Embarrassing stories

[citraman1]

So, I have an embarrasing story to share. Today is the day I found out that refractometers do not give you a true FG reading. The last 4 months I have been scrutinising over every practice in my brewday, water profiles, salt additions, mash temps, flow rate (gen2 robo is my system), pH, starch conversion and for the life of me I have not found out why my FG was reading 1.022-1.030 on all my brews. Devastating! I would altar my brewday with the new info, every time still reading 1.022-1.030. I learnt about stuck fermentations and just about everything that could go wrong with a beer and still couldnt figure it out. Until today. I got home from work after reading refracs are not accurate with alcohol in the solution I raced to go find the old hydrometer. It reads 1.014, bang on my recipe. I nearly cried with relief! My mind went back to the beer I tipped thinking again, its not good enough, it cant be good if it hasnt finished fermenting. I still bottled a few litres of each batch, left it sitting under the stairs bottle priming. I have put one of my last 6 beers I all thought were rubbish in the fridge, pumped to try them in a few days. All that beer I thought was lost! So sad
I hope this is the last embarrasing story of my homebrew journey, but it forced me to learn a lot about beer and its process and the science behind it. Can anyone else out there top that?

 

[Wobbly74]

A couple of brews ago I had replaced the mechanical thermostat on my sparge urn with a spare stc and tested it etc. On brew day I ran off the excess heated water from my main kettle to it to sparge with, went ahead and mashed in and then turned the sparge urn on at the plug. Nothing. Played with stc and still nothing. Went into a bit of a panic (for no real reason) and eventually just sparged with the slightly cooled water 10C under strike temp instead of my normal 76C. After cursing myself a bit and contemplating pulling it apart I realised that I had wired the stc through the main switch on the urn which I hadn't turned on. Switched it on and it worked fine. Doh.

 

[Engibeer]

When I had my old BIAB setup, I used to hook up the STC for the mash and then disconnect it for the boil - plugging the element straight into the mains for the boil.

I left it set at mash out (78C) after one brew day.

Next brew day I set up the rig, heated it up to strike, mashed in. Came back 10 minutes later and the mash was at 78C. Damn it!

I milled another kg of malt, waited for the mash to cool down, added the extra kg, figuring that would contain enough enzymes to complete any necessary conversion.

I raced to the chemist, got some iodine. Did an iodine test. All good - no starch. The beer turned out fine. Finished a couple of FG points higher than planned.

 

[mongey]

2rd brew ever. a Belgian dubbel fwk that I was super excited to make after my first beer was a present and not one that I would choose to make . fermenter cleaned and sanitized ,ready to go

Had fermenter on the kitchen bench and for some reason decided to pour in the FWK from the other side of the bench . hear running water, think "what the **** is that running " but keep going . yep. fermenter tap was open, over half the wort was all over the kitchen floor . had to go back and buy another one . and that damn floor was sticky for a month

 

[altone]

I hope this is the last embarrasing story of my homebrew journey.

If you keep brewing I guarantee there will be more embarrassing stories.
Whether you share them is something else

Your and mongey's stories of wasted beer are always sad though.

I ALMOST threw away my last brew.

Was mashing at 66C went off to do some stuff and came back to a reading of 85C - dammit I've cooked all the enzymes.

Thought the old urn switch hadn't flicked to the off position (I do BIAB so always in the urn)
I unplugged it and the reading was still climbing ???

Went to get a kitchen thermometer - 63C - it was just a rogue temperature probe.
So glad I checked it again rather than swearing and dumping it!

 

[lost at sea]

lets see now......went to drill the teeny tiniest hole in the side of my fermenting fridge.....pssssssssst....what the fark is that....oh boy....

cleaning my lines and taps one day. missus was cracking a whip on me as we had to be somewhere soon, in my haste i connected the liquid out ball lock before i reconnected the tap.....oh boy.....


thats just off the top of my head.

 

[JDW81]

My mind went back to the beer I tipped thinking again, its not good enough, it cant be good if it hasnt finished fermenting.

One of my golden rules is only tip a beer if it doesn't taste right. The numbers might not be what you expect (due to operator error or otherwise), but it's the taste that has the final say.

lets see now......went to drill the teeny tiniest hole in the side of my fermenting fridge.....pssssssssst....what the fark is that....oh boy....

I've done this as well. To quote Napoleon Dynamite "*****"!

 

[Wobbly74]

Also, first time pressure fermenting. Thought it was depressurised. Removed liquid out post. Wasn't depressurised...

 

[Wolfman1]

2nd time I tried No chill into a cube with a tap. Boxed it all up and turned it over then turned to walk away and kicked the tap off the cube.
Two lessons. Don’t use a tap on the cube, and most importantly always brew in work boots. Hot wort and bare feet don’t mix

 

[altone]

2nd time I tried No chill into a cube with a tap. Boxed it all up and turned it over then turned to walk away and kicked the tap off the cube.
Two lessons. Don’t use a tap on the cube, and most importantly always brew in work boots. Hot wort and bare feet don’t mix

Double ouch!
I don't wear work boots but always shoes, as it only takes a tiny splash of hot stuff to hurt.