Post your screw ups and what you learned from them

I don't remember most of my screw ups, but I know that I have learned. I am now a pretty relaxed brewer, and even with what some here would consider my lax sanitation and bottling / kegging habits I have had no (knock on wood) infection problems in my brewery

1) Do not do an open fermentation too long unless you want 5 gallons of IPA malt vinegar
2) Check a carboy for the gallon of sanitizer you left in it prior to racking your beer.

In many years and 30+ batches of relaxed brewing, I think this is it.

 

I would say it happened today, as I was stupid enough to put in my air lock on the lid over top of the beer and I ended up accidentally pushing the black rubber circular object that holds the air lock in place through and seeing it go all of the way to the bottom of the beer. Oh yeah, this is after I added the yeast. Here's what I did, somewhat quick thinking without freaking out too much and calling myself an idiot - I grabbed my bottling bucket tried to pour the beer into the bottling bucket slowly (remember the yeast is already in it), and with sanitized tongs grabbed the black rubber circular object. So then I had to get the beer back into the fermenting bucket and once again poured it back into the bucket. So not just once but twice, I think I probably over activated the yeast in this beer, so because I don't want my house to explode this evening, I don't have my lid fully on my beer. In a sense I'm creating a hybrid of an Oktoberfest (which is what its supposed to be) and a American Wild Ale. I'm really not an idiot but this is only my second beer. Ah, for all I know, I'm probably just over-reacting and need to seal the lid within the next half-hour?

 

Do not worry. It would be impossible to over-oxygenate your yeast by pouring back and forth. If I were you, I would replace the lid now.

 

I have done this quite a few times. My method, leave the rubber gasket in beer and put a sanatized piece of foil over it. No problem.

 

Missed my OG by a mile on a black wheat I brewed today. Didnt have any DME around to help get it up.. Learned I need to make a list of things to pick up that will help troubleshoot problems next time I stop at the LHBS.

 

I didn't think about that, thanx, if it happens to me again, maybe I'll do that.

 

thanx for the advice

 

My latest took place on Saturday... assuming you have enough propane to get you through brewday. I got my dubbel to a boil and went inside to have lunch and relax for a while. When I came back out before I had to make the 20 minute hop addition, I discovered that I had run out of fuel and my propane burner had shut off. With no idea how long the flame had been out, I got another tank in there and decided to add another ten minutes to the boil. I guess the flame had been out a while longer than that though, because after chilling and racking to my bucket I discovered that I had almost a gallon of extra wort and my gravity was at 1.054 instead of 1.065. Not a huge deal, I ended up boiling some DME and sugar and adding that two days into primary to give the yeast some more fermentables, but still a pain in the ass

 

My all time worst mistake:

My brother came over to help me brew a pretty simple brown ale. As you all know, one of the wicked facts about this hobby is there's just enough down time to get absolutey hammered if you're not careful. Especially when brewing a pretty simple recipe...

After cooling, we go to transfer the beer into the fermentor...about half way transfered and the volume in the bucket seems to be higher than it should be...once completey transfered there was a total of almost 7 gallons of beer!! Was only supposed to be 5.5 - WTF???!? Too much water? Not a long enough boil? After sitting there for almost an hour trying to figure out what had gone wrong, we finaly realized that we had racked the wort onto about a gallon of star san solution that we had in the bucket to sanitize.

Needess to say, that batch got dumped.

Lesson learned? Don't let your brother talk you into another...and another...and another

 

I did brew it...this was after brewing and cooling, then transfering to the fermentor. I did let it go for a couple days just to see what would happen, but I never got any activity...probaby just too much starsan for the yeast to get rockin...so down the drain it went...bummer.

 

Not that bad considering it was my first batch but.

Use the proper amount of priming sugar based on how much wort you have, not what the recipe says/what you were supposed to yield. Extra fizzy.

 

Had a batch way back that just wasn't getting the carbonation going, so I thought I'd uncap the bottles and add just a small amount (less than 1/4 tsp) of corn sugar to get things going. I uncapped a number of them and started adding the sugar without recapping them right away. Well, the sugar floated for a few moments, then sank, resulting in a series of volcano's going off, one by one. My attempts to recap those gushers to save the beer was comical. The caps wouldn't stay on the bottles long enough to cap and in my rush I ended up spilling wet, slippery bottles of hb all over the place....which quickly became a sticky mess.(I did the remaining bottles one by one & this did the trick for carbonating without fountains)

 

capping a yeast starter while storing it in a chest freezer used for fermenting your just made beer. home made rocket!