What Can Go Wrong On A Brew Day?

[henderjo]

So Ive done a few brews now, and even a few posts. Ive put my 2cs in, to maybe help a fellow brewer out. My beer is getting better every brew, mostly thanks to this site and all of you reading this right now. Almost every post is about helping someone fix one particular technique... This post is a little different...



Sometimes, and indeed some days, no one could possible offer any suggestion to turn things around for you. Im talking about one of those days when, from the moment you get out of bed EVERYTHING that can go wrong... does go wrong and worst of all, its a brew day.



So this post is simply to offer a chance to tell the tail of your worst brew day so far - for me, that was yesterday...

 

[henderjo]

Wife and kids had all been away for a week, which would have been a perfect time to brew... if it werent for my fermenter being busy with my current brew (note to self buy another fermenter). So that meant a brew day, the day after they got back not a big issue. There was plenty to do, but I usually just do my brewing in between all the other things I have on... until yesterday, without incident.



To do list (brewing):

1. Filter a brew

2. Rack from fermenter to keg

3. Filter that brew

4. Clean, sanitise and put down another brew (my first APA)



Only 4 items, piece of piss considering Im only doing kits & bits.

Everything started well, cleaned my filter, sanitised it (while at the shops). Returned and filtered my first keg (takes about an hour), easy. Preped my other kegs for the next step, no drama despite plenty going wrong elsewhere in my day, my brewing was on track. Racked from fermenter and set up to filter my second brew... still going well. Made and ate lunch. Soon after (a while actually) I was in the kitchen, when I herd a hissing sound and realised:

1. I was still filtering! (how could I forget?!!!)

2. It was finished, and probably had been for a while about half a CO2 bottle ago!

3. There is precious beer coating my patio floor.

So I cleaned it up cursing, and suggesting to myself I might need a timer of some sort (note to self 2 buy a timer).

Next step 4.

All went according to plan, almost done when I hooked up my tube to take water from the fridge into the fermenter (about 10 mins to fill). Wife and kids have left to attend something or other... this is easy, Im in the home straight... so are the horses (Melbourne race 7). Next up the Cox Plate... better check the form and get a bet on. Now its around 40 minutes until they jump for The Plate... but it was soon after they past the post, that I realised Id made yet another Deposit to TAB (buy some shares Ill make sure you get a good dividend). Meanwhile my fridge had deposited something like 50lts of water, via my fermenter, all over the kitchen floor it was flooded!... but smelled terrific. An hour later, the floor was still sticky, disillusioned, disappointed, done with cleaning! I went fishing.



How can it rain for the first time in 6 months, in the 2 hours I choose to go fishing?



Im still a brewer, just.

Hendo.

 

[Nick JD]

I used to live in a wooden pole house in the hinterland. The area of the laundry where my fermenters sat had a handy rafter just above the fermenting bench - so one day I thought, I'll hang my fermenter filling hose there so it's nice and handy.

Fermenter sitting there by the sink, with all the yummy goop (extract), so I need to pour boiling water down the hose ... and as I take it down from the rafter it starts raining Antichinus (we had two of them living in the house) shit, and dead bugs and dust ... into my fermenter.

I drank that beer. It came out fine - I was leaning heavily on the fact that the crap fell into a near-boiling goop and probably got quite sterile. It was very dry too.

Antichinus shit makes good yeast nutrient.

 

[Pennywise]

:lol: :lol: So it's not just me after all, I had a similar incident not long ago but with a leaky keg. Woke up in the morning to find the kitchen floor covered in beer because the poppet on the out post was rooted, luckily after I purged it I left it in the kitchen sitting on a towel otherwise I'd be looking for a new SWMBO. Only just didn't make it to the carpet, phew.

 

[brenjak]

Mate,

I have those days as well. You just know that on the day that you leave the tap open on the secondary when racking that it is only the first of a list of "brew disasters" on the way.

 

[Peteoz77]

My biggest disaster was when my manifold fell apart in my mash tun. Lots of crap flowing out, so I put a SOCK on the hose, and continued.

