Worst Brewing Disaster. Ever!

[johnnymax]

I really don't want to go into too much detail, but I added some 5-Star pH adjuster to all my mash and sparge water. I noticed there was brown stuff floating in the water and the mash tun was getting shiny, but did not think much of it. I just thought the hot water was making the stains in my mash tun come clean. It was. I poured in the grains and mashed, then sparged. Had great efficiency. Added the hops, finished the boil, chilled then whirlpooled. I had 15 gallons of my favorite ESB. As I was waiting for it to settle out, I was starting to clean up and I read the label on the 5-Star pH adjuster (not sure why). It was NOT pH adjuster. Either I accidentally picked up, or they accidentally sent me a container of 5 Star "PBW" It is made by the same company as the pH adjuster. It is in the same white container and both products look the same (white powder). If you don't know what PBW is, well it is Pro Brewery Washand poison. You know my system shined like new. I had to dump the whole brew! :angry:

I put a large skull and crossed bones on the lid of the PBW.

 

[fraser_john]

I really don't want to go into too much detail, but I added some 5-Star pH adjuster to all my mash and sparge water. I noticed there was brown stuff floating in the water and the mash tun was getting shiny, but did not think much of it. I just thought the hot water was making the stains in my mash tun come clean. It was. I poured in the grains and mashed, then sparged. Had great efficiency. Added the hops, finished the boil, chilled then whirlpooled. I had 15 gallons of my favorite ESB. As I was waiting for it to settle out, I was starting to clean up and I read the label on the 5-Star pH adjuster (not sure why). It was NOT pH adjuster. Either I accidentally picked up, or they accidentally sent me a container of 5 Star "PBW" It is made by the same company as the pH adjuster. It is in the same white container and both products look the same (white powder). If you don't know what PBW is, well it is Pro Brewery Washand poison. You know my system shined like new. I had to dump the whole brew! :angry:

I put a large skull and crossed bones on the lid of the PBW.

Blech! Thank god you never took a sip of the stuff whilst boiling or something, thats pretty scary!

 

[Millet Man]

Almost had a major disaster last week.

At the end of a 12 hour brew day I had just started transferring 3,200 litres of lager into the fermentrer, had the manhole open to throw in the dry yeast and a dirty big blowfly came and sat on the edge of the opening daring to go in. A quick prayer to the beer gods and he took off in the other direction.

There could have been copyright issues if it had ended up a blowfly beer.

Cheers, Andrew.

 

[Fents]

Last weekend was doing a double batch (one batch just bigger volume) and everthing was going fine till i decided to have a beer at 11.50am...

Four beers down (i know i know) nearly at the boil and i go to grab the hops...My homebrew store weighs out all my additions in a bag and seals it in three separate parts, so all i have to do is open the part and tip them in..I noticed there was only two additions in this bag so i thought **** dave's forgotten one lot. So i ring and luckily he's still open so i was about to jump in the car and thought hang on i'll just weigh what i have. Turns out (i'd forgot) we couldnt decide how much hops i wanted so i just said give me 50grams of each. So i weight out my hop additions....GOD DAMN i forgot which hops were what?

So now i have a lager with tettnang and pearle in it but i think i bittered with tettnang and flavoured / aromaded with pearle which also means all my IBU's are all over the shop cause i dont know which was which.

Oh well half of its going on either raspberrys or strawberrys so it shouldnt matter too much.

 

[bindi]

Nothing major yet just the usual left the kettle tap on and a boil over or two in the past.
Oh smashed a 1.5L starter of Wyeast 3787 I was about to pitch last week, kept yelling duck duck and duck which did not help. :blink:

 

[lucas]

it's been one of those days.

