Share your mistakes please!

[badmajon]

I know making mistakes is part of becoming a good brewer, but maybe we can learn from others as well so we don't need to make them personally. I'll go first:

I brewed an IPA where I didn't make the hop bags big enough, I used some stockings and they resembled tightly stuffed sausages. As a result, I got almost no hop flavor in my brew.

The moral of the story: make your hop bags big, don't be stingy, make sure there is enough room for the hops and water to circulate in there.

 

[Nanobru]

Not taking down copies notes. Record everything : ingredients, gravities, timing on brew day, and cellar work.

 

[ajf]

My worst mistake was about my 6th or 7th brew. I wanted to make a stout, so I looked up a recipe, and then checked what grains I had on hand to add character and color to the brew. Needless to say, I didn't have what was in the recipe, so I made some (a lot of) substitutions which reduced my stockpile of leftovers considerably.
That brew was fantastic, and would have put Guinness out of business if it had ever been marketed.
The mistake I made was not making any notes about what I put into the recipe. I tried to remake it many times over the next 2 years, and failed miserably in each instance.

-a.

 

[SwampassJ]

Getting drunk before the boil even started (4pm or so).

Trying to stir 7+ gallons of hotbreaking wort from within the pool in an 8 gallon pot.

Starting at 1pm in the afternoon after working my normal job in the sun all day. Put myself into heat exhaustion.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

I don't make mistakes. Just limited edition specials.

 

[Revvy]

Whole thread about it here....

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

 

[brettwasbtd]

So many good ones, might have to edit this post as i think of more!

HOPS - no bag is fine, as long as you have something to keep them clogging the racking cane! Lost like 4-5 beers cause of this one!
RECOMMENDATION: panty-hose at the end of the racking cane/auto siphon

TEMP CONTROL - pitched at 80 expecting things to cool... fermentation stayed at 78 the whole time.... very fuselly this batch was, still holding onto over a case hoping it tones down.
RECOMMENDATION: As long as you sanitized everything, you can wait for the wort to be at your pitching temp. I now stick my fermentor in the extra fridge for a few hours until it reaches the mid 60s and pitch.

HOT WORT - If you have a cheap plastic cylinder to use for hydrometer readings, don't fill it with 150° wort and stick it in the fridge, when you come back, the plastic will be deformed and unusable.
RECOMMENDATION: don't be this stupid and, invest in one of the better hydrometer cylinders (base screws off for cleaning)

 

[ksbrain]

My worst mistake was on my first Duvel clone attempt. I planned for 70% efficiency, and got 90% efficiency. So my OG was where it should have been after the recipe called for adding corn sugar to primary.

A week later, I added the corn sugar to primary anyway. I bottled two bottles at that time when I took the gravity prior to adding the corn sugar. Those two bottles were awesome. Unfortunately, the beer never made its way through that extra sugar and the rest of the five gallons was overly sweet, oxidized, and flat. Ugh.

My takeaway was: don't mess with a beer that's good as-is.

 

[passedpawn]

Don't dump boiling wort into a glass carboy, then set the carboy in your pool to cool. It will break. Yes I did this.

 

[curlyfat]

Getting drunk before the boil even started (4pm or so).

Indeed!

Also:

Don't dump boiling wort into a glass carboy, then set the carboy in your pool to cool. It will break. Yes I did this.

That is f'ing hilarious! I've done some crazy things, but thank god I don't have a pool!

 

[November]

When I still brewed in the kitchen, I had a disaster that cost me an entire batch. After finishing the boil for a Belgian Wit, I picked up the pot to move it so I could get the beer into the fermenter. I burned my arm and dropped the pot. Luckily, I didn't get burned by the wort hitting the floor but the 4 gallons of wort on the floor did not make the wife very happy. It flowed under the refrigerator and the stove and into the laundry room. She immediately decreed that I could never again brew inside. This was tragic for a while, until she offered to buy me a propane burner and a bunch of other equipment to turn our garage into a brewery.

On a related note when my fermenter top popped off and spewed kraussen and beer all over the closet, she banned me from keeping fermenters inside and thus bought me a large temperature controlled, refrigerated fermentation chamber so I could ferment in the garage.

Moral of the story: Screw up to move up!

 

[Mischief_Brewing]

Don't try to step over a babygate at the top of your basement stairs while carrying a bottling bucket full of beer. Didn't lose much beer (lid was mostly on), but I did walk with a limp for nearly 2 months.

And yes, I would certainly sacrifice the body for the beer again...

 

[passedpawn]

Moral of the story: Screw up to move up!

Awesome.

 

[Jaysus]

I forgot the manifold for my mashtun on a mobile brewday. I was nearly an hour away from home, and already had my grains milled and my strike water heating when I realized it.

We wound up rigging a temp manifold out of a spare piece of CPVC and duct tape. What a day.

 

[Special Hops]

Don't drink to much while brewing. Bad things tend to happen.

I typically have one beer during mashing, one during the boil, and one during cooling. Much more then that and mistakes (some small , others large) get made.

 

[Zeppman]

Keep your fermentation temps within the recommended range as stated on the yeast packet. Never paid much attention to that until I decided to brew in my new "no central air" apartment in July in Chicago... yikes.

 

[mithion]

I should probably win the homebrewing equivalent of the darwin award for this. When you're santizing your wort chiller, make sure the hose isn't hooked up to it while you're trying to untangle it. I accidently pulled too hard on the hoose while untangling it and the whole kettle filled with boiling hot wort came crashing down. Way to go kill a nice brew day buzz. I was also partially drunk when that happened so I also recommend you pace yourself on the drinking while you're brewing. That's two mistakes I'll never do again.

 

[Randar]

Don't dump boiling wort into a glass carboy, then set the carboy in your pool to cool. It will break. Yes I did this.

