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

[bull8042]

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

Never had that problem. There are advantages to being hung like a Great North American Field Mouse! :rockin:

At least you didn't do that AFTER pitching.... That could have led to a "yeast infection".

 

[Revvy]

At least you didn't do that AFTER pitching.... That could have led to a "yeast infection".

UGH...

 

[Cape Brewing]

All I can say is:

Friends don't let friends chew sunflower seeds while pounding tripels and brewing an ESB.

You would be DAMN surprised how many shells somehow end up in your boil. ESB turned out perfect though. Ehhh... the shells were boiled and got strained out before they went into the carboy. It was fiiiiiiiiiiine.

 

[maltMonkey]

My first lager was an Oktoberfest. I didn't realize at the time that you need to make a large starter for lagers, so I just pitched the White Labs vial. The yeast pooped out at around 1.035. I was opening the fermenter every day to check the gravity. I stirred yeast nutrient in, along with a lot of air. Finally I gave up and ordered new yeast. The yeast took a week to come in, then I had learned from my mistake so I made a big starter for it. It was a month later before I could pitch the yeast, meanwhile the beer sat at room temp. After pitching, the beer finally fermented fully (albeit still with a bit high FG) after 3 more weeks.

So at this point the beer had been sitting on a pretty large stressed yeast cake for almost 3 months in primary, had been aerated post-fermentation, and had been exposed to open air a dozen times before the fermentation was complete.

I racked it to secondary, and lagered for 5 months, all the time just devastated that I was spending all this time, $$, and effort (not to mention fridge space) on a beer that would most likely turn out crap.

I now have only a six pack left, as it's one of my (and my guests) favorite beers.

 

[FireBrewer]

I had a few other brewers over one day and brewed a Maibock. Of course we had a few homebrews and I realized my kettle was a little short pre-boil, so I added some water (not very scientifically, I might add).

Fermentation was great considering I was sober when I took the yeast off the stir plate and pitched it. Long story short, I got Second Best of Show at a local comp with over 100 beers entered and got a 42/50 on the BJCP score sheet.

Probably helped that I had a few batches under my belt when I made it (60+ by then), but I try to cut back on consumption on brew day.

 

[chainsawbrewing]

oh gosh. it would probably be easier and shorter to post the times i've actually brewed without any mistakes.

i've brewed lots and lots of beer. my first batch i didn't take a hydro reading for starting gravity. i was pretty convinced that no matter what, my beer would suck. it didn't.

i've left beer in the primary for what i thought was "too long" like over a month and a half, and was convinced the beer would suck. it didn't.

i've made yeast starters from yeast frozen in my freezer for over a year, and was convinced the yeast wouldn't "work" and the beer would suck. it didn't.

i've made beer in the fermentation buckets for a primary, and had the airlock not sealed quite right, not seen any bubbling activity because of it, and was convinced that fermentation was NOT happening, and my beer would suck. it didn't.

i've drank WAY too much green beer, and forgotten about a six pack that i left at a buddies house 6 months ago, and shown up at his house and been like "oh man, i forgot about this." popped one open, and swore never to drink a green beer again. PATIENCE!!!

i've dropped stuff in the boil, dropped stuff in the carboy, in the bottling bucket, forgotten the irish moss, messed up the hops schedule, you name it. it all made BEER. and sometimes, it made DAMN GOOD BEER.

number one rule imo, is keep track of your so called "mistakes" and "goof ups." if the beer is fantastic, replicate the mistakes and goof ups, such as dropped my aroma hops 5 minutes late, etc.

 

[BarleyWater]

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

You know, Mike McDole (award winning homebrewer) puts a handful of dog hair in hish mash tun for each beer, that way it is his recipe and noone else can replicate it exactly. He makes some damn good beers apparentyl, so maybe there is something to this dog hair thing.

I have forgotten to pour the star san out of the carboy before filling it with wort. I had probably a quart or two of star san solution in the bottom of the carboy that I forgot to dump, I reallized after I had already siphoned a gallon or so into the carboy, so I said f-it we'll see what happens. It was a little foamy at first, and it had a HUGE krausen, but nothing bad happened, and it came out great.

 

[alpo]

I was so drunk when I made my third batch that I blacked out.

I literally don't remember anything past boiling the wort and adding the bittering hops. I got up the next day and the fermenter was sitting there in the guest room closet, just like it should be. I was pretty worried about sanitation or that I forgot to cool it or pitch the yeast or something.

I guess I did everything right, because it turned out great, better than the previous two. It was a Belgian Wit, AHS partial mash kit. That is my only first hand experience with a miracle.

 

[Rezilynt]

I was using my circulating/chiller and one of the hoses came off - I probably pumped 1/4 gallon of the circulating water into my wort. Beer turned out great.

I've had one batch that the water from the airlock got sucked back into the wort at least 4 times (I just couldn't leave it alone) This batch turned out great.

I once pitched the yeast (WYeast ) straight out of the fridge - turned out great but took 3 days to start fermenting.

