Ran home over lunch to quickly whip up a starter for tomorrow’s brew and in one fell swoop I funneled my just boiled wort into my flask, tore open my smack pack and dumped it in :shock:
I’ve been making starters for a long time and this is a first. I need a facepalm emoticon.
Anybody want to own up to doing something as stupid?
this isn’t quite as bad, but about a year ago I got my priming sugar all ready - boiled a cup of water, dissolved it, let it cool a bit. then I put it in the bottling bucket, and the phone rang or something. I stepped away, came back and said “ok lets get started” - took my bottling bucket and thought "huh, looks like a lot of sanitizer still in there and dumped it right into the sink.
then I turned and looked at the empty sauce pan on the stove.
I think I used table sugar, did not have other kind. since then I have ordered 2-3 extra sugar packets. but yes not quite as bad as the boiled yeast. I am pretty sure the poor guys didn’t like that.
A close second for me would a few winters ago when I took all my brew gear to a buddy’s to make a batch of cream stout. Got home late that night and put everything away (or so I thought). I went out to my vehicle the next morning and realized I left my carboys in the back overnight. It got down in the 20s. I put the carboys in the basement figuring the yeast was dead or wouldn’t take off. I gave it two days to see what would happen before pitching more and lo and behold it slowly started over that week. Turned out as one of the best cream stouts I’ve ever made too. Maybe I should try to replicate it someday :lol:
There ya go Spud, a new name, Ice Cream Stout.
I bottled 220 bottles of a blonde ale and after all was done, realized I forgot to add the priming sugar to the last bottling bucket full. To make matters worse, my son had rearranged all the capped bottles by height and type of bottle. That meant they were all mixed it with others that had the priming sugar added. 25% of my bottles were flat several weeks later.
I made a really high gravity stout. I was think that I needed a blowoff tube, but for some reason I didn’t put one on. It exploded in my coat closet and got stout all over my wife’s newly dry cleaned dress and my newly dry cleaned suit that we wore to a wedding. Fun times :lol:
A few years ago I brewed an English bitter, 2 days later when fermentation really took off, I heard some hissing from the carboy (I had taped the bung on the top because it wouldn’t stay in the carboy). I went to investigate to find the airlock clogged and krausen barely escaping from the sides of the bung.
I took the tape off, and POP! the bung shot to the ceiling, and krausen got everywhere. On the ceiling (10 feet), and everything within a 5 foot radius, even up into my sinus’s, and in my eyes. The velocity of that yeast gunk was way more violent than I had anticipated.
That was a fun day. I don’t tape my bungs down anymore, and have been using blow-off hoses ever since.
