Brew day fail stories?

[fury_tea]

I had another few mistakes that same brew day, nothing major but I'd planned my first no chill and rehydrated the yeast before the brew (just stuck the beaker in the fridge after advice on here) and I'd planned a 90 minute boil but threw my bittering hops in straight away instead of at 60 mins. Not wanting to mess up the IBUs I decided to make it a 60 minute boil so still ended up with 21 litres (as originally planned - before throwing 4L of it across the kitchen) but at 1.042 rather than 1.050. Considered putting some DME in but all I had was medium and I'm making a lager. Didn't want to darken it too much so I'll have 4ish percent beer rather than 5ish.

Oh and the time I saved on not chilling went into cleaning the sticky wort from almost every surface in the kitchen. Mrs fury_tea was not best pleased.

I'd not even been drinking this time either. Maybe that was the problem?

 

[fury_tea]

Bought myself a hop spider for today’s brew......... and forgot to use it! What a plank. I seem to be the only person having issues with my filter clogging up whilst transferring to my fermenter. Oh well there’s always next week :-)

I read that if you put the mesh filter on the bottom section of the Robobrew instead of inside the malt pipe you can avoid stuck sparges. I tried that on this (my recipe has a kilo of sushi rice in and was worried about it getting claggy and stuck). Well that resulted in much more trub material than usual and a gunged up pump filter, which hasn't happened before. Still not managed to use the whirlpool arm I bought!

 

[Dutto]

.............

A stark realisation which I'm glad I acted on was that it's not good practice to carry 20 odd litres of hot wort across the kitchen to the sink so I can use my wort chiller. I extended the hose leads instead.

For those who don't follow Clint's principle, you WILL finish up scalding yourself, so I offer up this bit of history:

• In 2016 I spilled some boiling wort on my feet.
• After the redness and blisters disappeared, I slowly realised that my feet were infected with some kind of fungus.
• I soldiered on until 2017 by peeling off flaking skin but finally decided to do something about it.
• I looked for fungal cream on t'Internet and discovered that it cost a bomb! (e.g. I found one product that cost £24.99 for 100g and only promised "Results from two weeks.")
• I thought "What would my Mum have done?" and lashed out £6.00 on a 10g packet of Potassium Permanganate.
• I dissolved 1g of the permanganate in a bowl of water, soaked my feet in it twice over the next 48 hours and watched my feet and toe-nails turn a rich brown colour. (The skin colour changed back to normal in about a week, but the nails had to grow out, which took about a year!)

Since then the fungal infection has disappeared and not returned so "YAY!" and "Thanks Mum!"

 

[South Coast Brewer]

It’s the grainfather system, I was actually toying with the idea about getting a false bottom for it? I’ve heard the robobrew one works just fine? So that might be a possibility

I’ve been using the GF for a while and have tried various methods to help with it the ones I have now settled on depending on the amount of planned hops are:
Whirlpool with the aeration paddle to get the hops to settle in the centre, then blow CO2 down the pipe which clears anything from round the filter before transfer (you can use a bike pump also) if the flow slows during transfer I do this a couple of times.
If it’s a heavy hop bill I also use a stainless steel pot scrubber wrapped around the filter (boil it in fresh water first to remove any production residue) I’ve found this works well at keeping the flow rate up.
I’ve heard mixed things on the false bottom so just haven’t bothered trying it.

good luck!

 

[cheeseyfeet]

Used my fairly new counterflow chiller last month, walked away for a minute and then heard a deafening bang!

Turned round to be showered with hot coolant water and realised that I'd forgotten to open the tap on the outlet, so the mains water pressure + heated water from being beside the wort had expanded then burst the hose!

 

[skulltat280]

4 all grain (BIAB) brews so far, 4 stories to tell lol. The arsenal match is starting in 15 minutes so haven't time to write them

 

[RichardM]

Today I had quite a few cockups.
I brew with a 20l Braumeister and managed to program a 0 minutes mash at 65C and a 10 minute mash out at 75C so I had to switch to manual.
I then realised I had forgotten the rolled oats that the recipe called for and then later on realised I had forgotten to had the white sugar to the boil.
Then for some reason I decide not to use my hop spider, this was a very hoppy American pale ale so I ended up having to scoop the wort out and pour it through a sieve because the leaf hops blocked the tap.

But it will still be beer!

 

[An Ankoù]

Today I had quite a few cockups.
I brew with a 20l Braumeister and managed to program a 0 minutes mash at 65C and a 10 minute mash out at 75C so I had to switch to manual.
I then realised I had forgotten the rolled oats that the recipe called for and then later on realised I had forgotten to had the white sugar to the boil.
Then for some reason I decide not to use my hop spider, this was a very hoppy American pale ale so I ended up having to scoop the wort out and pour it through a sieve because the leaf hops blocked the tap.

But it will still be beer!

It might be the best beer you've ever made. Write down the recipe while you can still remember it.

 

[RichardM]

It might be the best beer you've ever made. Write down the recipe while you can still remember it.

I have the recipe in Beersmith but I will need to adjust for the mash. Heat to 75C then leave for an hour!
It was meant to be Totally Tropical from James Morton's book, I forgot the oats and white sugar when plugging it in to Beersmith.

 

[An Ankoù]

I have the recipe in Beersmith but I will need to adjust for the mash. Heat to 75C then leave for an hour!
It was meant to be Totally Tropical from James Morton's book, I forgot the oats and white sugar when plugging it in to Beersmith.

