Post your screw ups and what you learned from them

Fully agree. I've been chilling to ~72degrees or so, transferring and popping the fermenter into the chest freezer to cool the remaining 10 degrees or so. Aerate and pitch yeast 2-5 hours later with absolutely no problems. Pitching the appropriate amount of yeast at the appropriate temperature goes a hell of a long way towards preventing infections.

 

I do that with lagers. Usually I can get down to ale pitching temps pretty quickly, but when I ned to get it to lager range, I'll sometimes just transfer to a carboy and put it in the freezer for a couple hours before pitching. I think the risk is pretty minimal if the carboy is sanitized properly, especially since bacterial activity is going to be pretty low once you get it below 60 or so. At any rate, I haven't encountered any problems.

 

received some for free from the home brew supply store. i told him that i needed to order Whirfloc for a brew. I got a baggy with 8 tablets in it.
so, with 10 minutes left in the brew, i dumped the baggy.

beer didn't taste so good.

 

Just curious. What did it taste like?

 

Always leave enough headspace in the fermenter. If not, you'll be woken up by a loud "POP" and a geyser of beer will hit the ceiling and rain down all over your bedroom... The carpet still smells like skunky wort on a warm summer day.

 

If there is any question of potentially really active fermentation, use blow-off hoses rather than airlocks. I had a batch of black IPA where the wort bubbled up into the airlock and clogged it up with hop particles. Thank God the carboy was wrapped in a blanket, which helped suppress the explosion. I guess the rubber stopper got so sticky from the wort, it stayed in place and the glass failed instead! Anyways, there were still shards of glass everywhere and a nice 5-gallon puddle of dark, sticky, unfermented wort on the basement floor.

The funny thing is I will always remember which batch that happened to. My brewing log was opened to the page of that batch on a table about 10 feet away. There is a nice spray of dark wort across those pages as a reminder of what happened.

 

I've told this story once on the old site...it pains me every time I think about it. I guess I could share again...here's how it went down:

One Saturday morning, I was waiting on a friend of mine to brew, as I was in the process of teaching him how to brew. He, as usual, was late as hell, and it was a nice hot GA summer day. So, when he rolled up about 10:30 (told him to be there about 7), we started weighing the grains. My small scale is hard to weigh a bucket on, and we were doing a 10 gallon Pils, so I needed 20 lbs of grain. I said "please hold the bucket and I'll pour". Started pouring, got 10-12 lbs in the bucket, and then had a small jam of grain trying to come out of the bag. He reached for it to unclog the jam. Boom! Grains all over the patio. So, I said screw it, I dont have more that much more Pils malt to redo it all, so we decided to scrape it up and use it off the patio. Should be OK, any particles should stay in the mash or settle out eventually, anyway, let's roll with it.

Fast forward thru the mash and vourlaf, all is well. Got the wort ran into the kettle, and started boiling, life is good...and HOT. It's now 1 PM or so and in the 90s. At this particular time, I was using various things to get my MLT high enough to drain into my kettle as my burner sits pretty high up. This time, it happened to be my empty recycle container with a lid, the MLT sat on the lid. We were done running off so I grabbed the MLT and dumped the spent grains in the trash, leaving the recycle container still on the patio sort of close to the boil stand with the wort on it. My buddy left my grill lighter on the lid of the recycle bin that we used to light our flame. Well, my wife was cleaning inside and had a bag of recycle stuff to go in the container. She came out, opened the lid, and the lighter flew and fell directly into my hot, boiling kettle of 12+ gallons of Pilsner wort. Freaking out, I turned the propane off to the kettle and just ran around like a chicken with it's head cut off as I had no idea of what to do. My buddy tried a second to fish the lighter out of the kettle, but to no avail, and I told him we should get back incase anything explodes. About 1 minute later, you see a furious bubbling from the inside of the pot where the lighter had then exploded in the wort. I WAS SO F'ING PISSED! He's 3+ hours late, spilled my grains, now, all the work we (I mostly...) had done in the hot ass sun was for naught. I poured the boiling wort down the drain, sat with my head in my hands for a while, completely disgusted, and then started drinking.

It was the worst beer day of my life. Luckily, no one got hurt, but I wasnt right for days. I take brewing very seriously, and my friend realized he had f'ed up. He was completely hung over, doing "things he shouldnt have been doing" the night before and probably that morning, and it just all fell apart. Other than burning my house down, I dont think that one can be topped.

