Brewing Bloopers

[berryman]

After reading Mash's post awhile back how he forgot to put the grain tube in the M&B and the mess that must have been, I got to thinking we all make simple mistakes once and awhile but don't always share. So share if you dare, it might help others from not doing it.

[berryman]

Last Thursday while kegging the APA I had in the fermenter for 2 weeks I found the hops that were supposed to be dry hopped and I must have forgot. I have made this recipe before and the 2 oz, Amarillo is probably the best part. thought about leaving them out but didn't like that idea. I have read about dry hopping in the keg but use a special cover to hang a hop sack. I used a new sanitized piece of thin fishing line tied on the outside of the cap. I could not get a good seal on the keg so for a couple times a day I would hit it with co2 Took them out late Sunday and all is sealed and under pressure now. I am sure it will be good, just hope I get that good Amarillo smell.

[MadBrewer]

I have a couple that come to mind. A few yrs back, I had a Kolsch going with a blow off tube, after fermentation I then began to cold crash it and it sucked up about a cup, probably less of Starsan. I freaked at first, did some research to verify it would be fine. To this day it was one of my best Kolsch.

Another time, brewing a Yuengling clone I was supposed to add 3 ml of lactic acid to my mash for ph correction. I grabbed the wrong, much larger syringe and filled it 3 times which I though would be 1 ml each, when in fact the much larger syringe filled to 5 ml each time. Mash Ph was low, boosted it back up with some baking soda and again beer turned out great.

One of the more recent bloopers was last summer I brewed an Amber Ale. I fermented in a corny keg and at first just left the PRV pulled open and twisted the ring to hold it open in place and covered with foil until I was to come back with a blow off tube. Well, I forgot (that ever happen to you...happened to me) and at some point in the fermentation, the PVR sealed itself and the beer was fermenting under pressure. When I went to check on the batch I noticed this and pulled the PVR without thinking, beer foam came gushing out and then the PVR wouldn't close again. I grabbed the keg, ran it out of the garage into the drive way, placed it in a garbage bag until the volcano calmed down. Probably lost under a gal of beer...the batched was salvaged and the finished beer was ok, but definitely not great.

[bpgreen]

On the mr beer fans forum, bloopers were often called Wilsons because there was a brewer there (Wilson) who would post hiliraious writeups of his bloopers (often including descriptions of the reactions of his canine helpers). IIRC, to qualify as a Wilson, the beer had to turn out ok. If your mistake ruined the beer, it wasn't a Wilson.

I've had a few.

When I was brewing all extract, I once decided to go REALLY BIG. I decided to find out what 6 lbs of LME in a 2.4 gallon batch would do. It stallled out. Around that time, I read some article or blog that said that adding a beano could restart a stalled fermentation. It can. But I didn't read up on it enough. The enzyme in the beano converts unfermentable sugars into fermentable sugars.

Until there are no more unfermentable sugars. And it slows considerably after the initial phase. So things may seem finished before they actually are. If you don't do something to inactivate the enzyme, it will continue to convert any remaining unfermentable sugars, even long afterr you bottle the batch. I was using flip top bottles and escaped bottle bombs, but had some very overcarbonated beer (there may or may not be a stain on the ceiling in the basement that happened before I started opening those bottles outside).

After brewing for a while, things became a routine, so I stopped keeping a checklist. I had a bit of a hiatus, and decided to brew a stovetop partial mash. My process for this was to do the mash as a BiaB, do the hop boil in the wort from the mash, add the LME at the end of the boil, then use refrigerated water to bring the volume to 5 gallons. When I took the gravity reading, it was more like a FG reading. WTF? I then notice the LME sitting on the counter unopened.

Does brewing coffee count?

I have one of those flexible brew single cup things. It can take a Kcup , but it also has a basket for grounds. The insulated cup that I have used for more than a decade until I broke it this morning didn't quite fit, so I'd put a shorter cup in, fill the taller cup with water, pour the water in, start it, then when it finished, pour the remaining water into the pot, pour the coffee into the larger cup, put the other cup back and hit the start button.

Of course, I usuallly did other things while the coffee was brewing.

The problem with making coffee is that you have to do it before you've had coffee.

Once, I heard sounds that didn't seem quite right. I couldn't quite place it, but it was off. When I git dressed and went downstairs, coffee was everywhere. I forgot to put the cup in.

Jus the other day, instead of pouring the coffee into the larger cup, I poured it into the coffee maker. It took several runs to get the full cup. Then it took a vinegar cleanng to get it right.

