What are some of the mistakes you made...where your beer still turned out great!

[Revvy]

This came to me in another thread, the one about infections and bad batches....

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/has-anyone-ever-messed-up-batch-96644/

This is the time of year where we literally have hundreds of nervous new brewers on here. They are worried about everything...Too high temps, Infections, sanitization, being perfect brewers...not making any mistakes.

They are worried that their first creation is like a newborn baby...so weak, and needing their constant attention.

We were all like that ourselves at one time.

I think it would be intersting, and helpful, that our new brew friends see just how hardy our beer really is...how sometimes it seems nothing during the brewing to bottling process turns out right...Except the beer!

And how often that no matter how hard it seems, we try to ruin our beer....it defeats our stupidity and survives.

Sometimes even becoming the best beer we ever made.

And that's why when you start a panic thread...we tell you to relax, that everything will be fine...because we know from our mistakes...and brewing accidents...that it usually is!

So fess up you "big guns" let's show the "noobs" how utter fools we were, how many mistakes we made (and still do) and everything still turns out OK!

Me first

I have stuck my arm in the bottling bucket (unsanitized) to fix the spigot.

Stuck my hand in a hot (158 degree) mash tun, to re-attach the braid. Owie

Racked my beer into an unsantized (but still clean) secondary.

I have dropped a lighter I was using to tilt my bottling bucket (and why I came up with my dip tube) right into the bucket when I was lifting it to the table.

I have had a beer where the autosiphon wouldn't keep, and I had to literally use it like a pump to move the beer.

I have had my auto siphon and my bottling wand get so gummed up with whole hops and pumpkin goop that I couldn't use them. Then ground the spring tip of my bottling wand in the garbage disposal and had to literally bottle directly from the spigot.

Brewed when I had a cold.

And fermented a beer at so high a temp it tasted like bubble gum (the one in the "never dump your beer thread.")

And None of those beers turned out bad at all! In fact some of those ended up being some of my best batches.

Okay my friends...Fess up...Let's show these nervous new brewers just what stern stuff our beer is made of!!!



By the way...hit the prost bar if you find this helpful!

 

[thataintchicken]

I had a batch of tripel that tasted like lighter fluid, seriously.
I waited... and waited.
when it went to bottle.. it was heaven. I almost tossed it.

The initial impulse is to toss.
The smart thing to do is see what happens. It's all about the chaos.
see what happens.

taste it. accept it. Know that you are not in control.

 

[eschatz]

I have forgot to let my yeast get to room temp before pitching and have thrown it in at fridge temp. Beer tasted fine.

I have reached in a primary bucket for the rubber seal from the lid. Good beer.

My airconditioning went out once and I fermented a Bock at 80F! Tasty beer.

This one isn't mine. My dad used to brew a beer when I was a kid. This was before Chuck P. It was an old prohibition recipe. It had a half cup of table salt in it and half a potato! We used to drink it in highschool. It wasn't that bad at all.

Bottom line is it's REALLY hard to prevent the yeastie beasties from doing their job.

 

[k1v1116]

My very first batch (also my first AG batch) I used one of those funnels with a screen at the bottom as my lauter tun... WTF did I know? and it turned out as one of my best beers. Papazians "good life pale ale" was the recipe.

 

[GNBrews]

My fermenter bucket has a drum tap on the bottom. I poured the cooled wort into the bucket, pitched the yeast, and then discovered 10 mins later that I had a trickling leak. Unfortunately I didn't have another fermenter empty, so not knowing that the nut was *too* tight, I tried spinning the tap slightly to tighten the seal. Oops. The nut popped off the threads inside and dislocated the whole assembly. So, with one hand holding the tap against the bucket and keeping the beer from pouring all over the floor, I had to put my entire unsanitized arm inside the unfermented wort to reattach the nut.

The beer, an Irish Red, fermented out with no problems and was one of the tastiest beers I've ever brewed.

 

[BrewInATL]

Keep them coming guys! This thread was a great idea Revvy! It's reassuring for us newbies. All of you don't realize how much you really help us out.

Thanks and Cheers!
-Mark

 

[Fingers]

My airconditioning went out once and I fermented a Bock at 80F! Tasty beer.

I did that once with an ale, it was the only undrinkable beer I've ever made.



I've gotten overly polluted on various intoxicants and completely mixed up hop additions. I don't know how many times I added the flavor hops. I followed up my error by not documenting the inebriation so I lost track of which beer in the lineup it happened to. 10 gallon batch.

