Post your "whoops" moments- messes, etc

[mongoose33]

Bought a Jaded Hydra immersion chiller and used it for the first time yesterday. I had the "out" hose secured in the sink.

Well. Not so secured as I thought. Turned on the water full blast (as per directions) and that hose became ALIVE. Had a minute or two of excitement and a very wet floor.

 

[GHBWNY]

Started racking beer from bucket #1 on countertop to bucket #2 on low stool (for bottling). As I was watching beer level in bucket #1 start to go down, I heard splashing. Looking down, I decided it might be a good idea to CLOSE THE SPIGOT in bucket #2!

 

[VagueSkunk]

Bought 1 oz each of Simcoe, Amarillo and Mosaic at the store yesterday. Bagged 'em up and on the drive home realized that I forgot to write the name of the hop on each bag. Oops.

 

[jonny24]

Bought 1 oz each of Simcoe, Amarillo and Mosaic at the store yesterday. Bagged 'em up and on the drive home realized that I forgot to write the name of the hop on each bag. Oops.

I've done that with yeast. My LHBS buys bulk dry yeast and sell it in clear plastic baggies. Normally they're labelled but they were out of the labelled ones and I just grabbed blank ones out of the fridge. Had to call them up and ask which was the darker of the two.

I've also had to call up and ask for the AA on some unlabelled hops.

 

[Vandulus]

Wow, I've had so many brain fart moments it's hard to know where to begin
- Not checking if the valves were closed
- Not inserting the dip tube in the fermenter
- Having a wee to much to drink and forgetting to add the DME in until I was chilling the wort
- Fermenting a 5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon fermenter - blew the airlock straight out and krausen splattered everywhere

The worst though? It was my 4th batch back in the late 90s and I was cooling the wort in a glass carboy sitting in an ice bath. I really shouldn't have been surprised when I lifted the carboy and the bottom fell out! Luckily the bucket for the ice bath was still underneath to contain most of the wort and there were no injuries.

 

[Cavpilot2000]

The first time I pitched onto an ale yeast cake (brown ale followed by a big stout), I didn't use a blowoff tube, and instead used a regular airlock on a brewbucket. I oxygenated the hell out of it, and in the middle of the night (about 5-6 hours post-pitching) I was awakened by a BOOM and the sound of a bucket lid falling onto the floor.

It actually blew the lid clean off, ripping the rubber gasket out of it in the process, and sprayed fermenting kreusen all over my kitchen cabinets and ceiling.

Try removing dark beer foam from a white popcorn ceiling...not fun.

 

[mmiddleton]

I added the stabilizer to a batch of wine without checking the alcohol level first. It wasn't NEARLY done fermenting *LOL*

 

[mashinary]

I've been keeping sparkling water on tap. Well through a series of events, I had a nice fully carbonated glass of StarSan.

If it weren't for a high gravity reading, I would have racked an IPA in to a keg that was "sanitized" with tap water.

 

[Honda88]

Wow, I've had so many brain fart moments it's hard to know where to begin
- Not checking if the valves were closed
- Not inserting the dip tube in the fermenter
- Having a wee to much to drink and forgetting to add the DME in until I was chilling the wort
- Fermenting a 5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon fermenter - blew the airlock straight out and krausen splattered everywhere

The worst though? It was my 4th batch back in the late 90s and I was cooling the wort in a glass carboy sitting in an ice bath. I really shouldn't have been surprised when I lifted the carboy and the bottom fell out! Luckily the bucket for the ice bath was still underneath to contain most of the wort and there were no injuries.

lol that's funny. I'm guessing you added the hot wort directly from the boil kettle then?

 

[raysmithtx]

I BIAB and use a Bayou Classic turkey fryer kettle. After the mash I was hoisting the inside pot with the grain bag in it (20 pounds of grain, so the weight was a lot more than the turkey fryer was designed for ). As the pot got about halfway above the kettle, the metal handle flexed too far and one end came out of the hoisted pot.

The pot feel directly back into the kettle causing a tidal wave of hot sticky wort to come up out of the kettle like a geyser. It soaked me, my shop and everything in site with hot, sticky 165 degree wort. That was months ago and I'm still finding things covered in dried sticky wort to this day.

