Worst Brewing Disaster. Ever!

[mckenry]

Besides an infection my worst brewing disaster went thus;
Made a nice stout. Tasted good at kegging. Filled the keg and carb'd her up. A few days later, put the keg in the fridge, pulled the tap, had a lovely stout.
Got up the next morning went to work. When I got home from work my boy (then 2) was playing in the back yard. I could hear an almighty hissing sound coming from the back yard. My keg fridge was on the verandah. I dashed around the back and the CO2 was hissing out the tap and a pool of stout was dripping between the deck boards Seems my boy wanted to pull his first beer unsupervised

 

[Doogiechap]

Besides an infection my worst brewing disaster went thus;
Made a nice stout. Tasted good at kegging. Filled the keg and carb'd her up. A few days later, put the keg in the fridge, pulled the tap, had a lovely stout.
Got up the next morning went to work. When I got home from work my boy (then 2) was playing in the back yard. I could hear an almighty hissing sound coming from the back yard. My keg fridge was on the verandah. I dashed around the back and the CO2 was hissing out the tap and a pool of stout was dripping between the deck boards Seems my boy wanted to pull his first beer unsupervised

That would make me cry ! My 5Yo son knows not to touch Dad's brew stuff but my 8 month old.. well a few years to go before the training will be complete... Then I will have to start all over again when they hit their rebellious teenage years Hmmmm locks on taps Hmmmm.

 

[Duff]

This isnt really related to homebrew but it is about beer.
I know a lot of people wont aknowledge this as a disaster and will say it was a good thing that happened but here goes.
Back in 87-88 I worked at the CUB plant in abbotsford for about 15 months.
My job there was what they call a "pumpman". There was always 2 people doing this job together.
Basically when the beer is ready to move from the conditioning tanks to be filtered through the "jets" then on to packiging. You got a call from the "jet" operator instructing you which tanks in which cellar you had to connect via the main "pumps" room. This room you stepped dpwn onto it via 4 or 5 steps from ground level Once you had them connected you just sat back and didnt do much really as the volumes wee so high.
Anyway I cant remember for sure now if it was fortnightly or weekly that the lines had to be cleaned with a couple of different solutions one being good old caustic soda.
On this particular Saturday my partner was away sick and I was left alone to clean the lines.
I went ahead and started cleaning lines by making some connections in the pumps room then moving on to another cellar to make some more connections.
Half an hour later on my way back to the pumps room I noticed a shitload of beer pissing out of the pumps room onto the outside ground of thr plant. Making my way there I realized I had left a connection open. I swear I had to swim through the beer to get there and close this thing off. I knew I was a goner. Finally closed it and went and reported to the foreman. He was ok about it. Later we estimated that about 40 to 50,000 litres had been lost.
But thats not all folks.
Next monday they discovered that I had left a holding tank open that was approximately half full. These were the new 4000 kilolitre tanks. I had run the caustic soda into this tank. Yes I screwd up a lot of beer.
I got taken up to the "big" bosses office and was told that this was not a warning. Any more screwups and I was outa there mega quickly.
I later found out that they tried to get rid of me but couldnt as they had left me alone on a job that 2 people were supposed to be doing.
Anyway thats one disaster.

cheers

I'll admit to one of my worst brewdays so far also.
It was over a year ago when doing two batches with some friends. The first batch went well but after finishing a full keg between us in just a few hours the next batch ended up all over the shed floor.
First thing that went wrong was i had not tightend up a hose clamp on my pump properly and while i was off inside piss farting around with something a mate comes inside and says a hose has come of. So i bolt out and turn of the pump to find all the mash liquior has pumped out onto the floor instead of through the herms coil.
Anyway i decide i might aswell save what is left. So begin to sparge into the kettle.
By this time i was so drank i could hardly stand up so while it is boiling i passed out on a couch in the shed for awhile.
When i woke up 1 hour later i find my mates have lit a fire just outside my shed.
I ask where did you get the wood from? and they point to my shed door and i see it is in million pieces and ash from the fire is covering the whole shed including the boiling wort.
I was too drunk to care so just sat down and continued to empty another keg sitting around the fire.
Time comes to cool down the second batch or what was left of it. Anyway the fermenter tap was still open and i didn't discover this untill almost all of the wort had run out onto the shed floor.
I close the tap and collect a whole 2 litres of wort. Then get down on my knees pissed as a fart and start licking up the rest straight of the shed floor. :unsure: .