 

[alpo]

This is not a mistake with the beer itself, but I once turned on the valve to my wort chiller with the output hose pointing right at my foot and I was wearing flip flops. That sucked

 

[Jonnio]

I am not one of the big dogs, but I will throw my 2 cents in

I forget additions all the time and just recently made an entire batch of beer with cascade instead of crystal (I am not sure how it turned out yet, but I am sure it's fine), but probably my most problematic batch was when I made "hobgoblin" and accidentally got dark DME instead of light, and bought chocolate rye instead of chocolate malt. I then had to try and crush the rye with a rolling pin since the local joint didn't have any way to crush it.

The batch turned out great.

 

[Shawn Hargreaves]

My worst mistake ever was right at pitching time, when I knocked over a White Labs yeast vial (yeah, no starter for this brew) and poured it all out onto my countertop.

Hmm. No other yeast in the house. Saturday evening, so LHBS is closed until Monday. Do I leave my wort sitting around for two days? Nah...

I can't remember when I last cleaned the countertop, but at least judging by a quick eyeball check all I can see is a bunch of breadcrumbs. So I scrape up as much of the spilled yeast as I can (using the side of a knife to slide it onto a thin sheet of metal), then go ahead and pitch it.

I lost so much yeast in the process, I underpitched by a ridiculous amount, and I guarantee I picked up some wild nasties from the breadcrumbs.

But the brew turned out fine. A little slow to start, but it was done fermenting within a week, and came out perfectly clear and clean with no off flavors.

Most of my other mistakes have been failing to follow recipes correctly:

My first brew ever, I picked a recipe that called for honey malt. "What's that?" I asked the friendly supplier in my LHBS. "Oh, that just means regular honey. 'Malt' is used as a generic term for any kind of fermentable stuff" he replies. So in goes a pound of honey. Later on I learn that he was completely wrong, and honey malt is of course a kind of specialty malt. But in retrospect this was actually a good thing, since real honey malt wouldn't have worked for me as I didn't know how to mash it. I also later found a different LHBS with more knowledgeable staff

Another time I was doing a partial mash using first wort hopping. But I forgot I was first wort hopping, and for some reason decided to recirculate a huge amount of wort back through my grain bed by pouring it back out of the brew kettle into the mash tun (this was only my second partial mash, so I hadn't quite got my technique down). Of course this ended up with all my hops mixed in with the grain. Inexplicably, it didn't occur to me that I needed to get them back into the kettle, so I ended up with almost no hopping at all. This was an English brown with half a pound of molasses. After 3+3 weeks in primary and bottle, it was so bland as to be undrinkable: overly sweet, but lacking any kind of flavor whatsoever. So I left it and moved onto the next brew. A year later, it tasted great. Still a little on the sweet side, but it developed a wonderful complexity, with a kind of raisiny liquorice character that must have originated with the molasses.

 

[Saccharomyces]

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.

"Dear, my fermenter is ringing. I think it's for you." ROFL!

 

[Saccharomyces]

This is not a mistake with the beer itself, but I once turned on the valve to my wort chiller with the output hose pointing right at my foot and I was wearing flip flops. That sucked

I did the same thing with a shoe on. Don't do it either way. Second degree burns aren't fun.

That brew day was the "El Segundo Grado" wit in my dropdown. One of the best I've done.

 

[Zordok]

My worst so far is adding too much top-off water to a cherry stout - ended up with about a 6.5 gal batch instead of 5.5 gal. Watery OG combined with the 1.020 curse and I ended up with a "stout" about 3% abv. The hydro sample from bottling day tasted like crap - too sweet, and very chemically from the cherry extract - imagine Robitussin mixed with dark LME. Spent two weeks trying to think of people I didn't like to give it away to.

During those two weeks it got a lot better. Very good after two more weeks. Now, everyone I've served it to raves about it, and so what if it is only 3%? It makes a great session beer...

 

[disasterpigeon]

I did my first batch of beer from a Best Brewer's American Pale Ale kit two months ago. Steeped my grains at 100 degrees for twenty minutes, then rocketed up to 185 for twenty minutes, cooled it down and added my extract. Added both cans, then I forgot to stir it in to avoid carmelization, so it sat on the bottom until the boil was done. Had three boilovers because my turkey fryer is hot *&^( Kept the boil covered with a lid the entire time. A pinecone fell in about the middle of the boil. Pitched yeast without rehydrating. Racked to primary after 3 days, moved to keg after 6 days in secondary. Went and bought a cool kegging setup and a minifrige off craigslist, and kept freezing my keg/room temping because the temperature control is busted. I've now varied the keg between room temp and a solid block of ice 4 times, and I'm buying a better frige this weekend. The darndest thing is, the beer tasted like dirty behind two weeks after I brewed it, two weeks after that it was barely drinkable, and I swear I had one last night that was pretty decent!
Just brewed an Oktoberfest kit with a full boil that went MUCH smoother, but I learned a lot from my first mistakes, so I'm hoping it will turn out even better (if I can stop making beercicles out of my keg).