I've long since kegged and drank the batch so I guess it was more in my mind than in my pot. :fro:

 

[Revvy]

C'mon...I'm not seeing many of my buddies posting in here...and I know EDwort is online...Besides beating us up with his potent apfelwein he's brewed a beer or two (thousand I'm sure) come one..pony up with the mistakes there fella!

 

[Fingers]

You have buddies?

 

[Glubki]

I got piss drunk on rum and coke while brewing a batch one night and passed out on the couch while my wort was chilling - 9 hours later it was in the fermenter and it still turned out ok...

 

[Borisbbadd]

Wife went to answer her cell phone, hit my arm, her phone flew out of her hand, did a couple back flips and a perfect 10 into the open fermenter..........batch turned out great, but the phone died.

 

[Revvy]

Wife went to answer her cell phone, hit my arm, her phone flew out of her hand, did a couple back flips and a perfect 10 into the open fermenter..........batch turned out great, but the phone died.

I have come close to losing my phone in the brewpot and the bottling bucket...wow!

 

[eschatz]

There's probably a "I lost my phone in my beer" thread around here somewhere...

 

[Grinder12000]

One of my first mini mashs I got everything ready but forgot 2 pounds of 2-row.

I felt that the only real problem would be the added hops to malt ratio and sure enough it was unbalanced towards hop.

Let it sit for a while as I know hops tend to diminish over time.

Drank on just tonight and it's just fine and I'll have no problems sharing it with friends.

 

[BrewinJack]

Im not sure if i qualify as Revy's buddy but i have been doing this awhile and i have a regular monthly Fu*kup... My ex-girl used to call it my brewing PMS (partial monthly screwup)....Some of the more colorful ones.

july of 3 years ago: forgot to pinch yeast into a batch of apple cider made with real fresh cider. It started to ferment natrally and i remember i screwed up and went ok, i will break down, hit it with some cap tabs and everthing will be ok in a couple of days... Well i went to the LHBS which i didnt frequent much because it was alittle far away for me and i didnt want people thinking that 18 year old kid was making achohal... grabed a bottle of camp tabs and went home and pitched in the required ammount... Then a day later i added the yeast in... fermentation didnt start... didnt start... I read the bottle... they weret camp-tabs... the cap said camp tabs... the bottle said K-sorbate... whoops, i just sterilized my brew, oh sh*t... no biggy... K-sorbate breaks down at higher temps... I pasturized the juice on the stove top... it ended up cloudy but fermented out fine... moral ov the story, read the bottle, not the cap

Two years ago in may i was making a batch of mean and didnt sterilize the fermenter... at all... just chucked the meade in there right on top of the old nasty red star yeast cake... i had made a cider in it just before... Fermentaiton started but the meade turned a funny color and i realized what i did and actully it turned out just fine

Hell my first extract kit... A red ale... skortched a large ammount of the malt extract to the bottom of the pan... was alot darker then i thought it should be but tasted just fine


thats just three of them... note how i mentioned color in all of them... most colorful... get it... i know im an idiot, and im not funny... thats somthing my ex-girlfriend would tell you too... but the truth is that brews are as fragile as we might think... if i treated each brew like a baby i would never sleep... i mean im catholic but thats rediculess

Cheers

 

[nitrousjunkie]

My first AG, a tripel, had drank to much homebrew. I don't remember anything past the boil starting. One of my best beers yet.

 

[GNBrews]

My first AG, a tripel, had drank to much homebrew. I don't remember anything past the boil starting. One of my best beers yet.

Autopilot Triple...I like it

 

[ArcaneXor]

Recently I accidentally over-diluted a mini-mash batch (i.e. undershot my OG), so the beer tasted thin and watery. I did some calculations and basically brewed another mini-beer that I added to the fermenter to compensate for the flaw. After the second fermentation and a bit of lagering, it's delicious now!

 

[bob1852]

forgot to add priming sugar to my last batch of Apfelwein.

Was about have way through bottling and my buddy says: "why is the sugar water still on the stove?" OOPS!!!

Oh well, I "wanted" that batch un-carbed anyway

and I just added the sugar water to a mead I started that day...

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

I once had a collapsed braid on my mash tun, and therefore a VERY stuck sparge. I dumped the entire contents of the MLT, grains and water into my bottling bucket to fix my braid, then dumped it all back in the MLT. 3 times I did this, but it kept getting stuck. The last time I just stuck my arm in the mash (don't do that...it's hot), and ripped the braid out (make sure to throw the braid into the street and yell loud obscenities at this point). Then I had one of my buddies open the valve while I held a muslin bag over the kettle. Everything came out, grains and wort, into the bag and I strained the wort into the kettle. I also did the same thing for the sparge, and when the bag got full I would just dump the contents back into the MLT.

