"Doh!!" Moment when brewing?

Not quite as dramatic, but just yesterday, I was racking ten gallons of what is shaping up to be an absolutely lovely 12.4% DIPA to the keg. I was careful to purge the kegs with CO2 and was gently moving the beer to the keg. The flow unexpectedly slowed to a trickle. I assumed the port was blocked, though the beer in the line was crystal clear. I decided to drain some of the gunk from the dump valve. I opened it and heard a massive glug as the negative pressure in the headspace gulped a hefty dose of air up through the valve -- I had forgotten to remove the airlock. I'm now praying that the oxidation doesn't kill the massive hop flavor too quickly.

FWIW, this is not the first time this has happened. But never to a beer quite as big as this.

 

Totally a "Willy Wonka and the Beer Factory" moment.

"Lickable wallpaper... Lick a bourbon barrel, it TASTES like a bourbon barrel, lick a chair it tastes like a bourbon barrel...."

 

So how did it taste??

 

My Doh moment came a few weeks ago when I was vigorously shaking a vial of white labs to suspend the yeast... Didn't think to vent it to release the pressure and just cracked it wide open. I shot myself in the face and chest with $7.00 worth of WLP013. Not exactly the brightest move when there's a carboy of wort standing by...

 

Dumped in the mash water. Dumped in the grain. Saw my SS braid sitting on the counter...

 

Honestly I think wlp013 is intentionally spiteful sometimes

 

It's the ONLY white labs yeast strain that has ever done that to me. I'm extra careful with ALL white labs vials now.

 

Vent first. Then re-cap and shake.

ETA: Excellent* yeast vial handling tutorial...


*or at least funny

 

Used bleach to get labels off bottles and forgot to properly rinse them. Poison control was called. Luckily no fatalities, except the beer.

 

How do you burp a barrel ? Just curious never dabbled

 

Dump it.

 

Never anything that bad... But I forgot to add priming sugar (6 22's into it) I remembered, and basically aerated most of the batch. It turned out good in the end, but it left me worried.

 

I found an easy way to get the last 6 beers out of the bottom of the bottling bucket. Just hike the bucket up on your shoulder like Donkey Kong and tip it so that the beer continues to go into the spigot. Don't get distracted. I tipped the bucket the wrong way and poured a few beers down my shirt and into my ass crack.

 

TMI

 

I begin carbonation while dry hopping at room temp. When beer is sitting at room temp I need to pressurize the keg to ~30psi to get the same level of carbonation as I do in my kegerator at ~11psi. One time when putting the keg into the kegerator I forgot to burp it and hooked up my CO2 at 11psi to my keg pressurized to 30psi... got a nice amount of beer into my CO2 lines. Terrific.

 

Had a pint this evening. Abso-freaking-lutely insanely the most in-freaking-credible beer I've ever tasted! Holy sh*t!!! Did I do that? Yikes almighty! (no, I'm not exaggerating!)

But you're probably right. I'm gonna dump it just in case.

 

And then the forum post: "Why Do My Last Few Beers Taste Like Crap?"

 

Did this exact same thing with the false bottom. We just dumped the mash into a different pot, put the false bottom in, and dumped the mash back into the mash tun. We were still within a couple points of target O.G., so success?