I did it! I confess! I killed them all!

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

Learned a valuable lesson last week. Don't try to do anything brew related when you're asleep. I did one of those absolute F-ups that you see in slow motion.

I had been building a starter for my Irish Red. I was going to decant my first step and toss in some fresh boiled extract for my second step the night before my brew day. Nice high krausen starter ready to pitch at the perfect time. But I went to bed and forgot to do the step. As I was falling asleep, I realized my mistake and dragged my butt downstairs to boil up some extract.

In my dazed state I just figured I would cool the extract in the flask just as I had done when I started the first step. So I decanted the first step and poured the near-boiling wort into the flask ...

The screams of the dying yeasties could be heard for miles and haunt me still. Or maybe it was just my own agonized howls as I watched the poor helpless critters shrivel and die. I held a dignified drainside burial service and went back to bed cursing my attled brain. The next day I grabbed a packet of dry yeast out of the fridge at my LHBS and sulked home to brew my beer, which I will now call Irish Wake Red Ale.

Lesson learned. Don't brew (or make starters) in your sleep.

 

[estricklin]

Unfortunately friendly fire casualties are part of war, that doesn't make it hurt any less though. It sounds like they fought bravely up until the very end, they will be missed.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

They did die bravely. I have put in a request to the Navy (they were serving in a liquid environment) for 276 billion Purple Hearts. Does the Navy do Purple Hearts?

 

[BadWolfBrewing]

276 billion? must have been a heck of a starter. You know, up until the gruesome death part.

I'll look forward to the 5.8 trillion gun solute. If thats a navy thing. I also dont know.

Funny stuff.

 

[burninator]

You're going away for a long time, pal.

 

[kombat]

I feel your pain. But if you got into canning starter wort, this sort of thing wouldn't happen, just sayin'.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

They'll never find me. Mmwwaa-ha-ha-ha!

 

[CUrchin]

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."

 

[mbbransc]

<sheepishly raising hand>

Yep, been there, done that.

 

[DurtyChemist]

If you just don't do stuff asleep you'll be fine. Do it drunk instead LOL!

Seriously though, I would have just told myself "I'll do it in the morning and pitch the yeast a day later, I'm to tired to do it right now" and been done with it. Sucks.

 

[GrogNerd]

like 97% of episodes of CSI or Bones or any forensic procedural: you would have been OK if you had just fessed up to the accident and hadn't tried to dispose of the bodies

calling 911 would have been the yeast you could do **takes off sunglasses**

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

That was my mistake! I didn't have sunglasses!

 

[hunter_le five]

You're a monster.


How do you even sleep at night?


#yeastgenocide

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

Once you've killed the first billion, the next 275 billion are easy. You just sort of get numb to it.