Post your screw up/mistake here

[Kealia]

We talk a lot about the beers we make, how everything went smoothly and how great they taste - but we all f*** up, too.

Share your most recent mistake that you made so that we can all share in the laughter or misery. I'll start:

yesterday's brew day was 99.9% smooth. It wasn't until I moved my fermenter (7G SS Brewbucket) that I saw that I forgot to attach the internal racking/arm. This means that I've effectively rendered the spigot on the bottom of the 'conical' useless for transferring to a keg unless I want to send a buttload of hops with it - which I don't.

Fortunately, this mistake is minor and I can just use my normal racking cane for the transfer, but the ability to drain it directly from the spigot was a big reason why I bought this. Oh well, it could have been worse.

[MadBrewer]

Oh yes, there are several I could mention. One of my biggest F-up's was last fall while mashing in an Amber Lager. I needed about 3 ml of acid to hit my mash ph and planned to add that to the mash. I had been using a syringe that was 1 ml for some time now but I also have one that is 3 ml and for whatever reason I grabbed that one, filled it and added the acid to my mash three times...so instead of 3 ml of acid, I added 9 ml of lactic acid to the mash. Once I realized what I did and mash ph was in the high 4's, I quickly added some baking soda and settled the mash ph around 5.2. I went on with the rest of the brew day and the batch actually came out just fine. It was a lesson to me just how forgiving brewing can be, and in the end we will have beer.

[Beer-lord]

I'm still grappling with my metallic taste on my last few brews and still haven't found out why. We'll see in a few days how the last one comes out.
Another mess up was brewing a BIG beer and before I had a keezer, it got too hot and tasted like ethanol!
I'm sure there's tons more stuff. Each brew day something little goes wrong but I just work around it.

[Inkleg]

This one time I went and signed up on a forum.....................

[Inkleg]

Just yesterday I when to bottle two different beers from two different kegs to share. First one was a piece of cake. Second one I forgot to bleed off the keg pressure before bottling. Lets just say I got two bottles out of the second keg though one was on the floor due to excessive foaming.

I can't seem to brew at my LHBS without leaving something behind. Last Saturday it was the lid for my kettle.

The list will go on and on and on..............

[John Sand]

I routinely post my errors. About every time I brew. I hope I won't post on the is thread again this week.

[berryman]

A little while ago when brewing a Kölsch and using my old system, I use to pour the cooled wort from my megapot into my sanitized bottling bucket and then from there free fall into the fermenter and how I got aeration. Well I forgot to turn the spigot off on the bucket and lost a little on the floor, instead of going with it as it was and should have I added water to bring it back up to the 5 gal mark. A 5 plus ABV beer ended up around 3.9 but still taste good and still drinking on it. I do have more like everyone else but this is my most recent FU...........

[Tabasco]

I don't mind when I screw up (well, actually I mind, heh heh) ... but I hate it when I can't figure out what went wrong ... like a low o.g. after a mash, or poor attenuation ... for now apparent reason. That drives me crazy ... fortunately, it's not common ....

My latest screwup ... and I've done this before ... put the heat on the induction burner to bring mash back from say 149deg to 155 deg ... forget I did it and leave the room. God, I hate that. Kills the mash! Total waste of a night and ingredients.
I finally taught myself to never leave the brew room unless I check it's turned off.

During hop boil I'll walk out, but I have the timer set on my cellphone ... for this I never have the lid on anymore ... boil-overs suck.

Hey, good to see y'all!!!!!!!!!!

[mashani]

I just boiled over my pot and spent 20 minutes cleaning up the burt wort mess.

Pot is now simmering in a more stable manner, but I don't trust it to look away for longer then this... so see ya all later...

[bpgreen]

Paging Wilson.

[Kealia]

I just boiled over my pot and spent 20 minutes cleaning up the burt wort mess.

Pot is now simmering in a more stable manner, but I don't trust it to look away for longer then this... so see ya all later...

Ugh, I worry about that every time I brew. Less since i Moved to a larger pot with a spigot, but it's always in the back of my mind.
Hopefully, you got it all off.

[mashani]

Yeah it's all ok. I got the flame out right away and immediately cleaned before anything really burned on too badly.

I literally looked at the pot, NOTHING was happening (not even ripples or swirly motion that I could see), turned away for 10 SECONDS (for real) to write something down, and then *whoooooooosh!*.

I did have my burner up full blast.

[Kealia]

I can't really call this my mistake because I didn't do anything differently this time, but yesterday's brew deal did not go smoothly.

I use of these for my mash tun:


After my 60-minute mash, which included rice hulls, I opened the valve to start draining into my kettle and......nothing. I gave it a stir or two to help things along, but it didn't drain more than just a drop or two. WTF?!?!!? I kept fighting with it for a good 45 minutes before I finally had to scoop out all of the grains and wort into two other pots so I could disassemble the false bottom where I found that the little tubing was in fact clogged with grains.
So after cleaning that out and reassembling everything I had to scoop the wort and grains back into the tun so I could drain it.

Fortunately, at that point, it drained just fine with nice clear wort and I was able to proceed with the rest of my brew day without issue. In the end, I ended up being over my target gravity by ~5pts so this f***ed up process seemed to boost my efficiency, go figure.

The only thing that I can think of is that maybe I lifted the false bottom during dough-in while I was digging down to stir the grains. I dunno....all's well that ends well, right?

[MadBrewer]

I have that mash tun as well, the 7 gal version. I never used rice hulls before using this mash tun, first time ever using a false bottom. Rice hulls are a must for me, I usually use a pound with every batch now and no longer have issues. I used a bazooka screen for years without them, I didn't even know what they looked like until this mash tun.

[Kealia]

I've been using this for about 2 years now without issue. I had a stuck sparge about 6 months ago due to a wheat-heavy grist so I used some rice hulls in that one and have been ever since just as a preventative. Other than this one issue, I've been happy with it.