Brew day fail stories?

[GerritT]

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

Hence my stop in brewing activities.

 

[Mrhandsome]

I like to save the yeast after I brew in a 500ml bottle. I cap it and store it in the fridge till my next brew day.

On brew day I get it out to reach room temp and add a teaspoon of sugar to wake it up a little before pitching.

Usually I'll place the cap loosely on top whilst I'm brewing, except for one time when I didn't (I sealed it) and it went boom boom. Yeast EVERYWHERE, but I still have my limbs, and enough yeast for my brew more importantly.

 

[johncrobinson]

My Father kept a starter going this way for 25yrs plus.

I think now we better understand the part the little yeasties play in our homebrew/wines.
Its not ALL about the alcohol,Important yes but not everything.

 

[Leard]

For my first BIAB about a week ago, I was lifting the bag out and then squeezing out over the kettle to get all the last sugars. It isn't easy squeezing 5.5kg of wet grain with just two hands and so I ended up dropping the bag into the kettle causing wort to splash out over the sides. I ended up only getting about 56% mash efficiency. I've learned that it's best to dump the bag into another pot and then squeeze in there, before transferring what you get back to the kettle.

 

[Covrich]

NOt a huge end of the world but once I put the tap on to trasfer wort from kettle to FV.. went out of the conservatory while that was going came back in a few mins later to realise I left my FV tap on.. lost about 3 liters into the rug in the conservatory

 

[RichardM]

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

I bottled 4.5 litres and put 15 litres in 3 mini kegs today. As always I tasted the dregs. I think this is going to be a good one.

 

[skulltat280]

I bottled 4.5 litres and put 15 litres in 3 mini kegs today. As always I tasted the dregs. I think this is going to be a good one.

show off, this thread is for us failures

 

[RichardM]

show off, this thread is for us failures

Well I failed to follow the recipe. Wrong ingredients and wrong mash temperature. The FG has much higher than it should have been because of the high mash temp.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Having seen what others have written, it feels quite tame to say I once open the tap on my boiler to fill my fermenter and then watched my beautiful wort spill over the bar top while a little voice in my head told me “that’s not right, surely?”.

I’d not fitted the tube to transfer the wort from the boiler tap into the fermenting bucket.

 

[fury_tea]

show off, this thread is for us failures

There's still time

 

[Dellboy78lfc]

This was my Facebook post from the weekend....
Third Grainfather brew today and had a few issues! Seal came off the bottom plate whilst doughing in which was annoying but sorted it. Knocked the filter off with my new whirlpool drill bit so have a nice bit of gunk in my wort now!

I’m more annoyed that I’ve overshot my gravity by 8 points and I’m not sure how I’ve managed to do that? Used a dilution calculator which says to add 4.6L of water which seems like quite a lot!

Oh and I’ve just smashed my hydrometer!

 

[Dutto]

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

Oh and I’ve just smashed my hydrometer!

Sorry, but that's more a "fact of life" than a "fail"!

I dread to think how many hydrometers I have been through over the years, because none of them had what could be classed as a "charmed life"!

 

[fury_tea]

First fail within 1 minute of my brew day. Plugged the Robo in, went to make a brew, when I came back there was an error and smoke everywhere.

I'd burnt a packet of silica gel to the bottom of the unit. Didn't realise the heaters were on.

Great start.

 

[Lawrence22]

1.Knocking the malt pipe back into the wort during sparging was probably my worst. Covered myself in sticky wort.
2. Primimg my weiss beer with sugar to about 4 vols Co2 and then realising the bottles wouldn't stand up to that, Had to release pressure after a couple of days and recap them all. They still ended up as gushers.

 

[Duxuk]

Not quite a brew day story, more a bottling thing. I had a small slug in a PET bottle. I noticed it before trying to drink the beer and, not being a vegetarian, I didn't imagine it had drunk too much. It transformed the flavour to something foul

 

[Dutto]

Not quite a brew day story, more a bottling thing. I had a small slug in a PET bottle. I noticed it before trying to drink the beer and, not being a vegetarian, I didn't imagine it had drunk too much. It transformed the flavour to something foul

WOW! The 1932 case of Donoghue V. Stephenson (aka The Snail in the Bottle Case) laid the foundation of modern UK laws regarding negligence and establishing the general principles of the duty of care between people. (Mainly a Seller and a Buyer.)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8367223.stm

I can recommend it as a sobering and informative read.

Enjoy!

 

[user 18729]

Nothing serious yet but recently I finished bottling a bitter with my beergun- there was some beer left in the transfer tube and I had a cracking idea I though I’d suck the beer out through the beergun (waste not want not) but pressed the gas trigger instead of the beer trigger

 

[fury_tea]

Nothing serious yet but recently I finished bottling a bitter with my beergun- there was some beer left in the transfer tube and I had a cracking idea I though I’d suck the beer out through the beergun (waste not want not) but pressed the gas trigger instead of the beer trigger

Hahahaha

 

[Drunkula]

Wrong thread.... too many open tabs.

 

[fury_tea]

Not brew day, but I had a leak on one of my co2 lines, I was force carbing something and it emptied the whole gas canister over night while I was at work.

Luckily the place I get my gas from is a 5 minute drive from me and they dropped a new one off within half an hour. Paranoid about leaving it on now though.