Worst bottling day

[Ozzfest05]

I laughed , I cried , I hid in the corner. finished at 1230 am.
To start I didn't have enough bottles for the batch, all are in use.
I go pickup some plastic 500ml and caps just to get me through.

My dishwasher uses hot water but no element I've wash plastic before. Slap all 24 and 80% came out deformed 6 of which the threads would not accept a cap.

Made a siphon starter with nylon T worked great.
So now I'm out 6 bottles I proceed as usual as I'm filling my bottling wand hose knocks over a beer and creates a delicious lake of amber ale.

My Siberian husky comes out to investigate , I swat him with bottling wand and press gravity feed to spray beer in his eyes he retreats, I won the battle ( jokes).

So I ended up having to pour a little beer down the drain maybe 2 beers worth.

The kitchen looks like a Nigerian flood and thank god the pregnant wife was sleeping.
I cleaned the floor 3 times and I willing wager my left fermenter she will complain about it being sticky.

Fml

 

[dunnright00]

I cleaned the floor 3 times and I willing wager my left fermenter she will complain about it being sticky.

They always do.

That's why I bottle in the garage now.

 

[lowtones84]

I had one sort of like this recently! First time bottling by myself so it was already tough, but then my bottling wand broke toward the end of bottling. I was sloppily pinching the hose off and just trying to get bottles under it quickly so as to not waste much, but ended up with about a quarter- a third of a gallon in an empty growler on hand. Surprisingly, tasted kind of good straight out of the fermenter with a little priming sugar in it.

Definitely ended up cleaning with rags and paper towels a couple of times and ended up just having to mop at the end of the night! Anyone else have "fun" bottling stories?

 

[harrydrez]

I hate bottling so much that I decided to buy a chest freezer, kegs, etc.

The kegs and related junk are on the way and I have a good 15 gallons of beer that I have put off bottling ready to go.

 

[BenVanned]

Mine helps me bottle, she fills and I cap. We have limited space to work with so its best if we return them immediately to their box. Last batch my tubing came loose and i ended up with a good bit of beer in my floor. She thought it was funny because we both got sprayed by beer.

 

[PT Ray]

....willing wager my left fermenter she will complain about it being sticky.

Sticky floors are like a luminol test for homebrewing.

 

[rico567]

I bottle in the basement for many of the reasons outlined in this thread. Yesterday I bottled in the kitchen, just to see if there'd be any gain. Went OK, I guess, but no less mess / cleanup involved, so.....back to the basement next time.

This thread does illustrate that it's always best to have a "plan B" before doing any brewing operation, so I'd better think my processes through toward that end......

 

[unionrdr]

I gotta get more muslin grain bags to use with whole leaf hops. I was straining/aerating the wife's beer into the fermenter,& the rather full strainer tipped over into the FV. So on bottling day,I lost about a quart of beer when the barrel tap on the FV got plugged by 2 hop cones.
Had to remove the tap to get the wet hop cones out.
Not to mention that the newer BB ale pale doesn't have a 6G mark on it. So I guesstimated the 6G level. Came up about 1/2-3/4G short in the 6.5 gallon ale pale. That's my guess,since my cooper's micro brew FV goes to 7G or so,with up to 6.5 gallon marks on the scale. The BB ale pale yielded 55 bottles out of the usual average of 66 bottles for 6G.
I even spilled about 1/4 of a beer when I was filling the 2nd to last bottle of my Burton ale. Good thing I got 1/4 or so in the last one. I guess I should use the 7.9G "beer & wine fermenter" for an FV,& the BB ale pale for a bottling bucket? Oh well,55 bottles is still pretty good. That's 118 bottles ready in time for Christmas.

 

[shuckit]

I've annexed the basement for bottling and I've been forced into the garage for brewing to keep up relations with the fam.

 

[cravej]

It couldn't be worse than my worse bottling day. I mixed in the sugar and put my bottling bucket on top of the fridge. My wife opened up the fridge door and the bucket fell and dumped all over her. I lost 5 gallons that day and there was beer cascading down my basement steps.

 

[pjcampbell]

ozzfest...
This is why I want to get a conical AND keg my beer. I do not have help and I am too clumsy and never seem to have the right tools. I always waste or lose a ton of beer or rouse sediment/trub/yeast up or both.

any thoughts as to whether I am just dreaming this up in my head that it will be so much easier?

 

[daksin]

Sounds like my last bottling day, last friday night. Packaging up the BSD that's been stubbornly refusing to finish for two months. Got enough of my favorite bottles (champagne and bombers for gifts, SNPA bottles for the rest- those are teh best aren't they?) washed and sanitized, got the right amount of sugar in (this time) and mixed well.

Bottling went smooth, new capper crown worked great on the champagne bottles, but still a lot of beer on the ground. Not as much as there would be though...

Of course I didn't notice that SWMBO hadn't been drying off teh bottles before putting them in the cases, so when I picked the first one up to move to storage, the bottom fell out from about 4 feet up. 2 great bombers full of this $80 batch of beer exploded on the linoleum. I was crushed, but at least only two of the bottles broke, still have plenty of gifts though.

Floor's still sticky though, 5 washings and 4 days later.