 gallons when in reality I got closer to 4.75 gallons into bottles. The bottle I opened last week, 10 days in the bottle, was damn near flat. I put another in the fridge last night for me to try tonight. I'm hoping it's carbed up more after another week in the bottle but don't have high expectations. If these don't carb up I might just dump it and chock it up to a stupid mistake that cost me the batch cuz I don't care for flat beer.

 

[catdaddy66]

I miscalculated the volume for my last batch and primed for 3.5 gallons when in reality I got closer to 4.75 gallons into bottles. The bottle I opened last week, 10 days in the bottle, was damn near flat. I put another in the fridge last night for me to try tonight. I'm hoping it's carbed up more after another week in the bottle but don't have high expectations. If these don't carb up I might just dump it and chock it up to a stupid mistake that cost me the batch cuz I don't care for flat beer.

Don't dump it, carb each bottle with carb drops. Little glucose candies that you drop in then recap the bottles should get each one perfect carbonation.



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[quincy07]

Don't dump it, carb each bottle with carb drops. Little glucose candies that you drop in then recap the bottles should get each one perfect carbonation.



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

I'll give that a shot. Thanks for the tip.

 

[JohnSand]

I make a mistake on every batch. I'd be nervous if not. Wednesday I brewed an APA. After adding my 60 minute hops, I started measuring the flavor additions and quickly realized I had added the wrong bittering hop. "Wait, I opened this package, not that." Fortunately it was a lower AA hop, and some fast math let me correct it. It's happily bubbling in the cellar, smelling great.

 

[eddiewould]

Mistake #1: Putting marbles in dry hop bag to weigh down hops. My keg has a dip tube that goes right to the bottom so I kept getting hop gunk in my beer. And grassy flavours.

Mistake #2: I go to remove said dry hop bag. I sanitise my brew spoon, remove the keg from the keezer, and try and fish it out. I get it most of the way up but then lose it, it falls to the bottom. Very slowly, the liquid level starts to rise. Then it starts to foam. Before I can get the keg lid back on, I've got beer foaming out of the keg onto the garage floor. Rip the thermometer off the keg and put it outside (to reduce the amount of beer on the garage floor).

Was an epic mess to clean up. Ironically, the foaming caused the hop bag to float so I was able to get it out. However I suspect the beer will be ruined due to oxidization (was a basic APA).

I've put the beer back on the gas and told my flatmates they can help themselves to as much as they want. I figure no point trying to bottle that one (I normally bottle with a beer gun from the keg) - what say you?

 

[FatDragon]

I learned on a recent bottling day that it's a good idea to stir the bottling bucket occasionally and not just at the beginning of the process - the last half-bottle went down my gullet tasting like syrup. Fortunately, the beer carbed up fine (but with very little head formation) and I haven't had any bombs so far a month after bottling.

The other mistake I have made on my last several bottling days is not wiping the bottles clean after capping. Mildew and mold propagate here in Wuhan at the drop of a hat, and about half the bottles I served at my wedding last weekend had a bit of visible mildew on them. Fortunately, the beer inside was good and nobody noticed the mildew. Now I'll be sure to wipe every bottle with a wet rag (maybe with a very mild bleach solution even) before storing them for bottle conditioning.

 

[Daphne-weizen]

This morning I was determined to have a perfect brew day. I was steeping my special grains bag and heated up some sparge water. I turned off the burner and removed the pan. For some reason I decided that it would be a good idea to warm up my LME by placing it on the stove waiting for my grains to finish steeping. a 1/2 of a split second later, after watching in horror at the plastic bag instantly melt and watch malt oozing on my stove top and onto my kitchen floor thinking OMG!!that was a really stupid thing to do!!!! I can't believe I did that! I managed to save about 3/4 of the malt and continued with the recipe. Actually the wort smelled great, I hope it turns out okay. Can anyone think of a clever name for my brew? "Airhead Kolsch?"

 

[bigwheell]

Dropped a glass 6.5 gallon carboy on my kitchen sink while cleaning it. I had visions of broken glass and water everywhere. Carboy stayed intact and broke my damn crushed granite sink. $280 for a new sink as it is oversized...

 

[revelation]

Today while crushing my specialty grain, I had a small amount in a plastic bag. I was running the drill with one hand and pouring with the other, the bag slipped out of my hand and before I knew it got sucked into the mill, jamming it and sending the entire mill flying before my finger came off the drill trigger... Luckily, no one was injured, the mill was mostly undamaged, the drill was undamaged, and the bag came easily out of the mill without ripping apart.

 

[pdietert]

Opening the ball valve right after a boil without an oven mit. I felt the heat but it did not register for a few seconds.