BeerCat
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Wise words indeed.
Worst brewing mistake.
- Thread starter adam7368
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My first AG, should have also done more research. 35% caramel malts. I'm drinking it but not great. Considering mixing it 50/50 with a very dry stout I've made.
Drunkula
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RaKeep talking - what was the rest of it? Was it just made up on the spot and mixed with hobnobs and some figs you had forced on you**?? How big was the batch, what yeast did you use?
That is still legendary, though. It's easy to follow a recipe... follow a path... but the true heroes of brewing fanny about for a few years until it's all amazing. That's what I've heard (hope happens).
** I've just had some figs forced on me and am wondering if I can brew with them.
I tried to brew a malty beer, ingredients;
1% Roasted Barley - UK
4% Flaked Barley - US
60% Maris Otter Pale - UK
30% Carared (Weyermann)
5% Carafa Special II (Weyermann)
Hops were a mix of fuggles and EKG, yeast S-04
23 litre batch, it was meant to be a deep red colour but came out a stout colour. It's not terrible but way too sweet for my liking. Only after brewing it did I read that Carared should not be used more than 25% in a brew. Beer looks great in the glass, with a thick, tight head that lasts.
Pirate_Pete
Landlord.
Left the tap open when I poured Light Dry Malt & water into the FV, which was sat on the laundry floor.
Only a tiny bit came out, but bloody hell is that stuff sticky.
Despite cleaning it up it was still sticky when the missus came home.
Only a tiny bit came out, but bloody hell is that stuff sticky.
Despite cleaning it up it was still sticky when the missus came home.
I've done this too
I made all my worst mistakes in the same brew!
1. Not testing the tap on my fermenter before racking in the wort.
To make matters worse, I left the room during the transfer, so returned to find the best part of 5 gallons sitting in a leaky bucket. I panicked, and rather than pour it back into the boiler, I stuck my arm in (yes, ewww) and tightened the nut. Sticky floor afterwards, but most of the brew remained in the bucket. I didn't chuck the beer (was my first AG so I was determined to keep going) but...
2. Naturally, the beer came out sour. Turns out hairy arms are full of tasty wild yeast. 'No worries' thinks I, I might save this by making a fruit beer - I've never made one. This was another error in itself, but it gets worse...
3. So I trot off to the supermarket and buy me some bananas. Why bananas? Because cherries are damn expensive and I couldn't be arsed to clean and chop apples. I chuck the bananas in, and go to work the next day. The lid is on the secondary vessel. I repeat, THE LID IS ON THE VESSEL.
It was NOT on the vessel when I got home. It was across the room. Most of the beer was still in the barrel. MOST. A small, but distressingly significant, volume had painted itself so the ceiling, taking with it krausen and chunks of semi-fermented banana. Another clean up job ensued, this time quite a bit harder as ceiling are a bit less friendly to clean than a floor. Et tu, gravity?
But I still bottled it anyway, and after a few months it was quite nice.
But I never brewed again.
1. Not testing the tap on my fermenter before racking in the wort.
To make matters worse, I left the room during the transfer, so returned to find the best part of 5 gallons sitting in a leaky bucket. I panicked, and rather than pour it back into the boiler, I stuck my arm in (yes, ewww) and tightened the nut. Sticky floor afterwards, but most of the brew remained in the bucket. I didn't chuck the beer (was my first AG so I was determined to keep going) but...
2. Naturally, the beer came out sour. Turns out hairy arms are full of tasty wild yeast. 'No worries' thinks I, I might save this by making a fruit beer - I've never made one. This was another error in itself, but it gets worse...
3. So I trot off to the supermarket and buy me some bananas. Why bananas? Because cherries are damn expensive and I couldn't be arsed to clean and chop apples. I chuck the bananas in, and go to work the next day. The lid is on the secondary vessel. I repeat, THE LID IS ON THE VESSEL.
It was NOT on the vessel when I got home. It was across the room. Most of the beer was still in the barrel. MOST. A small, but distressingly significant, volume had painted itself so the ceiling, taking with it krausen and chunks of semi-fermented banana. Another clean up job ensued, this time quite a bit harder as ceiling are a bit less friendly to clean than a floor. Et tu, gravity?
But I still bottled it anyway, and after a few months it was quite nice.
