How Bad Have You Crashed and Burned?

[beersk]

I narrowed down one of my issues to my racking cane.

Cleaning racking canes and tubing sucks. I currently rinse with hot water and then clean the next time I have a bucket of cleaner (brew day, bottle cleaning day, cleaning day day).


I recently started using a window box liner for cleaning long parts like racking canes, dip tubes, and my mix stir. They come in all sorts of lengths and are much sturdier than the wall paper trays I've seen others use.

Not a bad idea. I think I've settled on my method now. Closed keg-to-keg transfer with co2 kicks major @$$. I don't think I could go back.

[S. cerevisiae]

I made a couple of marginal batches when I first started brewing in early 1993, but they did not get dumped.  However, there was a point in the late nineties where I was dumping batches just to free up carboy and keg space.  I had friends calling me to see if I had any batches that I planned to dump.  It was crazy.

[etbrew]

Only dumped one batch.  It was my first attempt at a smoked porter.  I was all excited because I love smoked porters and I smoked the malt myself.  This might have been my 4th or 5th batch of beer and when I opened the fermenter I got nailed with and intense band aid aroma.  I waited hoping it would clear out but ended up dumping it.  It was nasty!

[majorvices]

I have dumped a lot of beer. Most of the times it was perfectly good beer that I was just making room for something else I was more excited for. But there are times I've either just not liked a beer via recipe flaws or experimental flaws that otherwise were perfectly fine but that I had no desire to drink. There have also been a few off infections and some fruit fly infection via hot, humid southern summers and pervasive fruit flies.

I own a commercial brewery now and am more anal than ever but I am proud to say I have not had to dump a batch is a long, long time. Now let me go find some wood to knock on. Nothing is worse than dumping $10k of beer down the drain over a stupid mistake. Let's not ever talk about the exploding bottle recall. OMG that was a nightmare.

The first rule of the exploding bottle recall is not to talk about the exploding bottle recall....

Hahaha! Exactly! It's been a couple years and I'm still not interested in talking about it. The pain goes too deep. But there are a few funny stories about it. Next time we have a beer together I'll confide.

A side point,

The thing about brewing, if you haven't made a few bad batches you're just not picky enough, IMO.

[santoch]

Just last year I brewed a porter that had one of the most prolific phenolic off-flavors I ever tasted.  The batch had a blowoff but I hadn't been watching it for a few days.  When I finally checked on it, it had gooey and dried up yeast everywhere.  I cleaned that up but obviously not well enough, and a wild yeast took over.  I fermented it out and bottled it and used some to teach a few BJCP classes, but dumped the rest.

I couldn't have doctored a more distinct off flavor if I tried.  It was awful.

[gmwren]

I know what the topic means, but since my first flight lesson in 1976 and about 5000 hours of helicopter since 1985, I'm proud to say, I've never "crashed and burned." All emergencies handled, even if it meant some time stuck a long ways from anywhere.

[dannyjed]

I've dumped 2. One was a "wet" hop IPA that got infected and the other was an IPA that got terribly oxidized. Many times if I have a beer that I don't care for I call up a few friends to come over and fill up growlers.

[Milwaukee Mike]

About 8 years ago I brewed a Wit using my 14G conical. After 12 hrs no signs of fermentation. After 24 hrs still no ferment. I am thinking WTF? I used fresh yeast with a starter. I popped open the access and could see wort almost to the top. I then took off the entire lid and it was full to the brim. Again WTF? I know I only had 11G's of wort. I then realized I forgot to dump the sanitizer. Wasted brewing day.

[Pi]

About 25 Years ago my mom gave me a brew in a bag kit. It should've been called "brew in the basement" 'cause the bag exploded all over the place! I thought: "there's got to be a better way". I picked up Pappazian's book and haven't stopped brewing since!

[euge]

How about filling a fermenter and realizing you've left the tap open? Lake of beer across kitchen floor....

Not a good time to walk away.

[Raul]

I made a batch that got left on the mash too long and turned bitterly astringent.

[mchrispen]

How about filling a fermenter and realizing you've left the tap open? Lake of beer across kitchen floor....

I did this recently after changing from carboys to Speidels... three brews in a row. Third time I swear I checked the valve and still left it open while filling. I often wonder how I made it through school without someone beating me over the head with a two-by-four...


For the record, I no longer use the valve on the Speidels. Good ole' racking canes for me!

[brick pig]

Big brewing problem this weekend. My grain bag sprung a leak big enough to let some of the grains out, but not big enough for me to notice until the end of the steep. Lots of grain scorched on the bottom of the kettle.

Ooops.

I transferred as much of the liquid (and as little of the loose grains) as I could to other pots & pans, and as quickly as I could effectively do so I scoured the scorch off the bottom of the brew kettle, re-sanitized everything, and went on with the rest of the brew.

Everything looked & smelled like it should (I've made this recipe a number of times before), but I guess I won't know how successfully I salvaged it until time to bottle.

[brick pig]

Not that anyone has been losing any sleep over this, but I thought I'd check in here to say that the scorched grains I wrote about in that last post didn't seem to hurt the final product at all.

This batch is noticeably cloudier than previous batches of I've made from this recipe, but I expected that. Tastes perfectly normal, though.

Lucked out this time.

[69franx]

Glad it worked out for you. It seems like sanitizing everything "mid-boil" was not necessary if you still had more boiling to do, but better safe than sorry for sure