Did the same thing but set the hose up to run water over the outside of the glass....


BOOM! Hot wort on foot. Not fun.

 

[Vuarra]

I got married.

She likes BL Lime.

 

[JetSmooth]

Not taking down copies notes. Record everything : ingredients, gravities, timing on brew day, and cellar work.

Excellent point! I don't have any notes from this last batch. I need a beer lifecycle worksheet. From recipe, to brew data (actual vs. planned) to cellaring information. I think I saw something like this once, but can't find it now.

do you have a standard format you use?

 

[Randar]

I got married.

She likes BL Lime.

well that is 2 serious mistakes rolled into one!

 

[Walker]

Last sunday I finished boiling up 10 gallons of scottish ale that I had been looking forward to brewing for several months.

Everything went well and I was done cooking and ready to chill. I opened the spigot on the kettle and pumped some boiling wort through my pump and chiller to santize it and started fetching the ice from the freezer to get the chilling started.

When I came back I noticed that I had left a drain valve open on my plumbing and 5 gallons of the beer had already left the building... flowing down the driveway and into the gutter on the street.

(hence the dunce cap on my avatar)

 

[doulovebeef]

i had a few beers while i was brewing one day and as i was transfering from the BK to the carboy, i stumbled over my autosiphon and the whole BK slammed onto the kitchen linoleum. the next day i went and bought a turkey fryer to brew outside. i should mention my overall brew time has decreased significantly since i started using propane, and no more DMS!

 

[King of Cascade]

rolled out of bed this morning looked over....300 +pounds

 

[Randar]

BTW, I will add in the most common mistake here that I think almost every all-grain brewer has encountered at some point:

Faulty or MIA temperature measurement devices causing missed target temps.

 

[jturie]

Good lord, where do I start?

Always use a blowoff tube instead of an airlock for the first few days of fermentation, lest your plastic fermenter lid take flight.

Read your Wyeast smack pack, lest you find out that you just pitched 1010 American Wheat yeast into your APA batch.

Be careful closing the lid on your Keezer, lest the party tap get pinched by the lid and simultaneously squirt 5 gallons of Scottish Ale into your Keezer whilst draining your full CO2 bottle. That's actually happened to me twice!

Record, record, record. Probably my most consistent failing.

 

[curlyfat]

I'd almost forgot about this epic fail:

It was my first October-Fest brew, and one of my first all-grains, and only one of two times I decocted. Needless to say, this was a looonngg brew day.

Since I didn't have a chiller yet, I just hauled my 15.5g pot into the bathtub and started filling. About that time, SWMBO shows up with dinner. I go eat dinner.

About halfway through eating it dawned on me that I'd never turned the water off! I ran back to discover an almost overflowed bathtub (thank god, that could have been worse!), with my brewpot floating sideways, half-submerged. I felt positive since the lid was still on, but it turned out that the cooling liquid was pulling a vaccum on the pot and sucking bathwater in around the lid. There was almost double the liquid I started with.

I debated boiling it back down, but decided to chuck it. The next day I bought copper tubing and fashioned an immersion chiller.

 

[bolts]

Decided to brew a really big RIS, aiming for 1.100 OG. 22lb grain bill, 60m boil, 3oz hops ...

We learned that 22lb of grain doesn't exactly fit in a 10 gallon mash tun, managed to get ~7 gallons of water to soak into 22lb of grain with minimum spillage, but it took forever. Mash temp ended up a couple degrees low.

Efficiency was so low we decided to do a third sparge that gave us something like 12 gallons of wort total to boil down to the target 6 gallon batch. Should have been happy with a 1.070 stout.

A vigorous roiling boil took forever, something like 5 hours to reduce down to our target volume and a 1.107 OG. We tossed in the hops when we decided an hour was left.

We pitched a huge starter, but probably didn't aerate enough (shake method) and it stalled out at 1.036. Racked it on top of another yeast cake 6 weeks later and then went on vacation for 3 weeks to find that it had finally finished at 1.018. Then it sat for another couple months.

It's now affectionately known as Soy Sauce Stout. The long boil caramelized it to death and it may be displaying notes of autolysis. It'll soon be the first batch I dump, although I keep debating throwing oak cubes in it and maybe some Brett to really punish it.

 

[Apendecto]

Don't get in a hurry with your first brew with your dad. You just might forget to chill the wort before putting it into a Better Bottle. And that's totally fine if you like Shrinkie Dink carboys.

D'oh.

 

[oceanselv]

When I still brewed in the kitchen, I had a disaster that cost me an entire batch. After finishing the boil for a Belgian Wit, I picked up the pot to move it so I could get the beer into the fermenter. I burned my arm and dropped the pot. Luckily, I didn't get burned by the wort hitting the floor but the 4 gallons of wort on the floor did not make the wife very happy. It flowed under the refrigerator and the stove and into the laundry room. She immediately decreed that I could never again brew inside. This was tragic for a while, until she offered to buy me a propane burner and a bunch of other equipment to turn our garage into a brewery.

On a related note when my fermenter top popped off and spewed kraussen and beer all over the closet, she banned me from keeping fermenters inside and thus bought me a large temperature controlled, refrigerated fermentation chamber so I could ferment in the garage.

Moral of the story: Screw up to move up!

While I didn't screw up as bad, my boil over just coated the electric stove top and nearby counter tops, my wife also put the kibosh on brewing inside. The next day she told me to buy whatever I needed to brew outside. So I now have a larger stainless pot, a banjo burner, a grain mill, kegs, a 3 tier stand and a converted cooler as my MLT, 5 lbs of hops, 100 lbs of base grain, 30 lbs of specialty grains, various other gadgets for brewing and a very lovely and understanding wife.