What was your biggest mess up when doing a homebrew??

[BrewMan13]

Once did an imperial stout with a bunch of added stuff (ie: an expensive brew) and after the boil I put the kettle on a glass table on my back deck while I got the chiller situated. I had my back turned when I heard a crash, and my deck was now covered in hot wort and shards of glass. The wort attracted honey bees which buzzed around while I cleaned up the glass.
Edit: another great time was when I (stupidly) used to not securely attach the hose to my kettle when pumping the wort through the chiller. It came loose and I managed to re-attach it, but 2 of my fingers got torched with hot wort through my gloves and had skin peel off. And the beer wasn't even that good.

 

[BBBF]

Trying to cold crash a mead outside, in a glass carboy and forgetting to take it back inside when the temperature dropped.

 

[bracconiere]

not really the worst mistake, but just recently my immersion chiller sprung a leak, needless to say i had to bring 14 gallons, of what started as 10 back to a boil....

 

[Jaybird]

First time using a Teflon coated plastic carboy (this is about 20 years ago) we decided to put the hot wort in it so we could float it in my pool (in the winter) to cool it down to pitch. Well about 1/2 gallon in the carboy shrunk to about 1/2 size. It was hilarious.
We absolutely learned our lesson. NO BEER BEFORE BOIL

Cheers
Jay

 

[Rackrunner]

Two quick ones:
I use a grainfather, which has a grain basket you lift out after mashing and set on top to sparge. Decided to press down on the screen a bit to "get that extra little bit of liquid out". Bottom screen gave way and I dropped 14 lb of grain back into the now-200 degree wort coming up to a boil. Only brew day I've ever had to dump outright, and damn near burned my face off with a wort volcano!

Second one was pure stupid - collecting hot water from the counterflow chiller for use in cleanup later and just plain old forgot to turn the water off after the xfer to fermenter was done. Unfortunately this was indoors (basement) and had quite a bit of water cleanup to do

 

[day_trippr]

[Knock on wood/cross self thrice] Really only one exciting event in all the years but it was a beaut: the first brew on my first dual-pumped three vessel rig, I was swapping the wort pump output hose from recirculating the mash to draining it to the boil kettle and I thought I had shut off the wort pump. Wrong, I had switched off the hlt pump. That was one hot mess, especially as the pump switches were at the bottom of the rig...

Cheers!

 

[day_trippr]

...I mean, as differentiated from random stupid brewer stuff...

Like, about 10 minutes ago, sitting in my office, sipping a stout, scanning all of my little computer minions scattered around the premises, and discovered ferm chamber 2 - which I just loaded with two carboys filled with the days brew - is ignoring its controller telling it to turn on the fridge compressor.

Went down to the humble brew space, checked the controller - yup, it wants cool, now - then check the fridge itself. Which was turned off.

Stupid stuff like that happens weekly 'round here. My minions save my dumb ass

Cheers!

 

[Soulshine2]

I bottled 4 gallons of beer, then put 1 gallon in secondary with some brett dregs just to see what it would do. As I am cleaning up, I notice that I have another gallon jug on the counter. Turns out, I used an unsanitized secondary. Oh well. I put it all away and basically forgot about it for a year. When I finally dug it out, I had a very nice gallon of malt vinegar.

probably the best salad dressing vinegar ever

 

[Soulshine2]

not really the worst mistake, but just recently my immersion chiller sprung a leak, needless to say i had to bring 14 gallons, of what started as 10 back to a boil....

i knew there was a reason I set up my IC and test it every time before I dunk it.

and there it is.

 

[Soulshine2]

Forgot the filter tube in my cooler a couple times. That involves scooping hot mash into a bucket to get at the inside of the spigot. I've tried to do it blind with oven mitts in a garbage bag, but the wire mesh opening is too flexible, you really need to be able to see it to coax it on.

The worst however, was when I was setting up my taps on my bar. I have a 6 tap tower on the bar on the main floor, with kegs in a fridge in the basement below it. I had gotten one tap hooked up just in time to show off for a party, and it worked flawlessly. Two weeks later I hooked up another keg. Connected the beer line, headed upstairs. I DID remember to check to make sure the tap was closed first. Pour a pint, worked fine, stand there looking at the tap.

Drip.

From the back of the tap.

Hmm... I wipe it, and lean closer to see where it comes out.

Drip. From the next tap.

At this point I decided to disconnect the beer and tighten some things. Go downstairs, open the fridge, and beer is SHOOTING out and spraying all over the inside of the fridge. Just everywhere. It was coming out of my homemade trunk line, it had backed up all the way back around the outsides of the beer lines. Got soaked trying to pull the line off the keg.

What I ended up figuring out was that the O-rings on the built-in shanks on the tower were broken. By some miracle, the first tap I hooked up was the ONLY one with intact seals. ALL the rest were broken, and since the first tap worked I thought I had gotten everything right.