I did throw away the bent metal handle and replace it with a stainless steel chain. On the positive side if I had the pot above the kettle when the handle broke I could have ended up with about 8 gallons or that stuff everywhere.

My glass is always half full... of beer.

 

[Peam]

I told myself that morning before work that I should throw on a blow off tube, but of course "it'll be fine until I get home"

 

[Imburr]

I didn't calibrate the thermometer for the keggle I bought and brewed a $50 recipe 8 degrees under where it should be.

I also double-primed a batch, though it turned out fine and no explosions.

Lastly, I didnt add water to make 5 gallons in one batch, so ended up fermenting and bottling 3.5 gallons of citra IPA, tasted yeasty.

 

[apl_seed]

There was a smidge of water left in my immersion chiller from a previous use. When I turned on the water to start chilling the next batch, a shot of boiling water came out, bounced off the back of the sink and nailed me in the forehead. Thankfully I wear glasses or I might have caught it in the eye too. Had a bit of a blister for a few days. Moral of the story: Turn water on slooowly.

 

[Cavpilot2000]

I told myself that morning before work that I should throw on a blow off tube, but of course "it'll be fine until I get home"

Oooh, up under the wall too...

 

[Peam]

Oooh, up under the wall too...

Yeah it wasn't pretty. Thankfully the basement is being redone at some point anyway. It's basically a giant brew room at this point

 

[Honda88]

Dad brewed some beer in a 5 gallon carboy awhile back. Air lock clogged up and it blew the bung out to the top of the ceiling...the plastic airlock was in pieces. It sounded like a shotgun had went off when it happened. Funny thing is I told him that might happen.

 

[Vandulus]

lol that's funny. I'm guessing you added the hot wort directly from the boil kettle then?

Yep, at the time I was only doing partial boils so I'd add 3 gallons of boiling wort and 2 gallons of room temperature water into the carboy. The saddest part? That carboy was one I got from my grandfather and 30+ years old

 

[Yooper]

I thought my biggest "whoops" was actually pretty funny, and I shared it in an interview with forum member Dave Carpenter (now the editor of Zymurgy) with us laughing about it. https://beerandbrewing.com/VKG5-SsAAD6t70Y8/article/homebrew-disaster-relief

No problem having it printed, except for one small detail. I forgot to mention it to Bob, the steady and sane member of our duo.

He picked up the magazine, and read it. Later on, he said, "I didn't know about the flood." I gulped and said, "Um, sorry. But it was about 5 years ago......................" That was the end of it!

But yes, the lesson 3a in the magazine article does ring true even now. You simply can NOT fit 50 gallons of water in a 10 gallon cooler. No matter how hard you try.

 

[SanPancho]

a hoppy lager with over 450ppm of chloride. oddly enough, it tasted a bit similar to homemade banana wine i had in india. go figure.

 

[str1p3s]

Forgot to put my SS braid in the bottom of my mash tun. Opened the valve to vorluaf and nothing came out as it slowly dawned on me what an idiot I am.

Briefly thought about reaching down into the hot mash and trying to attach it before realizing that's even dumber. Ended up dumping the whole mash into a bucket to attach it....can't find it.

Get a big nylon bag that I used once to BIAB and put it in the mash tun to use as a filter and dumped the mash back in and changed plans from a fly sparge to a batch sparge.

Efficiency was awful and I had to add DME to bring up the OG, but it turned out ok.

 

[Black Island Brewer]

Brew day was finishing up, and I heated some water in my boil keggle to clean up with. Scrubbed up the keggle on the inside and lifted it off the stand to dump the water. Grabbed the handle with one hand, the chine with the other. I can still hear the sizzling noise my skin made.

 

[Begin2Brew]

Just started kegging and had racked a nice amber ale into a corny. Tossed it into my keezer and hooked up the gas line. When down a few days later to check on it and to my surprise nothing came out of the tap. Opened the top to see and empty 10lb CO2 tank and 5 gallons of beer in the keezer! Turns out I should always check the beer out post for leaks before walking away...

 

[rhoadsrage]

Many years ago, I was boiling a big stout. I made some Dulce de Leche from cooking sweetened condensed milk in the can, to add to the beer. At the last 15 min. or the boil I opened the cans and spooned out the big lugs of DdL, I stirred a bit but thought the rolling boil would mix up the DdL. When I was siphoning the wort into the carboy, I noticed that the DdL must have just went straight to the bottom of the pot, slowly spreading and carbonizing to form a thick chuck of charcoal. The whole beer tasted like burnt ashes, it didn't even make it to the bottle.
It also took some work to chip and scrub most of that mess out of the pot.