1. somehow set my clock forward an hour which led to my alarm getting me up an hour earlier than I'd planned, with HLT not up to temp yet.
2. crap efficiency, at least 5-10% lower than the last 5-6 batches which had been pretty consistent. dunno if maybe the proportion of wheat had something to do with it
3. massive boil over. I've had a few in my time but this one took the cake. must have lost at least 4-5 Litres in the minute or so i left it unwatched. damn you head retention proteins! huge mess on the floor of the garage

i guess it's not so bad but it just feels as though nothing has gone right today

 

[Deanodriver]

I spose the worst disaster I've had while brewing (nothing compared to some, though), was a boilover of some of my wort.

Had my sugars in a pot on the stove going along nicely, went to put the tin in (still a K&K brewer atm), and next thing I know, spillage of sticky malty liquid all over the stove.

What's more, I wasn't paying attention when topping up the fermenter, so it was a bit over what I was aiming for, so I only ended up with a 1.034 beer.

Ah well, it's been bottled for six weeks or so, I'm tempted to try it sometime soon

 

[domonsura]

All I'll say is, when you are running wort through the counterflow half-cut at the end of a brew day, and you are looking for something to sit across the top of the open fermenter (other than a sheet of clingwrap) to stop the hose from the counterflow from flicking out of the fermenter.....DON'T even let your eyes rest on that heavy ball-point hammer on the bench for a second.
They aren't suitable. Just don't do it.
Anyone want a hammerhead ale?
(I put all the wort back in the kettle and re-boiled....:lol

 

[ausdb]

All I'll say is, when you are running wort through the counterflow half-cut at the end of a brew day, and you are looking for something to sit across the top of the open fermenter (other than a sheet of clingwrap) to stop the hose from the counterflow from flicking out of the fermenter.....DON'T even let your eyes rest on that heavy ball-point hammer on the bench for a second.
They aren't suitable. Just don't do it.
Anyone want a hammerhead ale?
(I put all the wort back in the kettle and re-boiled....:lol

Sounds like a good excuse to find a stainless steel hammer with a handle that can be sanitised

 

[Hutch]

Ohmygod, I've laughed aplenty reading of other's brewing disasters, having never had anything major go wrong in over 15 years. Until yesterday.

I brewed a double batch of APA several weeks ago, and no-chilled into 2 cubes. When the fermenter was finally free, and ready to pitch the Wyeast 1737 Flying Dog, it was 3 days before a vacation to FnQ. No worries, I'll just leave it in the home-made fermentation box for the week, set on 18deg, and come home to a brew ready to keg.

Well, get home yesterday, knackered from the day spent travelling with 1-year-old daughter, and thought - "ahhh, lets go taste this wonderful brew that's finished".
Open the brew fridge, and I can feel the radiant heat hit me in the face. The brew is sitting there at 60deg C, steam is billowing out of the airlock and I have 20Ltrs of hot vegimite sitting in front of me. NOOOOOOOOO!
All because of a BLOODY SOFTWARE BUG in the Peltier controller, it's been sitting there in constant heat mode for the better part of a week, while I'm up north marvelling at how wonderful it is that beer makes itself while you're on holiday.

Well, lets just say it's a good thing I'm not writing software for NASA...

 

[Zizzle]

Oops. Have you tracked down the bug yet? Fired your QA department?

Hardly in the league of many stories here, this is my software mishap story from the other night in case you didn't see it in the brewbot thread:

I stupidly walked away while testing out some new code that runs some of the steps in parallel (e.g. heating HLT to set-point while recirculating). The code was buggy and applied power to the HLT when it didn't have water in it. I smelt something was not happy, ripped the lid off the HLT to see both the elements glowing yellow hot. Hit the reset button. Remarkably they both survived, although now have a nice shade of blue. You can't beat the $9 kettle element:

I don't know how this may have effected their life span, but it sure did get all the gunk off them.

 

[sqyre]

Oops. Have you tracked down the bug yet? Fired your QA department?