Iam sure this won't be my last brew disaster. But i sure hope it will remain my worst.
Jayse

First time I've seen the topic, but these are two of the funniest posts I've read. Ever. :lol: :lol:

 

[KoNG]

Agreed......Johnno's is gold...!!!! :lol:
For some reason i was picturing George Costanza getting marched into the Yankee's head office..!!! :lol:
"Yes Mr Steinburner... No Mr Steinburner..... Never again Mr Steinburner......"

 

[sqyre]

No where near the kind of bad day as the above post are... but when i started out kegging i seriously over carbed a keg of beer.. and I mean seriously.. nothing but glasses of the frothiest foam..

So i slowly depressurised the keg... then i removed the lid...and for some "god only knows" reason...

i picked the keg up and bounced it on the ground.... . . . . .. .

See if you can guess what happened next.....?



yep... Chernobyl all over again...

seen that episode of the Simpsons when Bart shakes the sh*t out of a can of beer and when homer opens it it detonates spraying foam out of the windows...

hmmmmm... been there...



Sqyre...

 

[browndog]

While I have been bringing back from the dead some old threads, this one was a classic.
That brings me to my latest disaster.
While having a march pump in the brewery now it pays not to drink and brew. While pumping to the boiler I got to thinking that I must of over sparged a touch as I was up to full boil volume and still had heaps of wort in the mash. To my surprise I had left the HLT valve open and ended up diluting the boil with about 5 litres of water. Not a big disaster just ended up with a 5 hour boil. :angry:

Steve

ps. I wont bring back any more oldies today. Its just a slow day at work.

Been there and done that just recently as Bonj can attest. Result 3hr boil.

cheers

Browndog

 

[Fents]

10 Litres on dirt in the back yard because i gravity feed from my kettle on the decking floor into the fermenter on the ground and i left the fermenter tap off completey....not even in the on or off postion but off the fermenter totally. I blame mary jane :unsure:

 

[boingk]

Whoa, been some major mishaps going on! Geez... Good read though!

Worst I've had so far was bottling beer when my bro was over for the weekend. Everything was going well, sterilising and so on, then it came to putting beer in the bottles. I turn the tap on the carboy, and the damn thing turns in its thread and starts gushing beer! Sh*t!!! Took me a couple of seconds to work out what was happening, after which I quickly screwed the tap back in - it was most of the way out. Only a few hundred mil of beer was wasted, so I was lucky.

Quote from my brother: "Ah...was that supposed to happen?" :lol:

 

[facter]

I have no idea what happened, but I got home last night and went to pour myself a beer, and found the entire contents of a keg in the bottom of my converted chest freezer. All I can think of is that it came up out of the gun or the quick dis-connect, as there are no holes, and the keg is still under pressure

15 liters of irish red, nicely aged for two months, gone. Boo.

 

[andrewg]

Monday night - was my most recent brewing disaster - I was running off a few bottles of milk stout from the fermenter before kegging the rest of it, and next thing the end of the bottling wand drops off in one of the bottles and I have thick black stout gushing out of the tube onto the kitchen cupboards & floor - managed to lose about half a litre before the tap was turned off. Geez did that relatively small amount of beer make a mess - it seemed to have splattered all over the kitchen! Much to my surprise SWMBO was fairly sympathetic and she even help me with the clean up.
Despite this disaster I still managed to fill the keg (& looking foward to tapping this one too!)
cheers
HStB

 

[SJW]

First time I've seen the topic, but these are two of the funniest posts I've read. Ever.

I have to aggree Duff. I started this thread many years ago and thought I should revive it. They are two classics

Steve

 

[matti]

I told this story at Grumpys not long ago and at wasn't that funny at the time.
I was making a partial own recipe having about with 2,5 kgs grain in a mini esky. And I put the oven on 50 degrees. and thought that wouldn't harm the plastic esky.
Little did i know that the thermostat was bust so in about 20 min I could smell the burning plastic.
Fortunately only the outside was damaged slighty so I rescued the grains and poured the the rest in to a 10 litre stockpot and continued the mash from there. no real ill effects.

Lesson 1. Esky + oven= no go. I felt really big when missus asked for the little drink esky for a picnic a few weeks later.