 

[ButteryJones]

The other night, I opened up an oatmeal stout I made about a year ago. Must have over-carbed it or bottled too early because about 1.5 seconds after there was a volcanic eruption of oatmeal stout in my kitchen & in my face...

 

[Pantherjon]

1.5 seconds? That's an eternity!..lol..Mine was almost instantaneous from popping the cap! Was my 2nd or 3rd batch ever- was still doing the Mr Beer kits..It was the American Light kit, decided to 'add to it' by dry hopping..Used 2oz of Centennial(I think), BUT my method of dry hopping? Unscrew the top of the LBK and throw the loose pellets in! So, obviously when I bottle I had TONS of hop pellet debris causing the volcano effect whenever I would pop a bottle cap...Made the beer totally undrinkable...It all went down the kitchen sink drain..Only consolation was that it was only 2.5 gallons...

 

[BikerMatt]

This happened about eleven years ago, way before my brewing days but is still somewhat relevant...

Up here it is a custom to make very low alc vol mead for mayday celebrations which my mom had made since I was still in the army back then. My girlfriend, now wife was living with my mom in my old room (practically the entire upstairs). I had been on a weekend leave and drank about half a bottle of mead forgetting the rest of the bottle between my computer screen and the central unit that had it's left side panel removed (I was a nerdy kid). The table was sitting in front of a big window with a wall heater under it. Then suddenly one evening I got a phonecall, think it was wednesday or thursday. My gf was at work when my mom was getting ready to leave the house. She told me she heard a MASSIVE explosion from upstairs and went to see what happened. The glass bottle where the mead had been had exploded into a gazillion needle sharp sticky shards spreading them everywhere across the fairly large room. When I got home the next weekend I properly inspected the damage. My computer was in shreds, several small shards had shot through the motherboard, the curtain in front of the window had a hole in it as well as the first pane of the triple glazed window. There was shards all across the room, the only place that had been saved from the blastwave was my bed which the computer screen had protected but we still changed all sheets just to be sure. Later on about a month from that I found a small shard embedded into the doorsill about ten meters from ground zero! I contacted the manufacturer of the sparkling wine which' bottles we were using and they told me all their bottles get tested at 7 bar!

 

[kevo342]

In my early days of brewing, I had just finished chilling the wort and poured it into my carboy. I was using a vial of white labs liquid yeast. I unscrewed the lid of vial and turned it upside down over the opening of the carboy, and proceeded to drop the whole vial in to my wort.

I sat there for a moment with my hand hovering where it was when the vial slipped from my grasp, unsure oh how to proceed. I finally decided to just pour the entire contents of the carboy back into my brew kettle, fish out the now empty vial, and then pour it back into my carboy.

I could do nothing but hope I hadn't contaminated the hell out of my beer. Put the airlock on and set it in my closet to ferment.

Fortunately, the story has a good ending. The beer came out great, and there were no issues at all!

 

[Murphys_Law]

Just remembered this gem...

I was making a raspberry stout and poured from my kettle to bucket, somehow broke my hydro over the fermenter bucket (don't ask, I may have had a few beers!).

Sterilized another bucket and a strainer and poured the beer into the the new bucket, catching glass and bbs into the strainer.

Beer turned out damn good!

 

[tsl346]

I split my wort into 4 different 1 gallon carboys to test out some different yeasts. Some yeasts were definitely were more zealous than others. I had to move out the fridge, freezer, and shelving in my brew storage room to clean everything where the beer spread. After this I switched to using a half gallon growler as a blowoff container.

Results: Wyeast American Ale II was my favorite, and Denny's Favorite is disgusting.

 

[brhenrio]

I split my wort into 4 different 1 gallon carboys to test out some different yeasts. Some yeasts were definitely were more zealous than others. I had to move out the fridge, freezer, and shelving in my brew storage room to clean everything where the beer spread. After this I switched to using a half gallon growler as a blowoff container.

Results: Wyeast American Ale II was my favorite, and Denny's Favorite is disgusting.

American ale ii is one of my favourites too