Hardly in the league of many stories here, this is my software mishap story from the other night in case you didn't see it in the brewbot thread:

I stupidly walked away while testing out some new code that runs some of the steps in parallel (e.g. heating HLT to set-point while recirculating). The code was buggy and applied power to the HLT when it didn't have water in it. I smelt something was not happy, ripped the lid off the HLT to see both the elements glowing yellow hot. Hit the reset button. Remarkably they both survived, although now have a nice shade of blue. You can't beat the $9 kettle element:

I don't know how this may have effected their life span, but it sure did get all the gunk off them.

I was just chatting to incider and he reckoned you were distracted testing your lastest invention...

"The BumBot"

It has an uncanny resemblence to incider but made of metal and touches its toes at the press of a button..

Hangon a minute... :blink: now i know why Sean wanted all that aluminium foil...

Sqyre...

 

[RobboMC]

Yes, this is a brewing disaster; read on.

My SWMBO has a nice hedge running up the fence, she is a very serious gardener. The hedge was getting overgrown and was having trouble getting through the gate, so I took to the hedge with a wipper snipper. She went absolutely beserk, through the roof!!! I only cut a few leaves off, but it was enough to cause all h*ll to break loose as far as she was concerned.

Unfortunately for me at the time I had a lovely Coopers Heritage Lager going in the shower recess. When I got home from work the next day I rushed into the bathroom to check the temperature of the brew, only to find that SWMBO had opened the tap and the whole thing had run down the drain.

I think there's a lesson there somewhere. I have a new brewing rule, whenever I boil the kettle I make her a cup of tea. Seems to make the brewing go a whole lot better.

 

[Fents]

Yes, this is a brewing disaster; read on.

My SWMBO has a nice hedge running up the fence, she is a very serious gardener. The hedge was getting overgrown and was having trouble getting through the gate, so I took to the hedge with a wipper snipper. She went absolutely beserk, through the roof!!! I only cut a few leaves off, but it was enough to cause all h*ll to break loose as far as she was concerned.

Unfortunately for me at the time I had a lovely Coopers Heritage Lager going in the shower recess. When I got home from work the next day I rushed into the bathroom to check the temperature of the brew, only to find that SWMBO had opened the tap and the whole thing had run down the drain.

I think there's a lesson there somewhere. I have a new brewing rule, whenever I boil the kettle I make her a cup of tea. Seems to make the brewing go a whole lot better.

:blink: thats not a brewing disaster! thats domestic brewing violence! get a court order out for her to stay 30 feet away from all fermentors h34r:

 

[ham2k]

Yes, this is a brewing disaster; read on.

My SWMBO has a nice hedge running up the fence, she is a very serious gardener. The hedge was getting overgrown and was having trouble getting through the gate, so I took to the hedge with a wipper snipper. She went absolutely beserk, through the roof!!! I only cut a few leaves off, but it was enough to cause all h*ll to break loose as far as she was concerned.

Unfortunately for me at the time I had a lovely Coopers Heritage Lager going in the shower recess. When I got home from work the next day I rushed into the bathroom to check the temperature of the brew, only to find that SWMBO had opened the tap and the whole thing had run down the drain.

I think there's a lesson there somewhere. I have a new brewing rule, whenever I boil the kettle I make her a cup of tea. Seems to make the brewing go a whole lot better.

geez... was there a rabbit in the fermenter?

 

[Steve]

only to find that SWMBO had opened the tap and the whole thing had run down the drain.

I would've been straight onto the hedge with a tin of petrol and a match :lol:

 

[petesbrew]

Having the fermenter in the shower recess, wouldn't you run the risk of an odd pube getting in the airlock whenever you or SWMBO jump in? :blink:

 

[Zizzle]

only to find that SWMBO had opened the tap and the whole thing had run down the drain.

Time for a new woman I'd say. I don't even know someone that mallicious & vengefull, and certainly wouldn't want them in my life.

 

[lucas]

I would've been straight onto the hedge with a tin of petrol and a match :lol:

too right. if that were my SWMBO she would lose MBO status very quickly. how very juvenile

 

[Cortez The Killer]

That's terrible