Best mistakes

I am one to have a few brews while making beer. Luckely I do not make many mistakes. Probably the most common for me is not taking a hydrometer reading before fermentation.

 

My biggest brewday fiasco was my first one containing rye malt, a rye pale ale. As I recall, there was only about a lb or a little more rye malt in the grist. But that was enough to turn the grain bed into glue. I didn't have any rice hulls*, and I eventually gave up and dumped the mash in the trash. Succesfully did the same recipe (plus rice hulls) the next weekend. Good beer too. I've always meant to repeat that one (sans the stuck sparge), but never got around to it.

*"You won't need them for such a small amount of rye." Thanks so much, internet!

 

My mash tun used to have a copper manifold in it that was friction fitted. During stirring of the mash I regularly got it disconnected, and I ended up getting used to transferring the mash to a bucket, reattaching, then starting the vorlauf over. I have since started using toilet braid.

My biggest best screwup ended up being on a Dunkelweizen. I was using an old slurry of WY3068, and revived it making a starter. I assumed the yeast was still good, but when I tasted it after fermentation was excessively tart. I ended up throwing some East Coast yeast Brett blend into it otherwise I was going to dump it. This is now my first Flanders Red, and after about two years it is one of the most delicious beers I have ever made.

 

I'm planning on using rye for the first time next weekend. 2.5lbs (20%) and planning on a half pound of hulls. Do you think that will suffice?

Screw-ups? I'm fairly new, so they've been numerous, but fairly predictable. Underhopping, underpitching, fermenting too hot, most recently fermenting too cool...nothing too noteworthy/hilarious yet.

 

Not exactly a mistake but I brewed a pumpkin ale recently that was supposed to be similar to DFH Punkin but with a maltier brown ale base. I used S-04 instead of US-05 to bring out the malt as well. Tasting the beer before cold crashing and kegging it had a nice subtle hint of spice which I enjoyed. After kegging and carbing the beer, the spice was gone and all that was left was a decent brown ale. So I made a tincture with 3/4 tsp of pie spice and dumped it into the keg. Tried it again yesterday and it tastes even better than expected and exactly what I was shooting for.

 

Do a beta glucanase rest and be prepared to decoct if things go to shit.

 

I had one similar to Vikeman. Was brewing up 10 gallons of a 1.095 Imperial Red with Rye (30%) and after the beta glucanase rest, my mash got stuck at around 130 while recirculating and heating up to saccharification. In the end I just decocted it (spur of the moment, no calculations, just estimated it) and was able to hit my sacch temp perfectly (154). Turns out my pump clogged and after sacch rest I ended up running off at a trickle to ensure no more cloggage. Ended up being a 7.5 hour brew day for a single batch of beer, but the beer ended up tasting great.

 

Hard to say, but after that rye fiasco, I tend to err on the safe side, with 1/2 lb of hulls per pound of rye malt. It's true that you can always add more and re-stir if you get stuck, but now you're reducing the wort output volume. So I just use more hulls and plan it that way (including increased water to cover absorption) from the beginning.

 

Good to know. I'm about to use a pound of rye in my first Berliner, thanks to the OP.

 

On my very first brew I was trying to do a full boil on an induction burner stove top. I started brewing 5 hours before I had to go to work. After I steeped my specialty grains I broke the wort up into 4 pots and tried like hell to get them all up to boiling temperature. I was even using the oven at this point. I finally got them all up to temp, and added my hops to the main kettle.

I had an extra patch of carpet in the kitchen. It was sort of a runner rug that ran from the sink to the stove. The rest of the kitchen was tiled. While trying to get everything reorganized I set one of my pots down on this runner rug and forgot about it for a few minutes while I was cleaning out the other pots. I came back to this pot on the rug and tried to pick it up. The carpet lifted up with it and I thought 0.o WTF?! The pot was still hot when I set it down on the rug and it melted the carpet into a glue that fused the two together. After realizing what I had done, I thought at least I'd try to salvage the pot. I put both feet down on the rug and lifted like hell against the pot. Well, the pot was actually made of two pieces. The bottom is glued/soldered to the top. I was surprised when I had the top half in my hands and the bottom was still stuck to the damn carpet. After cussing like crazy I threw the two halves of the pot and the rug in the dumpster. I chilled my wort the best I could (90F), and pitched my yeast. I was 20 minutes late for work and my back hurt for a week from trying to lift that pot off the rug.

