issekremaaa
Member
Hi HBT people,
I have only been brewing for a couple of months now and to date have got 3 batches to my name. I have definitely been infected with the home brew fever already however. Just loving the whole process from creating recipes over brewing my wort to tasting the fruits of my labour.
As with most of things the learning curve is always on the rise and I have learnt a lot from reading books, following the HBT forum and simply putting it into practise. Still I have made a couple of silly mistakes during my first three attempts at brewing and I thought it would be a good idea to start a little compendium for other beginners to prevent them from doing the same.
Here are two silly (and costly) mistakes that I have made:
1. Not long before transferring my third batch into the fermenter, I was cleaning my 6 gallon glass carboy. Poured about 2 gallons of hot water from the tap and a bit of PBW in it and (not really thinking about what I was doing) put the bung in. Well while I was brewing my wort, I realised that my feet were getting wet and guess what happened?! The hot water created a bit of a vacuum and the glass could not withstand the strain and cracked. Awesome, soapy water in the carboy and wort waiting to be transferred in my pot. Luckily I had a bottling bucket/plastic fermenter that I was able to use.
Lesson learnt: Only use warm water for glass and do NOT put the bung in the opening and walk away! :smack:
2. Made a Belgian Wit not so long ago (5gal batch in my 6gal carboy) and used an airlock from day1. Who would think that one gallon of headspace in there would not be sufficient for the mighty krausen of WLP400. Well when I went to see what my beer was doing the next day I had krausen all over my carboy and garage floor.
Lesson learnt: Listen to other people when they say Use a blow-off right from the beginning!
I assume that you guys have had enough similar experiences to fill whole libraries with but I would love to hear some of them, and I suppose many of these you wont read about in books, its just part of the DIY process and therefore worth sharing here.
Prost!
I have only been brewing for a couple of months now and to date have got 3 batches to my name. I have definitely been infected with the home brew fever already however. Just loving the whole process from creating recipes over brewing my wort to tasting the fruits of my labour.
As with most of things the learning curve is always on the rise and I have learnt a lot from reading books, following the HBT forum and simply putting it into practise. Still I have made a couple of silly mistakes during my first three attempts at brewing and I thought it would be a good idea to start a little compendium for other beginners to prevent them from doing the same.
Here are two silly (and costly) mistakes that I have made:
1. Not long before transferring my third batch into the fermenter, I was cleaning my 6 gallon glass carboy. Poured about 2 gallons of hot water from the tap and a bit of PBW in it and (not really thinking about what I was doing) put the bung in. Well while I was brewing my wort, I realised that my feet were getting wet and guess what happened?! The hot water created a bit of a vacuum and the glass could not withstand the strain and cracked. Awesome, soapy water in the carboy and wort waiting to be transferred in my pot. Luckily I had a bottling bucket/plastic fermenter that I was able to use.
Lesson learnt: Only use warm water for glass and do NOT put the bung in the opening and walk away! :smack:
2. Made a Belgian Wit not so long ago (5gal batch in my 6gal carboy) and used an airlock from day1. Who would think that one gallon of headspace in there would not be sufficient for the mighty krausen of WLP400. Well when I went to see what my beer was doing the next day I had krausen all over my carboy and garage floor.
Lesson learnt: Listen to other people when they say Use a blow-off right from the beginning!
I assume that you guys have had enough similar experiences to fill whole libraries with but I would love to hear some of them, and I suppose many of these you wont read about in books, its just part of the DIY process and therefore worth sharing here.
Prost!
. I did make 3 batches about 20 years ago, but I do not count that. Now a silly mistake I made was not shaking up the smack pack before pitching 
.
