Share your dumbest brewing mistakes

I just dropped an unsanitized weight into my ale pale on Monday. I ran out of blow off tubes and I used a heavy washer on the outside of some sanitized aluminum foil. I had to sanitize my arm to pull it out. I pitched yeast that was old, I didn't make a starter, and I had 6 gallons of wort in a 6.5 gal fermenter. I'm hoping for a slow fermentation when I need a quick fermentation. The whole thing is inside of a trash bag in case I get excessive blow off. I added some Nottingham after 24 hours of inactive fermenter.

It was a double batch and this will be the first to tap. The other half will be taking pumpkin spice and should shape up very nice.

 

I once racked a beer to a bottling bucket, mixed priming sugar, prepped sanitized bottles, then didn't have bottle caps on hand. On a Sunday. Thank god for Wal-Mart and seltzer water.

 

I recently brewed and fermented a pale ale exactly to plans, and then I f'd up the damn priming sugar. I was low on table sugar, so I boiled some DME. I added the DME quickly to a boiling saucepan and scorched it. I didn't notice this until I added it to the bottling bucket. It looked dark brown and smelled off, but in my haste I just siphoned the beer onto it and bottled. I forgot about it until 2 weeks later when I chilled a bottle and tasted. I had forgotten about the priming step and was surprisingly disappointed in a harsh aftertaste. Smells fine and initial taste is good but the finish really bugs me. FG was 1.012. I'm convinced it's the damn scorched DME. I have 40 bottles of this batch and hope that it "ages." Not optimistic.

 

This passed Sunday, I kegged a batch and racked a batch to a balcones whiskey barrel. I had roughly 6 gallons that I was trying to rack into my balcones barrel and had a nasty overfill all over my dining room floor. At the same time, I was kegging a blonde ale into a 5 gallon korny keg and also, had an overfill and spilled about 1 gallon onto the floor. Next time, I'll pay a little more attention.

 

Nothing like cleaning up a few gallons of hard work.

 

First batch i made was an extract batch. i didnt think sanitizing was that important (just used some soap) and then fermented in my bedroom (the temp never got below 78 in my house)

 

Too many to list... a few batches back I was going to do a double brew day, IPA and Saison. Bought the specialty grains, milled everything up. Did the strike water for the Saison (1.043 OG) and added the base grains for the IPA (1.060) along with the specialty malts for the Saison. It was super thick and I didn't have a way to fix it. Couldn't just adjust on the fly since it was a test batch. Had to dump the grains and go for just the IPA that day. Luckily I had more base malt at home and a mill.

 

My most recent mistake was accidentally brewing a 5 grain bill that was intended to be 8 gallons and only adjusting my base grain accordingly. That's how you end up with nearly 20% flaked oats in a sour base.

 

I once forgot to sanitize my fermenter and realized immediately after racking into it. It was an IPA with a huge hop stand, so I really didn't want to reheat to pasteurize. Ended up fermenting for two weeks, racking to keg and force carbing with no infection.

 

I had a keg of wild stuff that had been sitting warm for a few days. I put it out on the patio, clipped on a cobra tap and went back indoors to grab some other stuff. I hear my girlfriend shout "oh my god!" from outside, and turn just in time to see that the silicone tubing on the cobra tap has ballooned up to about 4" in diameter. Fraction of a second later it blows, sending a jet of warm sour beer 15 feet across the patio and in the open kitchen door where the arc maxes out against the ceiling above the refrigerator. I have to run back outdoors dodging the jet of beer while my girlfriend is literally ROTFL. Figure about 2gal sprayed out. Spent almost an hour mopping the ceiling.

 

Ha, a buddy of mine did this same thing a while back.. thankfully I had some bottle caps, and he quickly drove over to my place to pick them up.

 

I think my dumbest brewing mistakes happened when I was just getting into brewing. I would pitch single packs of yeast into imperial beers, thinking that would be enough to get the job done. d'oh!

 

In my case it worked out fine as a learning experience. Turns out I cannot drink 2 liters of 7% beer without falling asleep on the couch.

 

When I first got my RIMS tube going and didn't have it properly rigged to the PID controller, I had left the electric element on when I had the pump running as they are configured through the same emergency shut-off switch...RIMS tube was partially filled with wort, so it started boiling. Was using silicon tubing...noticed a GIANT balloon had formed in the tubing (so I could see right through the tubing...the size of your birthday party balloon) just before the tubing popped. Ears were ringing for a few minutes and was picking up pieces of silicon tubing for like a 20 yard radius for weeks afterwards. Made sure the PID controller was hooked up for all subsequent brews

 

I once used an auto-siphon and a bucket fermenter without a spigot...what was I thinking? : )

 

I was teaching a friend to brew and we got way to high during bottling day... We stripped labels off with bleach and I was sure I rinsed them really well before sanitizing and bottling, but a couple weeks later my friend called me panicked because he tasted bleach. I personally didn't but each bottle had me worried and drinking beer that might poison you takes a lot of the fun out of it. Very sad drain pour.

 

I forgot to attach the tip on my auto-siphon when I was transferring the beer to my bottling bucket. (I had dry hopped in the primary carboy so there was a ton of hops in there.) I wasn't paying attention to the clear tubing to see that stuff being sucked into the bucket until I was about halfway thru the process. By then, the siphon had cleared everything away within 'sucking' distance and it was minimal transfer of the hop glop after that. Instead of another siphon transfer (with the tip on) to try to fix this error, I decided that I would have to live with a bit of extra trub in each bottle since all of that stuff kept getting stirred up when I kept mixing the priming sugar in the bucket. The beer did turn out great, although I had to settle for decanting and drinking only 11 ounces from each bottle.