Finished up fine!

 

[brenjak]

When doing kits and you notice a bit of the Coopers tin packet floating in your brew as it goes in the lagering fridge? Still tasted o.k. when bottled and aged. Wrapper in the yeast slurry!

 

[dj1984]

One time i forgot too put the manifold in my mash tun, then just as i put my first runnings in the kettle forgot the hop screen.

 

[winkle]

You could invite NickB along, get on the sauce and forget a sparge step.

 

[bullya]

So I've done a few brews now, and even a few posts. I've put my 2c's in, to maybe help a fellow brewer out. My beer is getting better every brew, mostly thanks to this site and all of you reading this right now. Almost every post is about helping someone fix one particular technique... This post is a little different...



Sometimes, and indeed some days, no one could possible offer any suggestion to turn things around for you. I'm talking about one of those days when, from the moment you get out of bed EVERYTHING that can go wrong... does go wrong and worst of all, it's a brew day.



So this post is simply to offer a chance to tell the tail of your worst brew day so far - for me, that was yesterday...

Last night i filled my HLT, set my temp and timer ready to go so when i wake up a coffee and i'm brewing. I went out this morn only to discover i had forgotten to switch the power on. I decided to cut my loses and enjoy a stress free day with a few beers and my day is travelling quite well now.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I used to live in a wooden pole house in the hinterland. The area of the laundry where my fermenters sat had a handy rafter just above the fermenting bench - so one day I thought, I'll hang my fermenter filling hose there so it's nice and handy.

Fermenter sitting there by the sink, with all the yummy goop (extract), so I need to pour boiling water down the hose ... and as I take it down from the rafter it starts raining Antichinus (we had two of them living in the house) shit, and dead bugs and dust ... into my fermenter.

I drank that beer. It came out fine - I was leaning heavily on the fact that the crap fell into a near-boiling goop and probably got quite sterile. It was very dry too.

Antichinus shit makes good yeast nutrient.

Them little bastards bit like you would not believe

 

[Ales_Away]

Put on my first extract brew last week.
Got everything ready, weighed all the hops and put them in their own little bowls.

Then I grabbed a bowl to weigh the DME, the bowl wasn't big enough so I grabbed another. Still not big enough, so I get a salad bowl and used that. Problem is I hadn't re-adjusted the scales for the salad bowl, it was light plastic and my other bowls were ceramic. This meant I ended up with 1.3kg of DME instead of .8kg. Oh well, not going to be a session beer :chug:

Then the large burner on my stove decided to stop working...
I ended up doing my boil on the medium burner, 1 1/2 hours to bring the wort to boil. Had a nice rolling boil for the 60mins though, so not too bad.

Aahhhh, the stove copped some verbal abuse that day!!
All ended well though, so can't complain too much....

 

[schooey]

You could be doing a batch of Gonzo Imperial porter clone, and you can have it boiled, hops added everything sailing along smoothly and then realise that you were going to sanitise that fermenter instead of nicking to the shops when the wife asked you to.. Then you can remember that you have that 23L glass carboy clean, only needs a rinse, great idea!

Then when you first start running the wort through the chill plate, you think you beauty, washed up and cleaned up, beer in hand by six... then your young fella can kink the end of the hose that the water is running out of your chill plate from, and having ballistic mains pressure, it blows the hose off the chill plate and starts to fill the garage with water... Then you think the first thing to do is run and turn the tap off to stop water flooding everywhere... You start getting cranky with said son about fiddling with things while Dad is brewing and start looking for hose ends and such... Then you can hear this .. tinkle tinkle CRACK SPLASh sound and all of a sudden you realise that without chill water, boiling wort was making it's way into your glass carboy, something they apparently don't like... :blink: Then you can spend the next hour or so hosing Dr Gonzo and glass carboy from your garage floor...

That's what can go wrong on a brewday...

 

[flattop]

I tend to rinse out my secondary fermenters with Starsan before priming a brew, usually a swill about 50mls around the fermenter then out the open tap into a jug....
Usually about that time i either add the bulk prime solution or i drop the tube from my primary into the secondary and let the beer flow...
Results are either half my sugar solution or a couple of litres of beer running across the kitchen floor.