What did I learn? If your buddy is late, just start without them. If you can get done before they get there, even better.

 

I've got a lot. Of the top of my head...

-Used the 2 year old yeast that came with my first kit. Learned not to do that.
-Drilled the hole for the ball valve on a bottling bucket too low to get the fitting on correctly. Learned to measure shit before drilling holes.
-Bottled beer that had a ton of hop particles and too much priming sugar. Resulted in gushers. Learned have patience and not guess at measurements.
-Made a ton of shitty beer by trying to cheap out/be lazy regarding ingredients. Learned that garbage in=garbage out.
-Used carb tabs, left white flecks in beer. Learned to use priming sugar.
-Split my gas lines, hooked up a highly pressurized keg, and ended up with a gas line full of beer. Learned to purge and hook one keg up at a time (or get a check valve).
-Drained half a keg of beer out the beer tube because of faulty poppet. Learned to check the keg thoroughly for issues.
-Dented the like-new mini fridge I had just bought by stopping short. Learned to strap shit down when it's in the back of my truck.
-Fermented several beers at room temp with zero effort to keep temps down. Learned to control temps.
-Boil overs. Learned to fear boilovers.
-Gummed up my grain mill with rolled oats. Learned not to put rolled oats in my grain mill.
-Spilled half of a grain bill on my garage floor when a paper bag ripped. Learned to use a bucket instead of a paper bag.

That's all I got for now. Don't do any of that stuff I did.

 

Used 3oz of Sorachi Ace in an IPA

Learned - Dont ever use S. Ace in another hombrew, it has a gross fake lemon pledge aroma and flavor

 

Last summer I got back I took a two month break, just due to time constraints. I was a little rusty not to mention the first time I would be using my cooler mash tun and keggle brew pot. Seeing as how it was the first time with new equipment I decided to take a pre boil gravity reading and misread the BeerSmith instructions (I was doing a partial mash) and believed I had massively messed up the mash which resulted in stopping the boil and dumping 4 hours of work. Later after consulting some other brewers I determined that it was an interpretation error on the brew steps and not a mash issue.

 

it was a belgian blonde.
kind of had a bitterness to it that wasn't from the hops. it was drinkable, but not great. strange taste and not a pilsner flavour at all.

i actually have done it twice - the 2nd time was the next brew (a pannepot clone). that is bottle conditioning and I may crack it open to see if its drinkable or not. i assume...its not.

 

I learned not to leave a hydrometer on any surface that might be moved. Countertop....crash. Chair in the garage while brewing....crash. The sound of $10 smashing on the floor sucks every time. Put that little bastard UP and AWAY from all activity!

 

I fell asleep once, and I had a boil over... I done so many mistakes I hate to admit most of them now.

 

yea? bleachy?

 

Also need to add - when siphoning beer from a ~5.75 gallon secondary into a ~5.25 gallon corny keg, don't go do other things while the beer is siphoning over.

 

I tapped my first keg fill the other day- and it sprays like a firehose. What gives? Even with the gas disconnected it is a foam machine.

Beer's pretty tasty, though.

 

I forgot a couple. The Garage Floor RyePA I brewed a long time ago. 15 pounds of grain. I was pouring the grain holding the bag with one hand and stiring it into the mash tun with the other hand. Of course the bag tumbled out of my hand and hit the garage floor and spilled all over. I hadn't cleaned the garage floor in ages and there were leaves everywhere. I swept it all up, picked out the leaves and into the tun it went. It turned out pretty good, but VERY earthy- the hops I used were Columbus, Cascade and Centennial. It it is the only time I have ever gotten earthy out of the combo! LOL

Always make sure the ball valve to your tun and kettles are closed when pouring your strike water in or transfering your wort to the kettle!

 

Seconded. You'd think once was enough. Oh no. Twice.
To complete the trifecta, after selling my Blichmann gear to a good friend, I was helping him brew his first batch. As we're transferring the sweet first runnings to the kettle, I'm starting to tell him how it's important to always check that the valves are closed when he says, "the ground is really soggy."
Half of his first batch watering the lawn. Ergh.

 

remove the gas line, bleed off all the pressure from the keg itself, usually ill do this by depressing the gas-in poppit. re-apply a very low amount of pressure and taste. slowly bring pressure up to setpoint. rinse, repeat.