What’s your bad brewing habit?

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Timbo

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Nobody is perfect. What’s your bad brewing habit?

I haven’t used a hydrometer for three months. Keep forgetting to replace it/put off replacing my old broken one. Lucky I keg, but it’s gonna bite me soon!
 
Nobody is perfect. What’s your bad brewing habit?

I haven’t used a hydrometer for three months. Keep forgetting to replace it/put off replacing my old broken one. Lucky I keg, but it’s gonna bite me soon!
I broke a hydrometer once, since buying 2 spare years ago I haven't broken another one since.
 
I'd say mine is no regard for water. Never made any water additions, never used boiled or filtered water for yeast hydration, think i used correct sparge temp once, now i just go for whatever comes out of the tap.
 
Poor organisation/forgetfulness on brewday. Everything will be going well, then suddenly it's, "**** **** **** **** where's the CF chiller/I haven't cleaned the fermenter/etc," resulting in 5-10 minutes of frantic activity.
 
+1 for this.
Poor organisation/forgetfulness on brewday. Everything will be going well, then suddenly it's, "**** **** **** **** where's the CF chiller/I haven't cleaned the fermenter/etc," resulting in 5-10 minutes of frantic activity.
My biggest problem is thinking my kids won't run a muck on brew days.
Naughty kids = Angry Wife
Angry Wife = Painful brew day
 
Sometimes, not always, I don't clean stuff immediately after brewing, making things somewhat harder to clean after the fact (and I also crowd the laundry/kitchen with gear, that drives my wife crazy)!

I think my other bad habit is not cleaning the beer lines on my kegerator often enough, I know some people do that between every beer, I don't, maybe only once every six beers or so.. ironically I over-clean a lot of other things, weird.
 
Deciding at work that it would be a good idea to brew tonight when I get home from work at 5:30pm.

By 11:00pm as Im watching the wort flow through the chiller into the fermenter, falling asleep in my chair, freezing cold in the garage, I realise that it wasnt such a good idea.
 
Nobody is perfect. What’s your bad brewing habit?

I haven’t used a hydrometer for three months. Keep forgetting to replace it/put off replacing my old broken one. Lucky I keg, but it’s gonna bite me soon!
I havent used a hydrometer for 8 years since buying a refractometer.
 
No temperature control. Probably the worst of the lot, but I roll with it.
Saison's in summer, that's my motto.
 
No temperature control. Probably the worst of the lot, but I roll with it.
Saison's in summer, that's my motto.

Same here, although it's a bit cooler up here so I don't mind, plus the room I ferment in stays pretty cool compared with the rest of the house.
Looking forward to saisons and kviek yeast beers this summer!
 
I tried to avoid bad habits, having learned the hard way that cleaning as you go is the only way. That's after a nasty experience about 7 or 8 years ago when I forgot to empty and clean my mash tun for 3 days........

All my gravity measurements are done with a refractometer, except my FG just before bottling. That's'done with a hydrometer inherited from a now deceased neighbour. Must be at least 40 years old, so will never break now, surely? Still reads correctly 1.000 in my filtered water. Not paying for any more after losing about 4 or 5 of them over the years, including a very expensive lab grade one not long ago.
 
I’m anal about cleaning brewing gear but; Is knowing the Og and Fg going to change the taste (the reason I brew) of your beer? I think not! so my abv has become +/- %.. Out of curiosity I will check new brews. Now I say “it’s a strong bitter, you’l know after 3 pints :-}”

Owning a good thermometer(s), now thats a different story!!

Cheers
 
Similar to scomet, I know I should take notes when making my bitters/Ipa's especially when I change the hops, have a bitter now which is an improvement on the previous one, same malt schedule but changed the hops. Now I wish I had made notes.
 
One of my other bad habits is always tweaking recipes, I seem to have a sickness, can't follow a pre-existing recipe as-is. I always have to modify it to give it my own spin but usually this results in something not as good - I never learn! Haha! I do the same thing in the kitchen, always improvising, although the results are usually a bit better..
 
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