I had to pull my trunk line all the way back out of the wall/floor, deconstruct it and replace all the insulating foam and plastic wrap that was soaked in beer, reassemble and replace. And wrapping/zip tying all the beer line is NOT a fun or easy task.

its stories like these that confirm why i dont use pumps and why I still bottle

 

[sleev-les]

I at one point had 2 pumps, one with an inline switch and the other without. So forgetting which pump I was using, I plugged in the one that didn't have a switch and since I didn't close the valve, but did hook it up to my mash tun I had wort flying all over the place.

My other instance was at the end of a boil on a dark IPA I had a whole hop addition. Since my hop spider was loaded already, I thought I'd just throw them in the kettle. Forgetting they would absorb wort and sink so after I cooled the wort and tried to transfer it just clogged the port so I had to sanitize my arm and reach in and hold hops out of the way of the port the entire time it was being transfered. Beer turned out pretty good regardless of the arm addition lol

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Ohhhh fuuuuudge lol

I did similar. I mash in a cooler lined with a bag. Doughed in only to realize as I was putting on the lid that I'd forgotten the bag. I lined a bucket with the bag, dumped from the cooler into the bag lined bucket, rinsed the cooler and then transferred the bag to the cooler.

All in all, a pretty smooth recovery, but pretty stupid. Glad nobody was around to see that.

 

[kh54s10]

I did similar. I mash in a cooler lined with a bag. Doughed in only to realize as I was putting on the lid that I'd forgotten the back. I lined a bucket with the bag, dumped from the cooler into the bag lined bucket, rinsed the cooler and then transferred the bag to the cooler.

All in all, a pretty smooth recovery, but pretty stupid. Glad nobody was around to see that.

Was this supposed to say that you had forgotten the bag?

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I was brewing a NEIPA in january in Iowa. 6" of new snow and about -2 F that day. I brew in the garage and usually use a hose into my immersion chiller, draining down the driveway. I knew that wasn't an option and had ordered a pond pump to chill. The plan was to use room temp water pumped through the chiller into a bucket. When temps got down, I'd use ice water in a cooler and just recirculate the chilling water with the pond pump. This was all a proven process.

The problem was that the pump delivery was delayed by the snow. UPS packages always arrive by lunch, so I timed things to complete my boil around 1pm. Well, again due to the snow (I'm guessing), the delivery was delayed again.

So my FO hops addition (very large) was sitting there generating a ton of unplanned bitterness because I could chill fast enough. We tried putting hoses in snow and recirculating...no dice. Ultimately put the kettle in the snow, which got us there but the beer was going to be quite a bit more bitter than planned.

I just changed the name to "Bitter Cold on the Frozen Tundra" and processed it as best I could. It turned out quite tasty....much more bitter than the typical NEIPA, but we really liked it.

Brewing in the winter can be such a pain here. We sat there in sub zero temps in the garage boiling with all our arctic gear on: Heavy boots, layered up clothes, parkas, gloves. Still drank some cold brews though....

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

Was this supposed to say that you had forgotten the bag?

It does say bag. No idea what you're talking about (wink wink). Thanks for the catch.

 

[Navy Guy]

I poured my strike water in my Igloo cooler and hot water started pouring out all over the floor. Realized that I forgot to close the spigot.

 

[z-bob]

I dropped a full 3-gallon glass carboy down the basement steps. I watched it bounce in slow motion until it hit the landing and burst. At least it didn't take out the 5 gallons of some other beer in a glass carboy that was sitting just a few feet away at the bottom.

I mostly use lightweight plastic carboys now, and when I do use glass I have handles on them.

 

[kh54s10]

I mostly use lightweight plastic carboys now, and when I do use glass I have handles on them.

If those are the handles that clamp around the neck of the carboy, don't carry them with ANY liquid in them they will really stress the neck of the carboy and make them even MORE likely to break.

 

[day_trippr]

Yeah, "Don't Do That" lest you be featured in the "carboy horror show" thread...

Cheers! (it's all nasty up in there )

 

[z-bob]

If those are the handles that clamp around the neck of the carboy, don't carry them with ANY liquid in them they will really stress the neck of the carboy and make them even MORE likely to break.

It's the ones that clamp around the neck. I carry them by the handle for control, and one hand underneath supporting most of the weight. And I don't use them very often anymore.

 

[WestMichiganSteelheader]

I’ve been brewing just a little over 2 years and I’ve only had 1 mistake that negatively influenced my final product. I have a large hop strainer for my boil kettle that I accidentally knocked into the wort with 2 minutes left in the boil. I thought with only 2 minutes left I should just leave the stainer in place. That caused a caramelization of the wort. Not a good flavor for an IPA. Lesson learned.

 

[Worthabrew]

Cold crashing with the blow off tube submerged in about a full liter of Star San. You only do that once.....