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Used dish detergent to clean my bottles and bucket for my first brew. Soapyest tasting pilsner ever.
 
My second AG batch was an SNPA recipe I found online. Prior to that I used a kit. I ordered my grain crushed, but my base grain didn't show up that way. I had no idea what to look for so I used the grain I got. I did a full mash, sparge, boil, etc before I figured it out. My hydrometer tipped me off. It was probably the weakest beer ever made. It was drinkable though, and I did finish the keg. I couldn't get a buzz if my life depended on it. :D

For my next batch I purchased a grain mill. I'm not taking any more chances.
 
Last year I decided to make some 1 gallon experimental batches. I accounted for everything on brew day, but then came bottling day. On my second-to-last bottle I realized I'd gone through the motions and used the same amount of priming sugar I used in my 5 gallon batches.
 
italarican said:
Last year I decided to make some 1 gallon experimental batches. I accounted for everything on brew day, but then came bottling day. On my second-to-last bottle I realized I'd gone through the motions and used the same amount of priming sugar I used in my 5 gallon batches.
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Ouch! Bottle bombs? What did you do?
 
Schol-R-LEA said:
How did you happen to get raw wheat directly from a farm? That is a bit unusual for most people. Few folks these days have access to a farm like that. While it is a nice thing to be able to do that, it's definitely atypical.

To be fair, I think that most brewing books and other resources assume you are getting malt from a source such as a homebrewing store, where you would have to ask for unmalted grain specifically. While unmalted wheat is sometimes used in brewing - mostly for lambics - you would normally use it as an adjunct, about half of the grain bill at most, and never as the entire grist. Even with malted wheat, you would normally have at least 40% of the grain bill as barley malt in a weizen, as wheat malt is hard to sparge (no hulls - you would need to add rice hulls to form the grain bed) and generally has low diastatic power (60-90° Lintner - enough to self-convert, but still lower than most malted barley).

My worst mistake? Well, yesterday I began bottling a porter before taking a hydrometer reading. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? Except that, as it turns out, the fermentation had stuck at a gravity of 1.025, about fifteen points above the expected FG... I had to pour the entire batch back into the fermenter and hope I didn't get an infection or excessively aerate it... not such a terrible mistake, perhaps, but an embarrassing one to be sure.
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I got my raw wheat from a farm that supplies those wheat grass growing kits :D YIKES! I'll try brewing another batch this week or the week after and will probably be dumping the current wort in the fermenter (haven't pitched yet).

By the way, its great to see so many stories on here! Great fun reading every experience!
 
mtnagel said:
Ouch! Bottle bombs? What did you do?
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1 bottle bomb and LOTS of gushers. My first couple of bottles flowed like lava, and I'd end up with about 3-4 oz of actual beer. The last few bottles I let sit in the fridge for a few months, and they opened fine. Fizzy like cola, but at least drinkable!
 
First brew using my new DIY immersion chiller. I was super excited, and had done a bunch of research looking for advice, and one tidbit that seemed like a good idea was saving the first few gallons of hot water to use for cleaning. So, I set the exit hose to drain into an empty 7g pot I had, and walk away to get my bucket sanitized. After getting starsan all over everything, I go back and sit on the couch and start watching TV or playing a game or reading HBT or something, while I wait for the wort to chill. As I was sitting there relaxing after a long morning of brewing, I notice an odd trickling sound coming from the kitchen. OH CRAP!!! I walk in to water overflowing across the entire floor, under the stove, under the fridge, it actually got under the wall trim and had soacked some of the carpet in the living room... It took over an hour to soak up everything and get things back in order, and by the end of it was was anything but relaxed. The only thing that save me was that this is only 1 of 2 times SWMBO was gone while I was brewing, so I was able to get all the evidence cleaned up, and to this day she still doesn't know that I made such a huge mess. It would not have gone over well.

Now, I just drain into the sink.
 
ltwhiskers said:
Used dish detergent to clean my bottles and bucket for my first brew. Soapyest tasting pilsner ever.
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Curious on this, I always clean with dish soap before sanitizing everything but I'm very liberal with the rinse water... Never had issues from it.