 

Not a brew day accident, but a serious beer-related fuck up nonetheless: I froze two cornies full of beer and a 2.5 gallon lager starter once. The beer more or less recovered, the starter was a total waste of time and money. This happened because I got lazy (I'll bet many a brewer's tale of misfortune begins with those words) and didn't want to do a step starter. "I know, I'll just do a gigantic simple starter in my carboy, cold crash it, and then pitch on top of the cake." So I made the starter, let it ferment out, and put in my chest freezer to crash it. Only problem was that when I rearranged things to fit the starter carboy in there, I set the temperature probe outside the cooler and forgot to put it back in. Checked on it next morning and everything was frozen. D'oh.

 

Big Brew day, 2011: I planned to do a HopSlam clone. The brewery supplied me with about 12 gallons of fairly heavy wort (I don't recall the exact gravity, but 5 lbs of honey brought my OG to 1.092). After boiling, chilling, and hopping the hell out of it, I racked it into two five gallon carboys and pitched four packets of US-05 (two in each carboy). I was ready for the drive home. I put both carboys on a hand truck and, while rolling out to the car, a swarm of curious bicyclists from a local bike club, complete with colorful Spandex, surrounded me to catch a glimpse. While maneuvering around a particularly curious gent, I hit a crack in the pavement, and watched helplessly as one of the carboys took a tumble! Shards of glass everywhere!

I mopped up the mess and went home (I had a few pints in the TapHouse just to be polite).

Four weeks later, I kegged five gallons of the most insanely delicious beer I've ever made! Indeed, it was easily one of the top five beers I've ever tasted! I'd put it up against HopSlam any day of the week.

That's when I started to cry.

 

Did a five gallon batch with ingredients for a three gallon batch. Sigh....

That 3.0% Kolsch was pretty good though!

 

I rarely make mistakes.
1. I've put the wrong yeast slurry into a porter, WY3068 instead of WY1028. Turned out pretty great though.
2. I once dumped 15 pounds of grain for a larger IPA on my disgusting garage floor. Swept it up and used it dirt and all. It came out meh.
3. I've reversed my hop additions on a pale ale. Brewing with a pal after too many. Beer was brutal bitter...but not terrible
4. Forgot sugar addition once, ended up with an American Bitter. Yum!

 

In addition to those already posted concerning lagers and laziness , picked up a new nylon bag with 4oz of hops upside down as I was getting ready to dryhop a keg of my most recent IPA. Pellets and whole cones .everywhere. All were on a clean counter so I just scooped up and placed back in the bag. Doh!

Almost forgot... the hose coming off the kettle and pumping wort on my driveway...could have been a lot worse.

It's been an interesting week.

 

I recently made a rye IPA with 20% rye (3 lbs). I used 0.7 lbs rice hulls. I had a successful mash, but I can tell you that rye is a totally different ball game than wheat. I never use rice hulls when making a wheat beer, and I have never noticed any difference in the mash compared to an all barley mash. The mash with the rye was substantially more viscous. If you have difficulty with wheat, then rye is going to kick your butt.

 

I've had bigger problems with 2 row barley base malt...it'a all how they grind it

I'm scared of rye (and usually take extra precautions)

 

I've never used wheat . This is my first venture into non-barley grains. I've got a pound of rice hulls at my immediate disposal. And a heat stick that I've never used for brewing, but have tested and is watertight. So hopefully between the hulls and the ability to raise the mash temp without heating more water (easier beta rest at least), I'll pull through OK...but now I'm sufficiently terrified.

I usually brew on Sunday, but I just told my wife this one is going to have to be on a Saturday because I have no fucking idea what I'm in for.

 

Biker gangs these days.