[BrewChatter]

Brew Day Disasters, They Happen To The Best Of Us

You brew, you burn, you live, you learn. Brewing day disasters happen to everyone!

You just finish doughing in and look over to see your false bottom sitting on your brew table. Oops! You look away for just a second to grab your beer while transferring your latest to the keg … look back to see the auto siphon buried in the yeast cake.

Do you have a time that went totally wrong because you may have had one too many beers while brewing? Or a brewing story that you find yourself laughing at because how could you actually let that kind of mistake happen? Let’s hear your disasters!

Post up your most epic Brew Day Disaster for everyone to enjoy, we’ll be sharing some of ours! The top 3 most epic disasters will be chosen by the BrewChatter brewers to win $100 each towards your next order of brew day essentials! Post and enter your name here. That's it! You're in to win! Brew On! -The BrewChatter Crew

[BrewChatter]

Let's get this started!!  This is Josh and R.J. from BrewChatter.  Our favorite Brew Day Disaster story is when Josh and I (R.J.) first started brewing.  We were maybe 15 batches in, had upgraded to an (awesome!) cobbled together all grain system, and were making 10 gallons of IPA.  It was some solid, 90's style IPA with lots of centennial, columbus, cascade and simcoe hops, Belgian Pale Ale malt and C60.  We planned to split the batch and use WLP001 on half and WLP007 on the other to see the difference between both strains and figure out which we liked better for our IPAs.

Well....we got drunk.  A 60 minute boil turned into a 240 minute boil, and by the time we figured out what had happened, threw in the flame out hops (whirlpool wasn't quite a thing yet then, lol) and started to transfer our 10 gallons of IPA, we were surprised that we only had enough to fill 5.75 gallons into a fermenter.  And it was completely green!

This recipe had almost 2 pounds of hops, more than half of which went in at flameout, so by the time we transferred, most of those hops went right over into the fermenter.

So, we transferred, pitched, and Josh asks me why it looked like Pond Water.  We made a 3 L starter for the beer, but it was probably still a pretty solid under pitch, so luckily it was 001!  We dry hopped normal, kegged, and the beer gods smiled on us, because even though it was pushing 10%, it was a good beer! 

It went on to win gold in the Double IPA category at our local competition under the name Pond Water IIPA!  So, it was amazing and there is no way that we can duplicate it!  That's one of our favorite disasters!