That was about 18 months ago or so.

Lesson 2. Keep your eye on the boil

Earlier this year I had a boil over on the stove wok burner in my 20 litre stockpot and blew the oven up.
I am still paying GE finance for that one.

My brew cost per litre as recently posted in another thread was around 75c/L.
In thruth it would be more like $11/L at the moment.

My baby is still with me but for how much longer???
Ain't life grand.

I'll drink to that. :chug:

 

[Offline]

Ok its a long story and not exactly about brewing,

Our house has only two power circuits and the second circuit has only one power outlet. I use half of this second circuit outlet to power my shed including beer fridges. Well being winter and all, with two kids, we wanted to run a lot of appliances simultaneously, this is not possible on only one circuit with out tripping the circuit.

So the minister of finances comes up with the brilliant idea of running the laundry off the second circuit. The easiest way of doing this of course was to unplug my shed and use this power in the laundry. Well I was away for two weeks when this decision was made and executed then when I returned I was sick for a week too (ie no beer).

Normally this would have only resulted in warmish beer and would not have been a major problem. However the before mentioned minister had previously declared that the unused freezer section of my beer fridge would be used for storing frozen food stuffs, which was fine by me at the time. Well at the time of the unplugging the freezer was full of bulk meats.

Well I went to pour a beer after three weeks and what did I find, not only is the beer warm and flattish but the freezer has defrosted and dripped all through the fridge, there is water and mould in the fridge and the worst smell imaginable (the sort of smell a dog would roll in). It made me dry reach, I have to hold my breath when I pour a beer. I have tossed the rotten food but have not yet had the time or courage to clean the fridge out properly.

Offline

 

[petesbrew]

Broke my f#$%ing can opener yesterday on the 2nd tin for my toucan stout!

It's only been used about 3 times.

Luckily it was open juuuuuust enough to be able to messily pour in some hot water.

 

[Doc]

Broke my f#$%ing can opener yesterday on the 2nd tin for my toucan stout!

It's only been used about 3 times.

Luckily it was open juuuuuust enough to be able to messily pour in some hot water.

That is a sign Pete. Get that AG system finished. You know you want to :beerbang:

Doc

 

[petesbrew]

That is a sign Pete. Get that AG system finished. You know you want to :beerbang:

Doc

Haven't even started to aquire stuff for the AG yet, Doc. Procastination is the name of my game.

Someday someday. :beer:

edit: Maybe i'll start planning for the next one.

 

[SJW]

Great to see this thread is alive and kick'in. It reminds me that we are all only human!

 

[fixa]

After reading this thread this morning and having a chuckle, it happened. Smug self was making a quick extract choc porter and as i poured the boiled stuff into the fermenter, looked down and saw it. black sticky goo making a run from the tap to the rug. Fortunately it was on the lino! took me a while to clean up, and lost prob 1 litre...
Bugger, i was not wanting to post to this thread either.....

 

[glennheinzel]

Not quite a brewday disaster, but brewing related.

We had some workmen coming to replace our rusted out gutters. They were using big ladders and it didn't look like they needed access through our garage so I decided to hide all my brewing equipment in there.

I spent half an hour tidying up my gear, however the roller door caught the shelves as I was closing it. This sent a couple of kilos of malt extract all over the floor.

About an hour later (just as I'd finished cleaning the mess) one of the workers asked if they could carry stuff through my garage... What a waste of a morning!

Edit: Doc - Perhaps this is a sign that I should get my AG setup finished ASAP?

 

[captian black beer]

Never thought I'd have to post on this thread so soon but such is life. Me and my brew crew have declared that we'll never brew on the 1st of Sept (or the 1st Sat in sept) again. So many problems, mostly unrelated. These inculded but not limited to the following:

Forgetting to put yeast in the ferment,
Snapping an airlock when putting the lid on the ferment
dropping 2 grometts in the brew when fixing the airlock
Finding out that the carport which all the brew gear (& BBQ) is under, is about to fall down - fixed temporaily
A table that had 10 gallons of beer fermenting on it tipped - fortunately most of the beer was saved
In the process of the tipping a small leak in one of the fermenters was discovered so had to do an emergency keg.

After all that was fixed, we discovered we had no more cold beer in the fridge.

Terrible Day - next year we'll avoid brewing on that day and just head to the pub.