Sent from my iPhone using the Home Brew Talk App
 
LowNotes said:
First brew using my new DIY immersion chiller. I was super excited, and had done a bunch of research looking for advice, and one tidbit that seemed like a good idea was saving the first few gallons of hot water to use for cleaning. So, I set the exit hose to drain into an empty 7g pot I had, and walk away to get my bucket sanitized. After getting starsan all over everything, I go back and sit on the couch and start watching TV or playing a game or reading HBT or something, while I wait for the wort to chill. As I was sitting there relaxing after a long morning of brewing, I notice an odd trickling sound coming from the kitchen. OH CRAP!!! I walk in to water overflowing across the entire floor, under the stove, under the fridge, it actually got under the wall trim and had soacked some of the carpet in the living room... It took over an hour to soak up everything and get things back in order, and by the end of it was was anything but relaxed. The only thing that save me was that this is only 1 of 2 times SWMBO was gone while I was brewing, so I was able to get all the evidence cleaned up, and to this day she still doesn't know that I made such a huge mess. It would not have gone over well.

Now, I just drain into the sink.
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I collect all my cooling water. You just need to pay attention! :)

Actually, I usually cool in my sink with an ice bath at the IC, so I can send the cooling water straight to my washing machine to run a load of clothes.

Larzean said:
Curious on this, I always clean with dish soap before sanitizing everything but I'm very liberal with the rinse water... Never had issues from it.
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I generally don't use soap for cleaning my brewing equipment (if you clean it with hot water right away, you don't need to), but I think you are okay if you do. I do clean my beer glasses with soap, which I hear lots of people say is a no-no. I do think you can rinse all the soap and perfumes off of whatever you wash. I probably wouldn't soak plastic things with perfumed dish soap for a long time for fear of leaching the perfumes into the plastic, but glass and stainless steel I would have no problem using soap on.
 
My understanding was that the problem with running beer glasses through the dishwasher was not the detergent, but the rinse agent ("Jet Dry" and its ilk). That said, I wash my beer glasses in the dishwasher anyway (we use a detergent that has a rinse agent built-in) and just give my glasses a quick rinse with cold water prior to pouring a beer in them.

I use Oxyclean to wash my kettle and other brewing equipment. One scoop in 5 gallons of hot water.
 
Well I wash my fancy glasses by hand with hand dish soap. I do send our general drinking glasses through the dishwasher and I do drink beer out of them sometimes.
 
I was using the brew hauler to move a glass carboy full of American IPA. I had not fastened the brew hauler to the carboy properly, and dropped it from about 2 feet on to my hard tile floor. The entire glass carboy and 5.5 gallons of beer and trub went all over my kitchen. Worst. Mess. Ever.

I actually brought the hose in from outside and sprayed out the whole place. It took 2 days to clean. I had to get underneath the cabinets, move the stove out from its spot, and move the refrigerator. Plus I lost an entire batch of beer. I'm never using the brew hauler, or glass carboys again. Just grab it with your hands and grab it tightly.
 
Kee said:
Always check to ensure mash tun valve is closed before dumping in strike water. Trust me on this one.
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Always make sure boil kettle valve is closed before draining your first runnings into it. Ask me how I know.
 
Conman13 said:
I was using the brew hauler to move a glass carboy full of American IPA. I had not fastened the brew hauler to the carboy properly, and dropped it from about 2 feet on to my hard tile floor. The entire glass carboy and 5.5 gallons of beer and trub went all over my kitchen. Worst. Mess. Ever.

I actually brought the hose in from outside and sprayed out the whole place. It took 2 days to clean. I had to get underneath the cabinets, move the stove out from its spot, and move the refrigerator. Plus I lost an entire batch of beer. I'm never using the brew hauler, or glass carboys again. Just grab it with your hands and grab it tightly.
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Milk crates - they're a lifesaver.
 
I always run into trouble when I'm trying to simultaneously handle more than one batch of beer. Last weekend I was bottling a stout straight from primary and also racking an IPA to secondary for dry-hopping. My intention was to wash the yeast from both so I boiled up all my water, cooled it all down, got everything into jars for the first wash then realized I hadn't sanitized anything.
 