 

[Brewin_Bob]

I am by no means one of the "big boys".

That said, my very first brew was (supposed to be) an extract amber. 2 gallon batch split between 2 1-gallon carboys. After pitching the yeast, I had the "brilliant" notion to toss in a 1/2 cup of whole coffee beans. Without sanitizing. With all the sanitizing that I was doing, it never occurred to me that I should sanitize the coffee beans before adding them to the carboy. The first bottle had a nice coffee flavor to it, not too strong, but nice.


The rest of them tasted like vomit.

 

[ifishsum]

I manage with only a 12 quart boil kettle, so I usually start by 3 gallon boil pretty close to the top...The second time I did a partial mash Dead Guy clone, I overshot my sparge water by about a quart. I couldn't bear to throw it out so I thought I'd just wait until I boiled off about a quart, then add it back in. Aces, right? Except that I forgot that I needed that extra space in the kettle when I dumped in 6.5 lbs of LME in the last 10 minutes. So now with my tub of LME in one hand and spatula/spoon in the other, my wort started overflowing the kettle and burning onto the still hot stovetop (gas was off though). Doh! I had to dip out over a quart to get it back down to a safe level to continue the boil and it was still pretty full.

I actually just boiled that extra quart and a half seperately (just long enough to pasteurize it) and then cooled it and added it to the fermenter with the cooled wort and top-off water. The beer still turned out great, cleaning the stove top was a PITA though.

 

[NJTomatoguy]

Lost o-ring and fished around bare arm to get it back.

Left lid off bucket when phone rang, My bulldog drenk from the bucket- The absolute best beer I have made.

Forgot to add whirlflock, just let it sit an extra bit, clear as a bell.

 

[Yankeehillbrewer]

On my 2nd or 3rd brew I was siphoning from the BK to my Primary, got a mouth full of wort and spit it back back into the BK. Beer turned out fine.

Thought I would take a little 15 min power nap while boiling once and wound up sleeping for an hour. Boiled down a little far and messed up my hop additions, but it still turned out fine.

I've missed my mash temperature and had to heat it up and cool it down mulitple times. the mash turned out to be thin, but still made a good beer. Enzymes were confused though.

 

[Ryanmcgrim]

I had the screen come out from the bottom of my mash bucket, causing it to completely clog during sparging, ended up having to rip my screen door off and use it as a filter to get her flowing again, don't know how she will turn out, bottling tomorrow...

 

[carnevoodoo]

I knocked my manifold apart while brewing. I had to dump all the grain and water into a bucket, fix it, dump it back into the mash tun, and then run off. Talk about potential hot side aeration! It came out just fine though.

 

[Moonshae]

I was using a hair brush in the bathroom underneath my carboy to tilt it as I racked it into the bottling bucket...forgot to move the bucket away first, and when I picked up the carboy, the brush fell right in. No infection, but wouldn't recommend as standard practice.

 

[PUD]

1st kegged beer stripped all the flavor out of a blue moon clone by pumping, shaking and releasing all the c02. lost that one!

1st all grain i mashed unmilled grain

stuck mash on a hefe. ran and got my neigbor to hold up my five gallon cooler over the kettle while i held a grain bag to get my wort drained. good beer.

3rd batch ever brewed i was positive it was ruined. posted multiple threads on how i messed it up. awesome extract summit ipa.

i'm sure many other random things. now i know it's almost always going to turn out good. unless i don't like the recipe, then i just send 1/2 gallon growlers to my neighbor to help finish it off. he loves me, not like guy on guy action.

 

[Flattop]

None of my brews ever goes according to plan but so far i have never had a dud, some of them needed more bottle time and one is overgassed but they are all drinkable.

 

[twig]

My worst so far is adding too much top-off water to a cherry stout - ended up with about a 6.5 gal batch instead of 5.5 gal. Watery OG combined with the 1.020 curse and I ended up with a "stout" about 3% abv.

I did almost the same thing the first time I used a kit from Midwest, before I realized they meant 5 US gallons (19L), and not the 5 Imperial gallons (23L) that Coopers kits use. It was a coffee stout and even though it was a lower than planned ABV (3.75%), it was still surprisingly full-bodied and creamy and is probably the best beers I've brewed. I'll have to try it again with the correct volume one of these days.

 

[dontman]

Back when I was using Iodophor to sanitize I made a solution in the carboy that I was racking to to sanitize it. Maybe a quart, maybe even a half gallon of that copper liquid in the bottom of the carboy.

I couldn't figure out why I was running out of space in the carboy so fast until I realized that I never dumped the sanitizer.

Beer turned out drinkable.

 

[dontman]

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

We don't talk about it much. It is called "The Before Time"

 

[Revvy]

We don't talk about it much. It is called "The Before Time"

Or Maybe Prohibition?

 

[Blue_Water]

I had some ants get in one batch. I called them the "proteins". Mmm good.