[mashani]

I once poured my Mr. Beer wort into a fermenter that I thought I had put water into (like the usual process), except in reality I had just not drained out the one-step solution. It turned out kind of minerally LOL.

10 years before that I had a glass carboy that got the bung clogged and must have had pre-existing stress fractures or something (I had dropped it a few times but nothing was visible?) literally blow up in my closet upstairs in my old house. Shards of glass were in the walls and ceiling of the closet. 5 gallons of beer coating the walls, and leaking through the floor. Fun times. I vowed to never will use glass again, and that was one of the things that led to a 10 year brewing hiatus before I went back with Mr. Beer.

[HerbMeowing]

i dropped my hydrometer on the kitchen floor twice without breaking and both times the beer turned out just fine.

[bpgreen]

i dropped my hydrometer on the kitchen floor twice without breaking and both times the beer turned out just fine.

I broke my first hydrometer before I got the chance to use it.

I think I used the second one once.

Then I bought 2 at the same time, so I'd have a spare when I broke one. The plan was that I'd order another when I broke one, in the hopes that the spare would last long enough for the replacement to arrive.

That was 10 years ago. I haven't had to buy one since.

I've come to the conclusion that hydrometers are pack animals. When they're forced into solitude, the get depressed and commit suicide.

[John Sand]

I've made a few over the years, infections, weak yeast etc.
I found a new one just this week! In September I kegged a pretty nice pilsner, good grain and hop flavor. Just this week, it seemed pretty bland. Now sometimes your taste changes day to day, so I didn't worry too much at first, but it's definitely not what it was. Now I remember that when I racked it into the keg, it seemed like there was hop debris or trub streaming in the autosiphon. Yesterday when I kegged my Christmas beer, I realized that they were air bubbles being drawn in through a crack in the tube (!). I simply covered the crack with my thumb which stopped the bubbles. I also used corn sugar to carb the new beer, hoping to scour some oxygen. The pilsner? Oh yeah, that's oxidized and probably will be dumped. And I thought I would get through the year without dumping one!

[FedoraDave]

Early on, I had the bright idea (NOT!) of using a glass thermometer instead of a digital one. It broke in the brew pot and contaminated my beer with mercury. Had to dump the batch and do a furious clean-up of the pot.

[Crazy Climber]

Nothing too out of the ordinary, here.

Once or twice, I've poured liquid (sanitizer, wort, or fermented beer) into a vessel with a spigot, without first making sure the spigot was closed. Luckily, I caught the mistake before sending any more than 6-10 ounces onto the floor.

Probably the best one was back when I was bottling (been kegging for a couple of years). I'd normally pour the priming sugar water into the bottling bucket, and then transfer the beer from the fermenter onto the priming sugar to mix, and then bottle from there. This particular time, I bottled a whole Mr. Beer-sized batch--close to a case of bottles, capped them, put the bottles away, and started the cleanup process. Hmm, what's this liquid sitting in this bowl? Oh, that's my priming sugar water. Wait - WHAT?!

Had to uncap all 20+ bottles, and add a guesstimated amount of the priming solution to each bottle via dropper.

And yes, the beer turned out okay.

[mashani]

So yesterday I stuck a PET bottle with beer in the freezer to chill it fast. Was going to get it out of there in an hour or so.

Then things happened, I forgot about it... opened the freezer 6 hours or so later.

It must have exploded while mostly frozen - everything in the freezer, everywhere, was coated with what amounted to a "beer slushy" - foamy beer flavored ice, the bottle was totally split down one edge and lying on its side.

Cleaning that up was fun.

[Beer-lord]

Oh no! That's not fun at all. I can thank my Apple Watch because I know I'll forget things like that so a quick "remind me to check..." or "set timer for 20 minutes" is all it takes.
That's my excuse anyway.

[John Sand]

My latest freeze wasn't too bad.
While cleaning kegerator lines, I leave some cleaner to soak for fifteen minutes before flushing. Last switch I took a shower after starting, and forgot to flush when I got out. The line froze. Last time I had a frozen beer line I turned up the pressure and used a hot rag to warm them. This time I just used nature and turned off the fridge.

[swenocha]

I have two relatively recently (in the last 2 years)... One was the grain tube similar to Mash, so I won't repeat it. 2nd was having a clogged keg from a ripped dryhop bag and not purging the CO2 the third time I had to unclog it. Sigh. Lesson learned... Was quite the IPA fountain...

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