Post your screw up/mistake here

[MadBrewer]

Been happy with mine too, holds Temps really well. Only thing I did was swap out the tubing for high temperature silicone and replaced the brass parts with stainless.

[John Sand]

I use a round cooler lined with voile curtain. Sometimes I have to pull the curtain away from the spigot to drain, otherwise it's great.

[ckd022]

I killed my yeast. Yup. Killed it dead. Well most of it anyway. It was a Wyeast smack pack. When I smacked it, I thought the pack felt a bit crunchy, like it iced up. I was storing it on the bottom shelf in the fridge and it must have gotten too cold. I was making a starter with it and when very little yeast grew I knew there was a problem. Luckily the loss was minor. Lesson learned, store yeast higher up in the fridge!

[ckd022]

I guess I spoke too soon. I woke up this morning to an active fermenting starter. There is a second lesson for me here - patience!

Anyone have any insight to the health of yeast that may have gotten too cold? This is going into a rather high gravity beer and I'd hate to compound mistakes. That being said, the yeast wasn't completely frozen so maybe what is left is fine but just took a while to get going.

[bpgreen]

I guess I spoke too soon. I woke up this morning to an active fermenting starter. There is a second lesson for me here - patience!

Anyone have any insight to the health of yeast that may have gotten too cold? This is going into a rather high gravity beer and I'd hate to compound mistakes. That being said, the yeast wasn't completely frozen so maybe what is left is fine but just took a while to get going.

My understanding is that it's not the cold that damages the yeast, but if liquid yeast freezes, it bursts the cell walls, killing it. It's possible to freeze liquid yeast using glycerin, but that's difficult and if you make a small mistake, you kill the yeast, anyway (I've tried with limited success).

So if it wasn't completely frozen, you're probably fine. It may have taken a little longer to start because it was cold and the yeast needed to warm up a bit to get to work, but I think you should be fine.

[ckd022]

Thanks BP! It is still fermenting away in the starter so I think I'll let it go a while longer to give it time to finish. No hurry on the brew day.

[John Sand]

I think that's a good idea.
I ruined a batch once by using an iffy smack pack pitched directly. In the future if I have a doubt, I'll use a starter.

[MrBandGuy]

I brewed a milk stout last weekend. Looking at the recipe, I may or may not have missed about a pound of speciality grain. I'm sure I paid for it, but I don't remember adding or milling it. I just put "may be missing C60" in my notes. Whoops!


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[ckd022]

So I dropped the yeast I thought I killed by freezing onto an Imperial Stout I brewed this evening. OG was 1.087. Fingers crossed! After a couple of day delay the yeast starter looked normal so I went for it. I'm thinking BP was on the money with his advice. Thanks Brian!

[ckd022]

Well, the yeast must have been fine because right now I could really use a bigger blow off tube. At this point, that's a really good thing!

[Crazy Climber]

Once, I bottled a whole batch (fortunately, in this case, I mostly brew 2.5-gallon batches), and was putting stuff away and thought to myself, "hmm...why is there still liquid in the pot that I use to boil and cool my priming sugar/water mixture?"

Yep - bottled and capped approximately a case of beer -- without priming sugar.

[ckd022]

New Lesson...

Glass Carboys + mistake = trouble

So I was emptying a glass carboy full of Starsan last Thursday night when it slipped out of my hands, hit the edge of my sanitary tub and shattered, slashing my right wrist in the process. After a loud crash, and louder scream for help on my part, my wife raced me to the ER. That led to a 3 hour emergency surgery to repair a severed artery, nerve and ligament. After a few days, I'm finally getting relatively back to to normal. I started back to work yesterday and the prognosis is positive. I'm still looking at a few weeks of rest followed by a few months of rehab but in the end I should get back to mostly normal. Just wanted to share my story so that everyone is extra careful. All in all, I've been extremely fortunate.

Kevin

[BlackDuck]

Holy crap dude. That’s serious. Glad your wife was close by to help out. That could have been really bad. Happy to hear that your OK. And hope the rehab goes well!!


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[MadBrewer]

Wow, glad you are ok after that. This is exactly why I gave up glass carboys...I brew out in my garage/patio area and I also have do so quite a bit of moving around my fermenters at times. They always made me nervous, and for good reason...we can only be so careful. I also hated trying to clean them them and dry hop or any other additions were also troublesome.

[Kealia]

Wow, glad you are ok after that. This is exactly why I gave up glass carboys...I brew out in my garage/patio area and I also have do so quite a bit of moving around my fermenters at times. They always made me nervous, and for good reason...we can only be so careful. I also hated trying to clean them them and dry hop or any other additions were also troublesome.

Wow, glad you were able to get to the ER ASAP. I have heard too many stories like that and went away from glass a while ago myself. Best wishes for a full recovery.

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