When mashing i often forget to do stuff, leaving the urn tap on is a usual one, I usually forget the whirfloc, i've had the mash paddle fall to bits.
My last brew i forgot to dry hop after the first week.
The worst drama i had was no chill cubing, i used to have a tap on the cube, one time i didn't squeeze enough air out and bumped the tap as i was turning the cube around, the hot thread gave out and hot wort shot about a meter across the bench, all over my hand and all over the floor, i tilted the cube and capped the geyser losing only about 1-2 litres. about 5 mins later i repeated the performance and lost another litre. I now only use bungs on cubes.

My little bottlers usually self destruct while bottling and i fish the bits out when i crack the bottle a few months down the track.

 

[hefevice]

You could be doing a batch of Gonzo Imperial porter clone, and you can have it boiled, hops added everything sailing along smoothly and then realise that you were going to sanitise that fermenter instead of nicking to the shops when the wife asked you to.. Then you can remember that you have that 23L glass carboy clean, only needs a rinse, great idea!

Then when you first start running the wort through the chill plate, you think you beauty, washed up and cleaned up, beer in hand by six... then your young fella can kink the end of the hose that the water is running out of your chill plate from, and having ballistic mains pressure, it blows the hose off the chill plate and starts to fill the garage with water... Then you think the first thing to do is run and turn the tap off to stop water flooding everywhere... You start getting cranky with said son about fiddling with things while Dad is brewing and start looking for hose ends and such... Then you can hear this .. tinkle tinkle CRACK SPLASh sound and all of a sudden you realise that without chill water, boiling wort was making it's way into your glass carboy, something they apparently don't like... :blink: Then you can spend the next hour or so hosing Dr Gonzo and glass carboy from your garage floor...

That's what can go wrong on a brewday...

We have a winner!!

 

[boingk]

Ouch, schooey, thats gotta hurt!

My most recent incident was a bit dumb. I was doing a few kits & bits for the lastest round of stocking up and doing things inbetween like grain steeping and liquor boiling, bottling the last batch etc. Get the whole shebang up and ready and notice boiling grain liquor and hop particles are flooding out a tap! Ahhh...hot tap! Must...turn...off

Oh yeah, with all the stuffing around and cleaning up I also forgot to add the malt and dextrose combo I was planning to use and had to do that today.

This is a winner of a thread guys, keep it up! (or not?)

- boingk

 

[Tony]

I was filling a cube with IPA one night..... around 11pm if i recal.

I had had a few beers

As the cube was almost full, it tipped over and fell on its side. I had it propped up on a piece of timber so all the air would come out.

A few schooners under the belt impares logical thinking, and i thought it would be a great idea to stick my hand into the flow of 90+ deg wort flowing from the cube, to grab the handle and stand it back up.

Well on sucessfully saving 90% od the IPA i realised my hand and lower arm was badly burnt. I ran to the laundry and stuck it under cold running water.

The skin around my wedding ring started to blister and i had visions of the emergency department cutting my ring off my blistered hand, so i took it off........ along with a large stretch of skin from my finger that went with it.

My wife was working nights and usually got home around 1am so she found me sitting in the kitchen, water running over my hand, about the 3rd strait scotch in the other to numb the pain and says.......... WTF have you done to yourself.

It didnt blister too much thanks to 2 hrs of cold water but the skin all peeled of after a while. it was over a month before i could put mywedding ring back on.

cheers

 

[henderjo]

ahhh... Schooey, you, and all of the above (along with a few of my brews) make me feel a whole lot better. As boingk put it - this is a fun thread... I hope it keeps going. If nothing else it provides the 'recently wronged' with a point of reference.

Charge your glasses - "to a better brew day".

 

[boingk]

To a better brew day!

[knocks over glass in process of reaching for it]

Ah, f***!!!

 

[schooey]

:lol:... Here here!.. Second batch for the day is coming along a lot better than the first one ended... *fingers crossed*