And idiot of the year award goes to

Northern Brewer General
1

ME!

After a thorough cleaning of my chest freezer,(which is attached to a temp controller) I forgot to put the temp probe back in the chest freezer. So the chest freezer was on full blast for about 24 hours, resulting in about 40 bottles of beer and 25 bottles of wine being completely frozen. Out of those only about 5 bottles broke, the rest either had leaky caps or just froze. About 15 of the wine bottles had corks pop out…those should be re-corkable I’d imagine.

Anyone else ever do this before? Most of it was homebrew, but I had a couple bombers of $10 beers.

I’d post pictures, but most of the mess is cleaned up.

:frowning:

2

Sorry to hear, but a great warning. TBH, I’d completely stopped thinking about my keezer actually being a freezer. :shock: Your story could happen to any of us.

Ive got my temp probe running thru a “hole” in my coller, so it shouldn’t easily come out, but just the thought scares the beejeebus out of me.

:cheers:

3

I had the probe fall out once and didn’t catch it for about a day it froze 2 kegs of beer that later thawed out and were OK.

Now I tape it in place.

4

Good thought, maybe a small hole would be good…Safe to say I’ll never do this again.

5

Man, that’s a bummer of a mistake. Well, now you’ll never do that again!

6

Ouch, that hurts!!! Sorry for your loss!

7

Well, the year is not over yet, someone may still top you!

8

I put an eyebolt on the inside on the collar and put the probe through it. I never pull it all the way out this way so it’s hard to forget.

I did this because I forgot once but caught it early because the temp was in the 80’s after an hour of cleaning the freezer, I thought it was broken but then saw the probe hanging on the side…

9

I’ll take highest in the runnings :wink:

10

[quote=“shredd3r”]ME!

I’d post pictures, but most of the mess is cleaned up.

:frowning: [/quote]

Haven’t you learned anything from the Internet? Grab your camera first THEN handle the situation.

11

I was in a state of shock, the camera might have become a part of a wall.

12

You’re not the only one in the running . . . .I made the same “not taking a picture” mistake a couple weeks ago when I dumped a 5 gallon bucket of freshly cooled wort as it emptied into my fermenter. Spilled every drop of it across my basement floor. The next day, I thought to myself - Should have got a picture of that for the NB Forum. We all have those “idiot” moments - would like to think that will be the biggest one I ever make.

13

And hopefully the last…

14

Yeah it’s ok, stuff happens. I was recently washing my mash tun after I put the wort on the stove and it got stuck. Before I knew it I had water pouring out of it onto the bathroom floor and in split second decision I just tossed the whole thing into the bathtub. Yeah… a full 10 gal cooler with 10# of spent grain… what a bloody mess. Should have taken a picture too.

15

Maybe we need to start a “Disaster Picture” thread??