What has been your worst home brewing experience?

Brewing 7 five gallon batches in one year that ended up as drain pours. After changing yeast,sanitation methods and bull headed attitude, the drain pours stopped.

 

Having an IPA bleed out of the keg this year. This stands out because it is the freshest bad experience, but it's not just that. I've thrown away bad beer before, but this was good beer wasted, wasted in a way that created a sticky mess. But I didn't have to go to the ER, ruin my carpet, or burn my house down. Gotta be optimistic about these things.

 

I've set my SS braid for my propane burner on fire, fused a pot to a rug, and spilled beer from the top of a bottling bucket down my butt crack. Not all on the same day, of course. All pretty terrible days.

 

Biggest disaster thus far was cocoa nibs clogging my racking cane and preventing transfer from kettle to primary. I'm only six months in and if this is my biggest disaster I'll be a happy man! No drain pours or major spills yet!

 

Having to get rid of 10 gallons of beer due to an infection. Very sad.

 

Had a sparge stick under my false bottom recently. Spent 15 minutes sucking hot grain through a hose to get the flow started again. Not a flattering sight.

I once primed a beer in the bottling bucket only to realize that I didn't have any bottle caps on hand. It was a Sunday and the LHBS was closed. Had to run to Walmart to pick up seltzer water PET bottles. Classy.

I was bottling a couple of beers from a keg on morning before work with a picnic tap, bottling wand, and rubber stopper. I though I had been venting the pressure sufficiently. Nope. Took an English Mild geyser to the eye.

No injuries. No drain pours or infections. No catastrophic messes inside the house. I can't complain too much!

 

Couple years ago I loaded up a sour beer with peaches and raspberries. I had it way too full.

The fermentation blew off the airlock and spewed fruit guts all over our living room.

I've bee brewing/fermenting/ in the garage and basement ever since.

 

All of the beers with Sorachi Ace, I had a pound to use and realized that the hop sucks when used for bittering and it sucks for flavor as well. One 5 gallon batch ended up as a drain pour after I managed to choke down about a gallon over a month or so and realized that the beer was not improving over time.

 

I thought I was the only person repulsed by that hop.

 

Had some bottle bombs after forgetting to sanitize some of the bottles. Sucked to clean up, but I'm just thankful I didn't get any to the face. Other than that, nothing catastrophic as far as losing an entire batch due to infection, or shattering a carboy full of perfectly good beer. I tend to always brew by myself, because I hate being a host while trying to think of all the other shit I've gotta prepare, clean, etc.. the mistakes I've made have all happened when I was distracted by other people. Makes me sound like I'm antisocial but I just can't multi-task!

 

Kegged a dubbell I brewed right before going out of town for Thanksgiving. When I arrived home, found my keezer full of the dubbell & an empty keg.

 

Next time you have a stuck sparge blow in it. This works a lot better.

 

Preparing to rack my 19.4% ABV Black Tuesday homage to keg for long-term storage and broke the spigot clean off. 2" hole at the bottom of a bucket spewing prized possessions all over the basement. Ended up dumping what I could into prepared keg but lost about 1.5 gallons. Monster sticky clean-up.

 

Learned some important lessons this past Saturday.
1. When it's 12 degrees outside hose bibs can freeze behind the frost plug (even if you had disconnected your hose) and cause a solid explosion of water in your basement while you're standing in your garage trying to fill your kettle for the Boil.
2. Plastic Big Mouth Bubblers can't take 100 degree wort - they begin to melt. Top-Off prior to transferring, or better yet, make sure you've chilled enough.
3. In a pinch, the cold water hookup at your washer in your laundry room is highly effective to hook a hose & a wort chiller to.
4. 1.108 OG Quad MUST HAVE A BLOWOFF TUBE INSTALLED unless you like cleaning up a mess 36 hours into fermentation. (I knew it but was just so pissed off about the entire experience that I threw an airlock in it at walked away)
5. When brew day starts out bad, JUST STOP - don't force the issue.

 

I actually tried that too and it would only clear up for maybe a cup or two of runnings before sticking/clogging again. It took a combination of sucking, blowing, and jamming a skewer into the ball valve to get it flowing right. I gave serious consideration to lighting the mashtun on fire and throwing it off of the balcony, but cooler minds prevailed.

 

There have only been 3 really *bad* things I can easily remember (in order of suckitude):

1: Dumping 11 gallons of breakfast stout (made with a hefty amount of expensive coffee and even more expensive chocolate) down the drain after my clumsy/intoxicated assistant brewer/friend dropped a digital thermometer (and the lithium battery inside it) into the kettle just after flameout. Why he felt a need to check the temperature of something that was clearly JUST boiling? . . .I still have no idea.

2: The time (9 or 10 years ago) that a leaky picnic tap discharged a full keg of what was arguably the best batch of saison I've ever brewed into a chest freezer in my (rented) 'great room'. This would have been a tie with #3 if not for the fact that I'd removed the freezer's drain plug to allow CO2 to escape for those occasions when I had something fermented in there. And I was outside with my dog when the leak happened. So... 5 gallons that would've been contained.... spilled out onto the carpet and soaked into the padding underneath. By the time I returned ~ 10 min later - my glass of the very first pour now empty, there was a wet spot ~ 8 feet across... and an empty keg.

3: The time (just last month!) that ANOTHER keg of saison saw fit to spill its contents into my freezer (this time through a poppet that didn't fully seat because the diptube o-ring was shot). Lesser incident than #2 because the keg was only partially full, it happened in my garage, and all was contained in the freezer - so cleanup was easy.

 

I've never had a catastrophe. Recently got lazy with a bigger beer and air locked instead of setting up a blow off. Air lock clogged, blew the lid off, and made a mess of my ferm chamber.

 

Was filling my Laundry tub sink in my basement bathroom to do an equipment cleaning session. Went to the room where I keep al my equipment, and ferment my beers, to grab the equipment to be cleaned when I realized the RIS I had brewed two to three days earlier had pushed the airlock out and was overflowing out of the car boy onto my basement carpet. Went straight to work attatching a blowoff hose and completely forgot about the laundry tub sink I had left to fill. Flooded my whole basement and lost almost a gallon of beer. Not a good day.