Homebrewing Safety suggestions

I'm with you. Lifting 8 gal of boiling wort once was a bad idea for me. I'm fortuanate that the only thing that hurt the next morning was my back.

 

I don't know if anyone's mentioned it yet, but for a safety suggestion it's always nice to have a friend help lift, check, double-check, etc. Misery loves company.

 

I had never heard of any duct tape tweaks for glass carboys. Makes sense though. Any particular coverage/pattern?

 

Brewhauler is awesome cause you can swish your choice cleaner and a gallon or so of water in the glass carboy while holding the neck and one arm through one of the loops. safe and always done in the yard, even though I know it won't slip but things can happen.

 

people who batch sparge using a rectangular cooler with no HLT to dump safely into it. when pouring your hot mash water/sparge water from a container, when you start dumping your hot water into the cooler, commit!!! do not hold back and let it pour.

 

I picked up a carboy handle, works great. Not much chance of dropping it using the handle, but a fair chance of eventually dropping it without.

 

I use packing tape so I can see through. Multiple vertical and circumferential (new word?) wraps. I tape the hell out of it.

 

I was boiling my starter last night, had the flask on the burner, noticed a little dme clump so I gave the flask a little swirl. Bad idea, it boiled over just like it does with the yeast in there. Hot wort all over the stove. Luckily I had a good pot holder and didn't burn myself, but the house smells like burned wort still this morning.

 

Same as pweis909 said above, I cover the sucker.

 

1. Make sure fermentation is finished, not stuck, before bottling. When a friend of mine brewed his first batch, he didn't realize that his ferment had stalled out, so when he primed and bottled, he wound up with more pressure in the bottle than the glass could hold, and all but 4 bottles burst while he was on vacation. Hell of a mess, plus that's how you get ants.

2. Don't try to take the lid off the keg before bleeding off the pressure. Kind of a duh one, but a (different) friend almost made that mistake (he'd never used kegs before, so he didn't know). Thankfully, my husband was there at the time and stopped him.

3. Clean up all spills immediately, esp. if they're on the floor, and make sure you wear shoes with good traction.

 

Yes, I found out what stirring boiling wort does, never stir boiling wort into a whirlpool....it starts jumping around and right out of the kettle.

 

If you batch sparge try using a medium size pot with a handle to transfer the first half of you hot liquor to the mash tun, then pick up the bigger kettle and dump the rest. Any way that I can reduce the chance of spilling 169F water on myself, I'm all over it.

 

Along the lines of not carrying things that are too heavy, don't carry things when you're too drunk.

 

Or clogs...

 

Be careful moving full carboys with a handle. The weight can snap off the neck. I only use the handles on mine when the carboys are empty. When full I use a brew hauler.

 

No one mentioned oven mitts? I am notorious for going to grab mash water kettle without thinking at least every brew session. And yes, the mitts are right there.

 

Yep. I try to brew like I cook - 'clean as you go'; e.g. my mash tun is cleaned and put away about the time my boil starts.

edit: Drinking coffee instead of beer helps greatly. I tend to brew early in the day so that works well for me.

 

...and things get heavier as you get drunker. One of the laws of physics we learn at the advanced level

 

I threw my back out the second (and last) time I tried the crank-and-shake method of keg carbonation. Now I set-it-and-forget-it.

 

...and get some of this to coat your carboy:

http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?sku=38084&gclid=CJrwlP_A2rYCFcJw4AodjkkAbg

You might have to special order the clear/'no color' if you buy locally (or just use any color if you aren't obsessed with peeking at your beer everyday). Paint this stuff onto your carboy and you have the advantages of glass without the danger.