Johnnyhitch1 said:
28grams in an ounce

16oz to a pound.

Made the mistake of weighing out 28oz pounds once....

Lets just say I knew something was wrong when I got a 102% brewhouse efficiency!
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This reminded me of my second stupidest brewing mistake.

The first time I did water additions I forgot to set my scale to g. So - I added ounces of everything. The beer tasted like the ocean.
 
The first time I used my BarleyCrusher, I hooked up my drill, started it and dumped the malt in the hopper. Without looking at the malt, I dumped it into the strike water in the mash tun. When I started stirring, I could feel that something wasn't right. The grain wasn't crushed. When I got the drill out of the cabinet it was on reverse. All of the malt had gone around the outside of the rollers. Couldn't figure a way to crush wet grain. Dump. Cuss. Cuss some more.
 
I left some of my supplies in my basement, my bubblers, wire brush, auto siphon, etc. Somehow water got in the bucket they were in and the brush rusted. I tried boiling the siphon and the bubbler to clean them and ended up just warping and ruining them. Had to replace all of that stuff. So far I've been pretty lucky aside from that.
 
brewbush said:
Yesterday I bottled my Simcoe/Amarillo IPA. I dry hopped into the primary without a bag (no issue) and I also did not remember to at least chill it to precipitate the hop debris.

Attempted the mesh bag over the autosiphon but that clogged up pretty quickly

Long story short....about 1 gallon of crap left in the bottling bucket that was just to murky to bottle.
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Nearly identical thing happened to us with the IIPA we're entering into the National Homebrew Comp.

We only got about 4 gallons total to keg and saw a lot of beer left in the carboy...

I cried a little...
 
Well I seem to forget Whirlfloc on every other brew..... But,

I misread the thermometer and mashed in at 160°F..... Luckily the beer has Brett in it and can eat large chain sugars better....
 
Most of my brewing mistakes happen towards the end of the brewday. I'm sure you can all figure out why. I've forgotten to take OG readings on multiple occasions. I almost always forget to vorlauf. The worst was probably the time I was helping a friend make an extract, partial boil DIPA. We put the kettle in the bathtub to cool it, turned on the water, went outside, and forgot about it. The water got high enough to float the kettle and tip it over, thus ending the brew day.
 
Eighty2Fifty1 said:
Most of my brewing mistakes happen towards the end of the brewday. I'm sure you can all figure out why. I've forgotten to take OG readings on multiple occasions. I almost always forget to vorlauf. The worst was probably the time I was helping a friend make an extract, partial boil DIPA. We put the kettle in the bathtub to cool it, turned on the water, went outside, and forgot about it. The water got high enough to float the kettle and tip it over, thus ending the brew day.
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I haven't done the exact same thing, but something similar. Happened to a starter.

I was making a starter. Boiled my flask and was cooling it in the sink with ice. I have a double partitioned sink. Forgot about it with the water running. I remembered it much much later and the flask has tipped over, spilling everything. Luckily, the water didnt flow over the counter top.
 
When I began hombrewing I had access to a lab with what dreams are made of, at least for a homebrewer. An autoclave, CO2, N2, glassware, temp controlled shakers (who needs a stirplate)...so I cultured some yeast from a bottle and grew it at temps I was used to using in the lab..37.5°C (99.5°F), it took 4 weeks in the keg and about 2 pints of tasting before it dawned on me that I wasn't drinking really "green" beer. Even though it tasted that bad it still hurt to dump that keg.
 
I'll give the abridged version of this from my first AG day. "Not all self converting malts are created equal."

Eighty2Fifty1 said:
We put the kettle in the bathtub to cool it, turned on the water, went outside, and forgot about it. The water got high enough to float the kettle and tip it over, thus ending the brew day.
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For fear of this happening I have a tendency to "fill" the tub and have the water turned off before adding the kettle. Takes about 5 minutes which is good for late boil additions or my interpretation of "flameout" on account of paranoia for infections. Slow rolling boil 5 minutes shouldn't take too much flavour out of anything IMO.
 
