Most frustrating thing about your homebrew hobby

[DirtyPolock]

Hey everybody. I thing that something like this could be a little fun. I'm sure that we all enjoy our hobby of homebrewing. I just started this year and am loving it so far. But with any love we also get frustrated with some things every now and then.

Add your frustration to this thread whether is it fun or a true frustration (like poor efficiency in AG). Who knows maybye you'll get some answers to your problems as well.

Here are mine as of now:

First, you never finish buying new items for your home brewery. I can see myself buying newer items to brew with for the next several years.

Next is the wait time to drink after brewing. I'm working on my pipeline to help this out but it will be some time until I solve this problem.

Lastly for me as of now, is the curse of EdWorts Apfelwein. It's so delicious yet so dangerous at the same time. It is liquid time travel juice because once you start to drink it you just all of a sudden wake up the next day wondering why you have the mother of all headaches. But once it hits your lips, it's so good!

 

[david_42]

Waiting so long between brew days, because I only brew when a keg kicks and I don't drink all that much.

 

[KingBrianI]

My biggest frustration is having way more beers on my "to brew" list than I have time to make.

The other frustration is trying to work with my ghetto rig. I've got to heat water in a kettle. Pick up the kettle and dump that into the mash tun. Lauter into another kettle while water is being heated in the original for sparging. Dump some of the sparge water into the mash tun from the sparge water kettle, etc. Basically a lot of manual lifting of large amounts of hot water, and the inevitable over heating of mash water or sparge water and the subsequent attempt to either wait it out or mix it with cool water. I'd like an automated system but can't justify the several thousand dollars when I still make good beer.

 

[Bobby_M]

Having more beer than I can possibly drink.

 

[bmbigda]

Waiting so long between brew days, because I only brew when a keg kicks and I don't drink all that much.

YES! As soon as I read this I thought of how impatient I am.

 

[Grimster]

Having more beer than I can possibly drink.

I have the exact opposite problem, I gave away too much recently too and now I'm down to maybe a handful of homebrews, pipeline is strong but I gotta watch my urges to "share" too much.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

finding the time

 

[Ohio-Ed]

Fermentation, carbonation, aging time...
Like taking a picture with a film camera... you know you have all the settings right but you still have to wait for development to see what you got.
I want digital beer!

 

[arturo7]

Never ending desire for more, better gear.

Talking about it more than doing it.

 

[Dalarast]

Besides the pipeline issue and the urge to always expand my "brewery" I would have to say the CLEANING/SANITIZING. I feel like I'm in Basic Training all over again with how much detail I put on cleaning and sanitizing prior to brewing, keeping everything cleaned and sterilized while brewing, and then cleaning of all equipment, kitchen, brew room, etc, etc... I want to pick up a homeless man off the street with "will work for food" and give him a sanitation chemical shower put him in a bio-lab suit to have him clean all my brewing equipment and I'll pay him in good ol BEER!

 

[meddin]

Never ending desire for more, better gear.

Talking about it more than doing it.

This is me to a T. That and the $$ factor

 

[arturo7]

Yeah, medds. The $$ factor is a big reason why the desire is never met.

 

[nepa1374]

Having more beer than I can possibly drink.

I agree with Bobby_M. It's hard to brew more when you have a backlog of beer to drink, and most of the people you know are BMC drinkers.

 

[drmark50]

I always want more gear and love brewing. I have brewing under a yr and just kept buying cornies because I was brewing so much. I feel the need to have something going whether fermenting, aging, kegging....

I also am frustrated with organization. I want to get brewing right away and all the time so I try to multi-task with as little preparation as possible. This ends up leaving me running around a lot. Goal is to have an automated system in a location where I can do my fermentation, racking, and cleaning. Will get here eventually.

 

[DavidSteel]

Frustration? When I pre-heat water for my sparge, it gets a little too hot and I leave it (30 minutes into the mash) and end up forgetting to warm it up again. Then when I am done collecting my first running's, I realize that my sparge water isn't heated anymore. Fuuuuuuu-

When I put my spent grains into a garbage bag and the bag breaks at the bottom when I am carrying it to the garage.

The fact that it takes so long. I am a very anal person and never leave my kettle or process.

But most of all, THE most frustrating thing is the fact that I have to wait for SWMBO to leave and be gone for at least 8 hours before I can start brewing, which doesn't happen too often. I can only brew when SWMBO is not home.

 

[willynilly]

Stripping wires

 

[GregR]

bottling. hands down, bottling. hopefully within the next few months after I get my CC paid off I'll be able to save enough to buy all the requisite equipment and kiss bottles goodbye!

 

[Zen_Brew]

Well I agree with many of the above, but the biggest for me is space. I love to brew and average 2 brews/month. I am always thinking of a new style, or modifying an old brew. Problem for me is I can only fit 7 kegs in my keezer and kegerator so it backs up the brewing plans when everything is full till I kick some. I gotta get a house with a big garage so I can get another Keezer.

 

[gmtech825]

relying on other people to decide when i can brew.

 

[OMJ]

Not having the enough money to buy all the gear I want

 

[IrregularPulse]

Never ending desire for more, better gear.

Talking about it more than doing it.

+ a lack of money to build what I want when I want to. Trying to balance equipment upgrades while still having money to actually brew

 

[remilard]

My biggest frustration right now is that I want to build a cold room but I don't like building things.

Thought about buying a small commercial walk-in but you really are looking at a big difference in monetary outlay and I'm sure installing one of those is substantial effort anyway.

 

[wildwest450]

Never ending desire for more, better gear.

I had that bug for a while, then it left. My desire has shifted to nailing my processes and making damn good beer. After all, shiny bling is worthless if crap comes out of it.

It also helps that I see many, many people on here put their main focus on their equipment. Foolish. Have you ever seen Denny's rig?

 

[Beernik]

My meads are either fabulous or ****.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

I want to brew and drink so much, but I don't want to get fat doing it.

 

[klyph]

My biggest gripe is that I only have one LHBS and it sucks. Old stock, limited selection, high prices, etc. And I live in Alaska, so ordering online isn't cheap either.

Not being able to get the ingredients makes the whole hobby a pain in the ass.

 

[Sherpa FE]

My biggest frustration?

Having a kick ass brew stand, a dedicated brewing garage, all the temp control I could want, a great local grain supply store,

JUST CANT BREW FOR A YEAR WHILE I'M STUCK IN IRAQ!!

Thats right Dad, I hope you are enjoying my brewstand.......

 

[arturo7]

I had that bug for a while, then it left. My desire has shifted to nailing my processes and making damn good beer. After all, shiny bling is worthless if crap comes out of it.

It also helps that I see many, many people on here put their main focus on their equipment. Foolish. Have you ever seen Denny's rig?

All of this from a guy building a brew shed? (evil grin here)

 

[DirtyPolock]

JUST CANT BREW FOR A YEAR WHILE I'M STUCK IN IRAQ!!

Whether or not you believe in the war we appreciate your service. Come back safe!

 

[beerjunky828]

My ego is deflated when I visit this site. I can't do anything myself, so seeing all these nice rigs built for cheap makes me want the urge to move in with some person handy with a welder. Or a drill. But I did take the plunge into AG finally so I guess it can only get better (if I only had $$).