This was an IPA, and it turned out fantastic. No astringency, no hot side aeration, just hoppy and dry...go figure!

 

[Kungpaodog]

Wife went to answer her cell phone, hit my arm, her phone flew out of her hand, did a couple back flips and a perfect 10 into the open fermenter..........batch turned out great, but the phone died.

I knew there was a reason I got the water-proof phone.

Well, I've boiled over and lost a bunch of wort, I've spilled half an active starter because aerating it seemed like a good idea before pitching (foamy starter everywhere), I've scorched LME by not stirring it at first, I've added a gallon and a half too much top-off water... and they were all pretty damn good beers!:rockin:

 

[Revvy]

Come on you people...I know you're out there...If you don't start posting your stories I'll start doing a thread search myself(and YOU KNOW I ROCK AT USING THE SEARCH FEATURE!!!)...I'm sure I could find some dirty little brewing secrets....especially from our distinguished moderators...

This is to show the noobs that we're not perfect, and yet the gods of fermentation still shine upon us.

 

[bmorris1]

Last month, lost five gallons of Celebration Clone to my carpet....

THEN I was shown Revvy's Bottling tip thread... Will certainly be used on my latest batch, dip tube already made, and shortened up the bottling tubing.

 

[jmulligan]

I had a wheat beer where I forgot the hops in my apartment freezer (I brew at my parents' house an hour away). I ran through the brew like usual, and then just made a hop tea later that I dumped into the secondary. This might not work for a beer that needs more hop presence/complexity, but for a wheat beer with a single bittering addition, it turned out great.

 

[flyangler18]

My very first AG was an oatmeal stout that I rushed to brew a little to late in the day. Despite my best intentions to nail my mash temp, I overheated my strike water and wound up mashing at 160° compared to my intended 154. Of course, I panicked- whipped open the lid, stirred like mad, threw in some ice to cool down the mash. Overexcited stirring threw globs of hot grain and spilled some liquor. Eventually stabilized at 154°. Went to drain my runnings- and it was horribly stuck due to all the oats. Backflushed the cooler with a puff of air. Still stuck. Terrible efficiency (only collected about 6 gallons compared to 7), overboiled and only wound up with 4 gallons in the fermenter after dealing with a leaky IC spritzing water into the boil kettle. I saw that water dripping into the kettle and into my wort- and I immediately thought infection, already fearing dumping the batch.

I persevered. Pitched the yeast, saw it through- and I'm still here typing.
No infection, no horribly stomach-turning taste (perhaps a bit thin) but it was a hit with my rugby mates!

I still have a bottle of that (brewed 4+ months ago); might need to crack it and see how it is now.

 

[bob1852]

(make sure to throw the braid into the street and yell loud obscenities at this point).

that's THE best advice I've seen on this site ever!

 

[shecky]

I have never made a mistake. And I'll save you the 'you have to brew more than once a year to make a mistake' jokes.

No, really, my second batch, an IPA, almost became a disaster. I couldn't keep the siphon going when transferring to the bottling bucket. I got extremely pissed after probably 15 tries to keep it going. Said screw it and left behind about a gallon of beer. My mood was not helped by having literally just finished painting my kitchen.

Whole transfer process took probably 90 minutes with me aerating the crap out of the beer. It turned out pretty well, in retrospect.

I believe it was that day I discovered this place and was also the day I ordered an auto siphon, so I guess the disaster had its benefits.

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

Dangling my penis in the boiling wort was a mistake. But the beer still turned out great!

 

[jasper9]

This was before Chuck P.

as a noob i need to step in here. there was a time before Charlie Papazian ?!?!

 

[bull8042]

I had an AG batch that I totally missed my strike. It settled at 160°F, I added cold water to compensate and undershot my strike temp and ended up mashing at 150°F. I tried decocting, but couldn't seem to get the temp of the mash to rise. Then I found out that the paddle I was using to stir the mash was the same one my 2 year old had been running around the garage with and smacking the dog on the ass.
I ran short on sparge water after the first sparge and couldn't get the second sparge up past 160°F.
My burner was having an off-day and wouldn't give me a rolling boil.... more of a semi-rolling simmer. Ended up having to boil 90+ minutes to get my volume down after hopping for a 60 min boil.
Waited almost 60 hrs before signs of fermentation, then ended up with a funky kreusen that had long black "hairs" growing out of it.
That DFH 60-min IPA ended up being privately known as "The Hair of the Dog IPA" and was probably one of the best batches of IPA I have done yet.

And shecky, if you brewed more than once per year...... hehehe