Ive built a wild "burn your wife to pieces" sparge arm once. Gravity fed, no shut off valve. Still not hearing the end of that one, understandably.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Home Brew mobile app
 
Put my carboys in my fermentation fridge and set it for 62 degrees. Plugged the fridge into a regular outlet instead of the temp controller. Next morning the carboys were at 33 degrees. Opened the door and plugged the fridge into the controller. Wyeast London Ale and Wyeast Irish Ale both started fermenting at 50 degrees. Well below the suggested range of 62 to 70. 3 days later with the door closed it is at 63 degrees and still going strong. Good thing I wasn't doing a larger batch in my freezer with the temp controller.
 
On my first batch ever I poured my cooled wort into my primary bucket with the spigot open. Wondered why a large sticky mess started spreading all over the floor. As soon as I cleaned it up I whipped out the sharpie and marked each side of the spigot.
 
Nothing too bad, just didn't chill the wort enough, pitched the yeast and the lid blew off that evening, luckily it was in the shower as I expected needing to set up a blow off tube but didn't have one at the time.
 
OkashiiBrew said:
Put my carboys in my fermentation fridge and set it for 62 degrees. Plugged the fridge into a regular outlet instead of the temp controller. Next morning the carboys were at 33 degrees.
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The mistake I take from this is that you didn't keep your fridge full and plugged in! :mug:
 
While draining my brewpot into my fermenter last batch, I realized that I never added any hops to the brew. None. I think I fixed it tho. We'll see.
 
amfukuda said:
A few weeks ago I was adding oak chips I soaked in whisky to my Carboy and accidentally dropped the spoon in. If the beer turns out to be really good I'm going to send it to contest with spoon under special ingredients


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
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Did something similar but with a rubber grommet. Lost the original rubber grommet to my fermenting bucket, got a replacement that would suffice. Was pushing the airlock into the grommet and POP!, pushed the damn grommet through the lid. Was then stuck with the grommet on one side of the lid and the airlock on the other. Had to just wiggle the grommet off the airlock and it fell into the (soon to be) hard cider. I laughed my ass off because it topped off the whole first-time-making hard cider experience...

That gave birth to the first, and hopefully last, batch of Grommet's Hard Apple Cider...
 
bluelimbo said:
Did something similar but with a rubber grommet. Lost the original rubber grommet to my fermenting bucket, got a replacement that would suffice. Was pushing the airlock into the grommet and POP!, pushed the damn grommet through the lid. Was then stuck with the grommet on one side of the lid and the airlock on the other. Had to just wiggle the grommet off the airlock and it fell into the (soon to be) hard cider. I laughed my ass off because it topped off the whole first-time-making hard cider experience...

That gave birth to the first, and hopefully last, batch of Grommet's Hard Apple Cider...
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Grommet issues seem to plague this place. Am I the only one who's seen buckets with a large hole drilled for using a conical rubber bung?
 
Zepth said:
Grommet issues seem to plague this place. Am I the only one who's seen buckets with a large hole drilled for using a conical rubber bung?
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I have done that too. But I actually have three type of fermenters: Carboys, and buckets with grommets and bung holes.
 
I was doing an extract, 3 gal boil indoors. I was dumping in a 3 lb bag of DME with my left while stirring with my right so I wouldn't get large clumps. The bag slipped and about 2 lbs of extract ended up everywhere. The flame was out, but the stove was still hot so it caramelized on the burner. Worst part was spending an hour cleaning up before starting my boil. I also reduced it to a 4 gallon batch because of the lost DME.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
masteraviator said:
I have done that too. But I actually have three type of fermenters: Carboys, and buckets with grommets and bung holes.
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I use a #2 for my buckets. They are cheep and it lets me get my thef in without taking the lid off. I hate carboys and only use buckets. Don't even own one
 
Knocked my bag of crushed grain over (for a 10 gal batch). It fell over on the edge of my table. More than half spilled onto my garage to the floor onto dirt, oil, etc. Bad start to a brew day.
 

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