Share your dumbest brewing mistakes

I once added the priming sugar to the bottling bucket after I had racked the wort to it, and I then forgot to stir it in. The results were a 50-50 blend of nearly flat and over-carbonated bottles.

 

Marriage and grad school kept me out of the game for almost 15 years. Maybe those were my two biggest homebrewing mistakes?

 

I have a couple pin lock kegs that were converted to ball locks, but the lids are still pin lock lids. Some of you already see where this is going

First time I use one of these kegs, I rack as normal and then pressurize. I usually release the pressure a couple times to minimize O2. Well, the pin lock lids don't have a "easy" pressure release valve so I use a small screwdriver on one of the poppets, of course it was the "out" side and I ended up with a face full of IPA. I still need to release pressure and I realize my mistake so I switch to the "in" side since that should be above the beer level. But, I had overfilled the keg and I received another face full of beer. I still wanted to burp the keg so I got a towel and ended up with beer all over the garage floor instead of my face. It turns out that 20# of PSI will push a lot of beer out of a keg very quickly

 

LOL

 

Yeah, it is funny in retrospect, but I tried out a lot of new curse word combinations that day. Probably ended up with a gallon of beer all over me and the garage.

 

Last year's greatest hits ...
http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/doh-moment-when-brewing.184004/#post-2476162

 

Mine is much too dumb to go into specific details of dumbness. In a nutshell: low OG, fermentation starts, decide to add some boiled DME to the primary ( ), pot boils over and scalds my hands with sticky sugar all over our nice Cherry kitchen cabinets and floor, added the boiled DME to the fermenter, took days of "attention" to make all the sticky go away on our cabinets and floors, airlock on fermenter blows and thank goodness I had a trash bag over the top to spare the ceiling. Beer was tasting great at bottling time which eventually led to exploding bottles and gushers when the caps were popped. This was early on in my home brewing and oh how that hard lesson still haunts me to this day! - Talk about exponential stupidness!! ( A few years and many batches later, a lot wiser, and turning out MUCH better beer thanks to this episode and a few others along the way - live and learn. )

 

Wait, I want to hear the details? I'd have no idea how you could pull that one off.

You're ahead of the curve, I promise.

 

1. On one of my first all grain batches, I drained my first runnings into the kettle. Added my sparge water to the mash tun, stirred, and put the lid on. Came back 5 minutes later to a full brew kettle. I never closed the valve on my mash tun. Only missed my target OG by .002.

2. One brew day their was this big family episode (got to love skype) and I wasn't in the right frame of mind to brew. Against mine and my wife's better judgement, I decided to brew any way. Got the strike water all ready to go, added it plus my grains to the mash tun.......I never put my bazooka tube on in the mash tun. That was alot of extra hard work that day. I learned to always have a pound of DME on hand just in case. Still had horrible numbers. the bright side was the brown porter I was making was extremely sessionable.

 

after the first few months of home brewing I was hooked and decided to start buying supplies in bulk to save money and to make stronger beer. One of the supplies bought was a 5 gallon container of maple syrup so I could make a rugged maple imperial stout. the brew was formulated to be around 10 abv and thinking more is better I boiled 1 gallon of syrup to sterilize then added it to the 5 gallons of wort figuring the .5 gallon of headspace would be enough. Threw in 2 packets of Nottingham yeast and left the brew bucket in the kitchen where the wood stove is located.
Well,, good thing the wife was away cause the ceiling was painted from the sprewing airlock and needed cleaning immediately not to mention the floor. Not to be beaten by brewing I thought it was a good idea to scoop off the foam that was seemingly endless then reattach the lid and airlock, yep , in the kitchen. Next morning the airlock had plugged, the lid blew off and there was sticky foam all over the floor with the bucket still overflowing.
Since the wife was coming home that day, sadlty I had no choice but to throw out most of the brew and ferment a gallon out of 6. And the beer was crap!!!

 

1. How many mother effing hydrometers I have broken.

2. My temp probe accidently came out of my chest freezer one day while fermenting. Came home to a broken carboy, and slushy stout all over my chest freezer.

 

Have a bit of a question concerning my most recent screw up.

Been doing small 1 gallon BIAB batches. Was mashing in on an American IPA this past weekend when I got tired of holding the bag into the word so I got some duct tape (gorilla tape to be specific) and attached it to the handle on the side of the pot. Checked my email on my computer real quick and when I came back the duct tape had slipped off the handle and gone into the wort. I don't think it was in the wort very long and still went on to throw it into a carboy with some nottingham ale yeast where it fermented pretty damn vigorously. Think it's safe to drink? I figured it would probs be fine, but I'm a noob homebrewer so you know how it goes. Cheers.

 

Bottling half the batch before I realize the honey primer is still sitting on the counter.

 

Pitched the last of my harvested yeast into a growler with about two cups of sanitizer. Killed my yeast then I had to go to the store to purchase a smack pack.

 

To be considered here is what chemical could have leeched out of that tape in a short period of time, and whether it might be harmful to you when drinking the beer. You only made a gallon, so a little bit of whatever might be leeched out could be potent instead of being minimized if you had brewed a 5 gallon batch. On the side of safety, I'd pitch that beer.