Whats the biggest bonehead mistake you've made while brewing?

[ajdelange]

Is there a size limit for a post?

If the question is really limited to the single 'biggest' I guess I can pick one. My system uses triclover valves. These are secured to fermenters, kettles, hlt's etc. by a triclover clamp and the hose to be connected to the vessel connects to the other side of the valve by another triclover clamp. Can you guess where this is going?

On more than one occasion I have reached down to remove a hose and inadvertently loosened the clamp on the vessel side. I always caught myself except for once and that was when the kettle was full of wort. I had an instant to decide whether to take the scald or lose the beer. I decided on the former and managed to save about half the batch. And the scald wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

In the middle of this my brewing buddy showed up with his 6 yo daughter. The language that child heard! I hope she wasn't scarred for life.

 

[CBU123]

Lets see.....

* Was reading the wrong side of the thermometer the entire time (C vs F) during a mini-mash brew.

* Knocked a small dish of gummy bears into my bottling bucket just after siphoning. Bottled anyway...marginal damage.

* Went to give the wort I just put into the carboy to ferment a good swirl only to learn too late that I forgot to put the bung in.

And the list goes on....

 

[WestphAles]

While I was sharing a little intro to whole grain brewing lesson with my uncle, which involved a 1-gallon batch on the stovetop, a person who will remain unidentified came into the kitchen to help. In preparation to do so, he lathered up and washed his hands... right into the pot of chilling wort in the sink ice bath.

 

[skullface1818]

for me, it was when I did my first AG mash.

Not only did I mess up my brewing water volume, temperature, and times, but my mash cooler still needed a lot of work. It was VERY leaky, its Stainless steel mesh was very unstable on the bottom, and their was exposed non Stainless steel metal washers on the inside....which quickly started to corrode after the first mash.

the beer came out terrible, heavily under gravity, and poorly yeasted (I made no starter). It tasted like a combination of stale yeasty bread with a distinct metalic aftertaste

Ohh and Did I mention the overcarbination? it was massively over carbinated.

I managed to fix up my mash to working order and none of my batches where ever as disappointing as the first AG one.

 

[Grossy]

Forgot to install my dip tub and false bottom on the mash tun.

At the time this occurred I only had one keggle, which served as MLT and boil kettle. I would mash, then drain the wort into fermentor pales, then clean the keggle, and then pour the wort from the pales back into the keggle and boil.

60 minutes later I could not figure out why I could not get clear wort from the MLT, and then it just stopped up.

Looked over on the work bench and there was the false bottom.

So I had to scoop out all the wet grains and wort into my fermentors and installed the false bottom,
then poured everything back into the MLT,
then let it sit,
then vourloughed,
then transferred the wort back into the fermentors,
then cleaned the mash tun,
then added the wort back into the keggle,
then boiled.

I think that brew day took 10 hours.

 

[mcangeli]

Knock on wood...

So far its been remembering the priming sugar half way through racking to my bottling bucket.... but I've only done 4 brews so far...

 

[HoppyDaze]

I know a guy who worked his tail off to get his wort down to 65 degrees, then never pitched the yeast. It wasn't me though...

 

[DrunkleJon]

AG brews -
Plan on a 5 gallon batch, buy ingredients for a 10. Brewed it anyway.
5.5 Gallon batch, come out with 7 gallons of wort.
5.5 Gallon batch, come out with 8 gallons of wort.
Moral:
I really need to recalculate my boiloff/deadspace of my equipment.

 

[rattyboh]

A while back I was going to do my first batch with late extract addition: added half of extract at the start of the boil. Then forgot to add the second half

 

[Shred]

Ran out of propane with 5 minutes left to boil today... that was pretty dumb. Fortunately, I had a tiny bit (read: just enough) in a tank on my secondary grill to finish the job.

 

[JBHB]

Left about an inch of one step soultion in my bottling bucket and bottled it hope it doesn't kill me.

Did this with my no chill container. Left probably half a gallon of sanitizer in it and realized after I'd transferred 3 gallons of hot wort that I forgot to empty it first. D'oh!

Fortunately after reading up on the web it appears the yeast actually like to eat this stuff. :rockin:

 

[Chadwick]

If a last attempt to boost the OG a bit more I grabbed the bag of sugar off the counter and scooped two cups into the wort. Didn't bother taking a reading.

The error did not present itself until 3 weeks later when I tasted a sample of the fermented beer. Uhm....that wasn't sugar. Yeah, ruined a whole batch.

 

[amfukuda]

My first attempt at a fruit beer I blended up my fruit did not sanitize it added it to my secondary in the blended state and had a lot go into my bottling bucket since I was doing five one gallon batches splitting priming sugar seemed like a pain so I used fizz drops instead while bottling I forgot what bottles already had drops in them so I added to the "empty ones" a week latter I am cleaning glass and fruit particles from my kitchen

 

[amfukuda]

I also ran out of ice for my ice bath one night and had to throw a bunch of frozen stakes and such in the sink

 

[Cerevisaphile]

I also ran out of ice for my ice bath one night and had to throw a bunch of frozen stakes and such in the sink

Why do you freeze your stakes? I would think that could make them brittle. I just keep mine in the garage in the bag with the tent. ;-)

 

[amfukuda]

That's why I love his place its full of smartasses.

 

[JonM]

I had a bottling bucket full of what promised to be a really good imperial porter. I tightened the spigot nut too much, which squished the gasket out of shape and caused a small leak. So genius me, I sprayed my arm with starsan, reached in and loosened the nut.

Infected the whole batch. All were nasty, sour, metallic tasting gushers. If I had let the leak go, I would have lost, maybe 3-4 beers. Lost the whole batch.