Biggest bonehead move on a brew day?

Foster82

New Member
Trial Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2013
Messages
208
Reaction score
1
Points
0
I will go first! Confusing your total requiered water with amount going into kettle. Needless to say I ended up with 5 quarts extra in the kettle, adding an another hour to the boil. Just glad I realized the mistake before I started my boil!
 
Trying to do a 7.5 gallon boil on the kitchen gas range.
 
Drinking too much and falling asleep during the boil.
 
Let's see:

Tried to boil 5 gallons on electric range...during the Super Bowl.
Measured OG from the wort in my kettle prior to top-off with additional water, and then wondered why the reading was much higher than projected.
Added 3 pounds of extract to water post-steep without taking kettle off the fryer setup, which resulted in boilover. Also, I had done first-wort hopping, so there was a lot of hop debris that boiled over as well.
 
An additional bone-headed maneuver from the Bear: Putting a just-brewed beer into too small a fermenter. Result: Most of the yeast gets blown off, leaving you with one very slowly fermenting beer.
 
Putting 4gal of 80 degree wort into an "old" room temp glass carboy and the bottom cracking off as I was going to swirl it for oxygenation. Luckly only a small shallow cut on finger but wort was in center of kitchen floor. 4hrs later after having the appliances removed to clean under, the kitchen floor was very clean. We had to go buy some beer to ease the pain of the lost BITCHIN' BELGIAN WIT. Brewed again the next day. Lesson learned old acid carboys get brittle with age. Also bought buckets directly after.
 
As a learning experience, why not post the results of the bonehead moves? We could start a weekly "Bonehead" award! As the guys at the Brew Hut said not long ago, everyone does at least one bone-headed thing every time they brew.... Fortunately most of them are recoverable (bitchin' Belgian aside...).
 
mis-calculated the grist/strike water volume that was too much for my mash tun. luckily mash temp after scrambling for an idea was around 140, so I took a quart or two of the mash out so I could close the cooler lid, and performed my first decoction mash. I got the technique for that down with that batch, but my beer came out tasting weird for some reason; harsh astringent aftertaste. No idea what caused that, but never had that issue since.
 
while brewing my last big double IPA, the recipe had 1lb of dextrose added at the end of the boil.. I swear I had threw in 2lbs of dextrose at the local brew shop, but turns out I hadn't! so I went into my kitchen, and grabbed a pound of powdered sugar which was the only sugar we had. Threw it in, and shortly after realized it wasn't just sugar.. it had CORN STARCH in it.

needless to say, the beer turned out cloudy as can be, with a starchy mouth feel. never doing that again....
 
If any of us had the voices for it, we could start a radio show with this stuff.... :))
 
There are two kinds of home brewers. Those who have mopped their ceiling, and those who will some day.
 
I recently forgot to wash my yeast after a batch. I am STILL kicking myself over that one because that means I have to spend an additional $8 on my next batch that I would not have had to otherwise. DOH!

I also recently had a serious brain fart and forgot about the wet t-shirt trick (and no, I'm not being dirty here). My brew ended up getting a bit on the hot side but seems to have turned out okay once I came to my senses and finally got it cooled down with said t-shirt trick.

Funny how you plan things out so well only to have human nature get in the way! :lol:
 
Nosybear said:
If any of us had the voices for it, we could start a radio show with this stuff.... :))

I actually co-host a talk show format podcast. I might be up for doing a homebrew podcast if someone wanted to host or co-host.
 
Let's think about it....
 
Last brew I did in a bag and I used water for a standard mash with sparge. You don't sparge BIAB...sort of...I set the bag of grain in a large bowl that holds the 12+lbs Set it on a table tipped over the wort and sparged slowly through the bag and it poured into the wort. Not a bad beer either.
 
Not exactly brew day but once I was transferring a beer through my filter into another keg, put the lid on the receiving keg but left the relief valve open for air to escape when the door bell rang, well 30 minutes later I get back to 1/4 of my beer foaming all over the floor ....that was a bad day lol
 

Back
Top