I've got a batch of TT conditioning. I hope it's as good as he says. Still not totally convinced by Morton and I hope I'm wrong. I don't think the lack of 3% oats will spoil it and the sugar just thins it out. Let us know how you find it when it's ready for the glass.

 

[RichardM]

I've got a batch of TT conditioning. I hope it's as good as he says. Still not totally convinced by Morton and I hope I'm wrong. I don't think the lack of 3% oats will spoil it and the sugar just thins it out. Let us know how you find it when it's ready for the glass.

I'll report back in month or so. It's not just the lack of oats and sugar that varies from the book. I had some caramalt to use up so used that instead of Munich malt and the hop amounts were slightly different because I wanted to use what I had in stock and buy more just to have even more odds and ends left over.
I had the book for my birthday last May, or even Christmas 2018. I think this is the first recipe I have done from it

 

[GerritT]

Spilled several pounds of liquor and malt over the kitchen floor, carpet and walls. Twice. Within 5 weeks.

 

[An Ankoù]

I'll report back in month or so. It's not just the lack of oats and sugar that varies from the book. I had some caramalt to use up so used that instead of Munich malt and the hop amounts were slightly different because I wanted to use what I had in stock and buy more just to have even more odds and ends left over.
I had the book for my birthday last May, or even Christmas 2018. I think this is the first recipe I have done from it

It sounds better and better.. Don't get me wrong, I've had his book a while and made one or two of his recipes. He invites us to judge his book on his recipe for APA (Undead, p. 171) and it's really not that good: the grain bill's too complicated, it's too strong, and I haven't seen any other APA recipe that insists on a single hop. Nevertheless, it's perfectly ok, but just doesn't live up to the hype.
By the way, talking about cock-ups, I made his Mad Boris and forgot to put the chocolate malt in! He writes books about bread, too, and I have the same misgivings.
Still going to try a few more of his recipes, though.

 

[foxy]

My biggy was chucking the grain in the strike water without the false bottom in scooped it all out with a big ladle and carried on, was a good brew as well

I did the same thing with my BM, put the grain in went to put the top screen on and there was the bottom screen alongside my top screen.

 

[RichardM]

Spilled several pounds of liquor and malt over the kitchen floor, carpet and walls. Twice. Within 5 weeks.

To mis quote Oscar Wilde “To spill liquor once Mr. GerritIT, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose twice looks like carelessness.”

 

[RichardM]

I did the same thing with my BM, put the grain in went to put the top screen on and there was the bottom screen alongside my top screen.

I've done that twice, hopefully never again

 

[skulltat280]

To mis quote Oscar Wilde “To spill liquor once Mr. GerritIT, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose twice looks like carelessness.”

 

[RichardM]

It sounds better and better.. Don't get me wrong, I've had his book a while and made one or two of his recipes. He invites us to judge his book on his recipe for APA (Undead, p. 171) and it's really not that good: the grain bill's too complicated, it's too strong, and I haven't seen any other APA recipe that insists on a single hop. Nevertheless, it's perfectly ok, but just doesn't live up to the hype.
By the way, talking about cock-ups, I made his Mad Boris and forgot to put the chocolate malt in! He writes books about bread, too, and I have the same misgivings.
Still going to try a few more of his recipes, though.

I have Paul Hollywood and a Hairy Bikers bread books. I treat the recipes like those in my beer books, a source of inspiration or a starting point, not something to be followed to the letter

 

[An Ankoù]

I have Paul Hollywood and a Hairy Bikers bread books. I treat the recipes like those in my beer books, a source of inspiration or a starting point, not something to be followed to the letter

A splendid approach. I have a different strategy. I often make up a recipe exactly as given so I can understand what the writer has in mind and perhaps learn something from that. That is usually the only time it gets done that way and then it;s a case of how can I adapt this to my taste or improve on it. It also forces me to try new grains and hops varieties instead of forever wondering what they're like. So, for example, I've made up the recipe in the CAMRA book for Elusive Brewing's Level Up- A red ale. It's Andy Parker's brewery and Parker is co-author of the book. Parker loves Simcoe, obviously, and he goes on about how they are the perfect hop for red ales. Rubbish! To my taste it's horrible and dank and a waste of the Citra dry hops, which are completely smothered by the Simcoe. BUT, I've learnt something: the malt profile is marvellous and I'll rebrew Level Up with different finishing hops to limit the dankness.
Sometimes a recipe has glaring errors or obviously won't work: the recipe for Eight Arches Corbel in the same book uses far too much base malt for the given OG and would come out closer to 7% abv than 5%. Again, I'm presently trying to formulate recipes for some of the Brewdog recipes from their Book "Craft Beer for the People", which provides detailed recipes. Punk IPA and 5AM Saint both have a declared bitterness of 35 IBUs. Running the quantities through Brewer's Friend IBU calculator gives Punk IPA with 63.57 IBUs and 5AM Saint with 7.08 IBUs so both those recipes are problematic and they're not corrected by the massive flameout and dry hop quantities, which are fairly similar.
Now that I've corrected the Corbel recipe, I love it and I'll brew it, as it is, again and again, but I'll also make variations with different hops, especially as Ahtanum seem a bit scarce these days.
That's my approach anyway for what it's worth.

 

[The Baron]

I splashed the hot wort whilst stirring went over my thumb, note to self hot wort blisters. Forgot protofloc several times. Put hops in wrong order so bittering hops last but all told never had a major disaster maybe its just waiting for me