That One Thing...

I had my barley crusher seize up while on the drill, which upended the bucket (along with everything else) and threw grain all over the floor...twice. I was in the bathroom as there is a good fan for sucking all that grain dust up and out of the room...so the grain flew into the shower. A damp shower.

I threw all the grain out and went and bought it all again, luckily no issues with the third crush attempt. I nearly gave up though...just seemed like the universe was trying to tell me something.

 

A few years back I used a plate chiller on a DIPA and got a horrible clog in it right off the bat. I was already several beers in at that point and was about ready to call it a day after battling with it for 15 minutes. I hung in there and it all worked out but what a pain.

I am not sure if it is worse to happen at the beginning of the brew session or at the end.

 

Not taking he time to calculate, just "winging" it as fast as I can to get through the brew. I always worry what is going to go wrong when I do that.

 

There are times that I leave my drill attached to my BC. It just sits on top of a homer bucket. I'll try to walk away with half a hopper of grain, or try to grab the rest of my bill, and the drill will upend the BC. Sometimes it ends up all over the deck or carpet. It just depends on where I'm crushing.

 

Not counting the things that happen unexpectedly, spilling wort drives me nuts. I have 1 pump so I have to change hose positions several times. I have a couple procedures/components in place to mitigate drippage when disconnecting and reconnecting hoses, but it inevitably happens. I brew on concrete, but it is something I still try to completely eliminate.

 

Something like "crush your grains the night before you brew"

 

Yeah, but then how could I sleep at night (you know, if it happened to occur at night)?

 

I also have a grain mill pet peeve. Most of the time, my mill works great -- but every once in a while, it will decide to just cease working properly. It doesn't seize up and throw grain everywhere (thank god), but it has some kind of internal slippage which causes the drill to turn but the grinding wheel to stay still (the drill is turning the shaft -- not slipping -- but the wheels inside the mill just recalcitrantly sit there).

Usually some combination of patience and swearing gets it to work again.

 

This is the time I heat strike water. They usually come out to about the same amount of time. I guess I could make breakfast at this time.

 

I got nothing. Pretty surre dumping 10 gallons of boil wort on myself would still be better than work...

 

miscalculating water measurements during the mash and wondering why I had so much wort! I even took pics of the extra wort and told my friend, here is my extra wort, you want it? We can get ahead of ourselves sometimes and mess up. its ok. Most times it ends up being something good actually

 

Running out of x. When I used my turkey fryer, running out of propane would do it. Most recently, I ran out of calcium chloride and gypsum for water treatment.

Another recent thing - my airstone came off my tubing while I was oxygenating and was on the bottom of the fermenter throughout fermentation. What sucks is I just remembered this right now, more than a week after tossing my yeast cake (and, presumably, the airstone) into the compost bin. Might as well get a new airstone, because it could be a while until I find it.

 

I hate boiling DME in a flask on the stove. I really need to step up and get a 5L flask instead of monkeying around with my 1 and 2L. Boilovers are pretty much guaranteed unless I'm babysitting it the entire time.

 

I lost my air stone once into the fermenter as well and just left it there through fermentation. Now that sucker is worm clamped on good.

On a similar note, I lost a stir bar to my basement utility sink a couple months ago. The funny thing is, is that there's an ejector pump which won't allow the bar to move past it. So now, every time water is draining in the sink, I get to hear a non-stop rattling sound of the stir bar as water is being sucked out past it. On top of that, I lost a latex glove the same way. This made a sound similar to squeezing both ends at the bottom of an inflated balloon. And with a sink that could take as much as 10 minutes to drain, this symphony of sounds got very old very quick. I'm like a cowbell and overturned bucket away from something pretty special here. Still haven't bought a filter yet.

 

Clogging my pump. It literally sends me into a rage. I almost kicked the kettle over one day and said to hell with it.

But then I calm down, and fix it and move on. Only to have it happen again. Ughh.

I don't really have anything, other than dragging out all the crap to brew, that keeps me from wanting to brew. I hate pulling it all out, setting up, putting water into everything, cycling it all to rinse from being in the garage, and then setting up to heat the strike water.

 

I would highly recommend you get some fermcap. It works! Solved my boilover problem.

 

I just about started selling this stuff out of my cooler during Big Brew Day. Nobody seemed to know what this stuff is.

 

The funny thing is, I don't know what it is either. But it does work.

 

I was trying to find a homemade version of antifoam--Beyond standing overhead with a bottle of Star-San. I ran out a few months back. I found out that most, if not all of the antifoams, are a food grade silicone formula. I'm not sure if that means I could have just ground a little bit of tubing off and thrown it in the boil, but it's worth looking into.