But I never brewed again.
Zephyr259
Landlord.
That last line is a shame. Given you're still around are you going to give brewing another shot?
Surely you have been reading the forum.....
I'll not even mention @Dutto and wet feet...
Usely take's me about 6hrs most of which is fannying about but I always tell the missus the day before and will hint about doing a brew day days before to ensure she know's.
My last brewday I had setup the boiler,weighed out grains and placed in the mashtun ready for the next morning to get a headstart with the boiler on timer for 7.00am.:headbang:
Had all intentions to be finished for lunch time but with children around,dental visits,school visit lunch with the missus,school run and various other bits and pieces,I ended up with a 2 hour full mash of which I had to drain to FV and put on hold as the washing machine went on strike with a clogged drain.Never got boiling going to around 9.00pm then decided to have a wee drink and never got to bed to 3.00am,Never again......but the stout is now in secondary with some coconut.......
I signed up to this forum yesterday with just this in mind. The world needs more disastrous beer, and I'm the llama for the job...
Zephyr259
Landlord.
Ah, Llama Man, I couldn't parse out your name before. I was mistaking you for someone else who made a brew called "dirty arm ale" after a similar incident. Welcome and good luck.
What, someone else made arm beer before me? Even my failures are failures!
wfr42
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Also guilty of the arm in brew when my peco tap blocked...realised the 2nd time I could just tip it (particularly as I filter through a sieve enroute to the FV).
Had to ditch both my:-
trashy blonde clone due to an infection, I assume caused mostly by thinking "I cleaned/sanitised the fv when cleaning up from bottling yesterday, it'll be alright", the real mistake was not drinking it fast enough as it was ok initially and got worse before gushing every time....
and a wiessbier where I tried crushing my own wheat which then burnt onto my peco element and took some of the elements shine with it during scrubbing. My leftover brew with the remaining wheat (done in the buffalo) also burnt to the bottom despite stirring but is less "smoky..." and being worked through....
Had to ditch both my:-
trashy blonde clone due to an infection, I assume caused mostly by thinking "I cleaned/sanitised the fv when cleaning up from bottling yesterday, it'll be alright", the real mistake was not drinking it fast enough as it was ok initially and got worse before gushing every time....
and a wiessbier where I tried crushing my own wheat which then burnt onto my peco element and took some of the elements shine with it during scrubbing. My leftover brew with the remaining wheat (done in the buffalo) also burnt to the bottom despite stirring but is less "smoky..." and being worked through....
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Zephyr259
Landlord.
Oh, I actually have a mistake worth sharing, it's not strictly brewing related but is about grain.
I'm trying to replicate a barley wine (like actual sweet wine, not the beer style) I made the recipe for Barley Wine in CJJ Berry's book, it just says to use barley and amylase enzyme to convert the starch, the rest of the recipe is white grape concentrate and sugar. Used raw barley from the in-laws farm... First, raw barley don't do well in a food processor and getting it wet doens't really help. Second, it's full of yavins which you have to separate, they float and the barley sinks so that's one method. It fermented out ok and tasted... interesting... at the first racking but after another several months ageing it tasted absolutely foul, I assumed some kind of infection (there was a sister brew which also went bad) would seem that blasting the stuff with campden tablets isn't enough to kill whatever the hell was living on the straight-from-the-field barley.
In retrospect it'd have never worked as the starch probably wasn't accessible to the enzymes after just scalding in boiling water.
I'm trying to replicate a barley wine (like actual sweet wine, not the beer style) I made the recipe for Barley Wine in CJJ Berry's book, it just says to use barley and amylase enzyme to convert the starch, the rest of the recipe is white grape concentrate and sugar. Used raw barley from the in-laws farm... First, raw barley don't do well in a food processor and getting it wet doens't really help. Second, it's full of yavins which you have to separate, they float and the barley sinks so that's one method. It fermented out ok and tasted... interesting... at the first racking but after another several months ageing it tasted absolutely foul, I assumed some kind of infection (there was a sister brew which also went bad) would seem that blasting the stuff with campden tablets isn't enough to kill whatever the hell was living on the straight-from-the-field barley.
In retrospect it'd have never worked as the starch probably wasn't accessible to the enzymes after just scalding in boiling water.
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