Worst brewing mistake.

[adam7368]

I had my first major brewing mistake yesterday. Ì put a yeast starter on 3 days before brew day from yeast saved from my last brew. It had been in the fridge for about 3 weeks. When I went to the stir plate it had overflowed and smelt awful. Obviously infected! Whats more when it overflowed wort got in the electrics and the variable resistor has stopped working. Ì have no spare yeast and no stir plate! My only option at the stage is to grow yeast from a bottle without a stir plate and hope the unfermented wort doesn't go bad in the mean time.

Anyone else have any brewing errors in the past?

 

[Clint]

Wilco is open til 5.....

 

[jceg316]

I have had sh*t tons of errors. I've been in a similar situation where I didn't have any yeast ready so had to rush out the next day to buy some.

On my last brew the filter came off my grainfather pump and when I went to recirculate the wort in the pump it was blocked. Nothing I could do but cover the hole in the lid with foil and let the beer cool down. When it was cool the next day I put a muslin cloth over the top of the grainfather and poured the wort into the FV. As I was putting it down the elasticated side of the muslin pinged off the grainfather sending hops and other grime all over my kitchen and into the FV.

 

[djheaton321]

I've managed to knock over 23 litres of freshly brewed wort whilst oxygenating it. Took me hours to clean up the mess.

 

[BeerCat]

I've managed to knock over 23 litres of freshly brewed wort whilst oxygenating it. Took me hours to clean up the mess.

I have done that too. I obviously did not manage to clean it all up as a family of mice moved into the garage shortly after. That and ditching at least 20 batches of **** beer.

 

[Ali]

Where do I start? Infected brews, not realizing I could reset the Grainfather heater, wrong hops, wrong/no yeast. I could go on, but my latest mistake is probably sufficient to illustrtae the point of how hopeless I really am. Done a grol;sh clone, but used the wrong malt! Darker than it should be, coupled with a rather curious flavour....welcome to the world of all grain (and home) brewing :smile6:

 

[Ali]

Oh and I had an Erhlenmeyer flask shatter on me too!!

 

[Gunge]

Done a grol;sh clone,

Trying to replicate Grolsch is a mistake in and of itself!

 

[Cwrw666]

Moved into the present place 24 years ago and put a kit on, dissolved the canned goo in hot water, put it in the FV with sugar and topped up with lovely spring water straight from the tap. One week later I have a tub full of what looks like green snot with seaweed streamers in it...
So ever since then I've had to boil all my brewing water. Firstly using just the kettle, then I got a 30L boiler and since I had that there was no reason not to go all grain.
So really it's the best mistake I ever made.

 

[Clint]

A big mistake is telling all your "friends" you homebrew. .......amazingly they're ALL into ale...especially if it's free!

 

[MrRook]

Trying to replicate Grolsch is a mistake in and of itself!

:clap:
Ever try Grolsch amber?
It's a decent alt.

 

[MickDundee]

A big mistake is telling all your "friends" you homebrew. .......amazingly they're ALL into ale...especially if it's free!

Most of my friends were reluctant to try my homebrew and were all highly (pleasantly) surprised when it was actually nice.

I think they had the old “moonshine”/rocket-fuel image in their heads.

 

[ACBEV]

I think they had the old “moonshine”/rocket-fuel image in their heads.

That's my method... I don't make errors... Even the 3 hour boil I've done , while sleeping was on purpose... :p

 

[Gunge]

A big mistake is telling all your "friends" you homebrew. .......amazingly they're ALL into ale...especially if it's free!

The missus went to an Indian restaurant the other night, one of those unlicenced ones where you can take your own booze. I gave her a couple of bottles of red, and now her two sisters, mother and niece are pestering for me to make some for them. Er,no.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I have had a few but nearly had my worst this week, I thought it was colder in the house than it was so used my heat pad under my FV when I started a 30 bottle kit luckily I use a blow off tube or I would be a dead man, I had half a bottle of bubbly wine sitting on top of the FV when I got home from work which needed a good clean before being replaced.

 

[GerritT]

Small batch of gushers, and an infected Cocoanut Porter. Cleaning more religiously now
.

 

[ElvisIsBeer]

Didn't Bob Ross say there are no mistakes, just happy accidents. I think he meant just in painting.

Today was my first all grain in the mancave. So many stupid things happened.

where to begin:
1) forgetting that I needed an extra male/male connector for the hosepipe, to give me enough length of hose to run wort chiller runnings into the drain - at very short notice I rigged something using a male/female connector + PTFE + brilliant rubberised tape that melts into itself. Bugger me, it only worked.

2) not measuring anything at all or even trying to have a proper recipe - so at various stages I had to whip out the phone and google "what the feck am I doing?"

3) carefully shaping the wort chiller so that it had a space to slip a loop under the bazooka - and then realising that when it's all soupy, you can't really see.

4) wearing slippers - my feet were soaked

5) not telling the missus i'd be tied up for the night - she didn't go to bed until I got in at 22:35

6) taking almost 5 hrs

 

[MmmBeer]

I have had sh*t tons of errors. I've been in a similar situation where I didn't have any yeast ready so had to rush out the next day to buy some.

On my last brew the filter came off my grainfather pump and when I went to recirculate the wort in the pump it was blocked. Nothing I could do but cover the hole in the lid with foil and let the beer cool down. When it was cool the next day I put a muslin cloth over the top of the grainfather and poured the wort into the FV. As I was putting it down the elasticated side of the muslin pinged off the grainfather sending hops and other grime all over my kitchen and into the FV.

I did almost the same thing on Thursday. Stirring thoroughly during the boil and trying to scrape the burnt gunk off the element, I must have knocked the rubber cap off the filter. When I connected the chiller there was hardly any wort coming, so had to ditch that and dig out and sterilise my old immersion chiller. Temp soon came down to 23°C, unfortunately the grainfather is much deeper than my old pot, so had only chilled the bottom half, the top was still about 70°C. Transferred to FV by jug, left overnight to cool, then spent two hours removing, stripping and unclogging the inlet port of the pump.

 

[Alside101]

Made a red WOW and filled the dj to the top then when it kicked off it painted the stairway purple did that a few times

 

[MickDundee]

My first ever AG was done without enough research. Lager malt and cascade smash, must have been 4%ABV and about 80IBU. It actually mellowed ok and after about 6 months became rather nice.