Brew house chaos.

Homebrewing can be a bit technical at times, we're not all experts, and sometimes we make mistakes. Well I make mistakes.

I first brewed beer in the late 80's when a plastic bucket and tin of syrup and some hot water was all that you needed, how things have changed. I read on forums all the questions and sometimes the silly mistakes being made and chuckle to myself, "been there done that."

I sometimes, well quite often actually, don't know what I'm going to brew until I start heating the water, so I can blame some mistakes on lack of planning, and some on other reasons.

In no particular order below is a summary of a few of my own mistakes during a brew day over the last 10 or so years.

Connected my spunding valve to the dip tube post instead of the gas post on the pressure fermenter and lost all my wort onto the fermentation chamber floor over night.

Dumb I know, but you will only do it once.

Used a blowoff tube to release pressure into a sanitizer filled container before a cold night, the temperature change shrunk the plastic fermenter and sucked back all the sanitizer into the fermenting beer.

Beer turned out ok.

Sent a little hot wort via the pump from the boil kettle through the counter flow chiller to sanitize the chiller and turned off the pump, only to discover later the whole boil kettle has gravity siphoned out and lost all my beer.

Beer didn't turn out ok.

Tried to save my cooling water by moving the waste hose to fill buckets and got distracted and flooded the whole brewhouse.

At least I washed the floor.

Dropped the hop spider into the boiling brew kettle and tried to retrieve it with a brewery spoon and splashed hot wort on my arm receiving 2nd degree burns.

I've got a picture but yuk.

There is a fair bit of sitting around time when brewing, waiting for temperature rises, mash or boils to complete, hop stands etc. It encourages me to fill the time doing something else, like testing a previous brew or tinker with something unrelated. That's a mistake. I now don't drink when brewing, I have a recipe at least when I start the brew day and I set timers on my phone to interrupt my playlist to remind me to get back on task.

Here's a few more.

Broke 2 glass hydrometers in one brew day through careless placement of equipment.

Now I mostly use a refractometer and save to hydrom for keg transfer day.

Dropped the yeast packet into the fermenter while tripping over a random bucket once, fell backward and hit my head on the fridge. Just sat there giggling for a bit. Sometimes wish I had cc camera in the brew shed.

Poured 10 grams of yeast onto the floor instead of into the fermenter trying to juggle sanitized lid, scissors and yeast packets simultaneously.

Dropped the lid seal ring into my Cornie keg when installing the lid.

I've stacked 20 bottle of home brew on a glass shelf in my fridge. Needless to say the result was not good. I now use metal shelves.

Forgot to add the hops on time and mixed up all the additions so threw them all in at whirlpool. Beer turned out ok this time too.

Realized too late that the power draw for the boil kettle was melting the extension lead and the wall socket and shorted out the circuit mid boil.

Most or probably all of these were because I was distracted, was in a hurry due to a lack of planning, or having a beer while brewing, and still the end product is drinkable and sometimes excellent.

Brew Love

Andrew.