Thread: What's your biggest disaster?

When young, single and stupid(er), I used to run a couple of vats non-stop all year to build up a good sized stash for the Summer and Chrissy do.

As they were bottled I'd stack 'em up against one wall in the laundry, wall to wall and nearly ceiling tall, before starting a second stack in front. No wine-racks or anything fancy like that, just stacked bottles. 'Twas all darkside brewing, no hygrometers or similar... just wait for the fermenting to stop, then add an extra teaspoon of sugar during bottling. I'm sure you can already see what disaster this is leading to?

About the 3rd year I was doing this, we had an early Summer and our first hot, hot day. BANG! CRASH! Tinkle! Tinkle! It didn't take long to work out what'd happened, as there was a flood of home brew rushing through the kitchen and into the lounge to tell me "I think you used too much sugar in one of the batches on the bottom of the stack!"

You think a mere 50 stubbies makes a mess? Ha! That's just a drop in the ocean! Needless to say, I was not a happy chappy.

Some readers may find this thread very distressing. Maybe it should be in the orange room.

Hi Iain,

Enough with the doom and gloom.

I've a yen to try brewing cider..... have you a recipe/instructions that you are willing to share? (not the exploding one )

Not really home brew related but my biggest beer disaster was to buy some Southwark.

many years ago, when I was still at home with the folks, I had some home brew in the fridge. One of my Dad's mates came around for a game of billiards and Dad opened a botlle, thinking it was the real thing. His mate took one mouthful, choked on it and told him it was off and to take it back to the pub.

Originally Posted by chrisb691

Hi Iain,

Enough with the doom and gloom.

I've a yen to try brewing cider..... have you a recipe/instructions that you are willing to share? (not the exploding one )

SWMBO likes the Brigalow kit cider, OK, who am I to meddle in such matters of the opposite sex.
It calls for a kit and 1kg of white sugar, it works, dextrose tastes like crap, however, it has a longer brewing/fermenting time than beer, about 2 weeks in summer, up to 4 in winter.
I haven't tried any other brews but I believe that there are a few better kit brews available, or add some cored and peeled apples to the brew, I tried this and I thought it improved, but she who must be obeyed did not like the cloudy product, must be crystal clear and sweet.
Not my taste, but if that is what she likes, so be it.
Links to some cider ecipes that I have meant to try but haven't yet...
http://www.thbs.intas.net/kit_recipes.htm#Pear%20cider

Well it wasn't mine, and it wasn't a complete disaster.. but we did get a laugh from it

Mate brewed up 50l of brew from kits as per normal and poured it into a keg, and added the equalivent amount of priming sugar that you would use if bottling it.

All seemed OK untill we cracked the keg...

Hose blew off the fitting and a spray of beer shot across the shed untill the tap was shut again.... The pressure gauge on the homemade CO2 unit still read 30 psi - AFTER the beer fountain. ( you normally pour beer at 6psi).

Anyway it wasn't a total disater.. we were able to bleed the pressure down to sensible levels and the beer was OK, as far as I remember anyway

Cheers

Ian

My second brew, I added the wort but forgot to add the brewing sugar. I didn't realise this until I was sharing a few long-necks with some mates and we realised that, haing consumed 2-3 each, we didn't feel any impact. We knew the brew was less than enjoyable but put that down to my lack of experience. We pressed on and drank about 5 each to prove to ourselves that our analysis was correct.

Bill

It was doing my 3rd brew a beermakers cold and it didn't work real well in the barrel and was worse after bottling. Half flat and extremely sickly. I ended up pouring out half of it because drinking it became too much. It was tasteless and a real waste of time.

Originally Posted by Gumby

Not really home brew related but my biggest beer disaster was to buy some Southwark.

.

Ahhhh Green death, the only beer that solves thirst... one taste and you don't want to touch another drop.

My biggest disaster was to overcarbonate 50Lt of wheat beer... didn't go pop but it was like drinking choke a cola thats how fizzy it was.

H.

My first attempt at home brewing sort of tasted a bit sourish, but we all drank it anyhow.

The second attempt was the worst disaster I ever had, really sour. This was all back before the days of home fermenters. I got a plastic rubbish bin, and did the open fermenting method. (Remember none of the gadjets were around back then, and the lucky ones used the big ally milk churns).

I ended up with a few dozen longnecks of vile tasting beer for Christmas. To get rid of it the last two dozen, I got them nice and cold, and gave them to the garbo's for Christmas.

In the New Year, we had a new team on the garbo truck . . .

Reviving an old thread

My dad was a champion home beer maker he won many contests, with his best drops. But he had quite a few disasters.

Under fermentation was a favorite and for that reason he stored all his product in the old coal house. The smell in there was glorious from all of the accumulated spillage.

He made all of his brews from scratch, mashing his wort etc. His best product and in my opinion worst disaster was his IPA as I’m sure you all know Indian pale ale was historically made in the UK for shipment to India, it had a long maturing time so that it would cope with the rough handling, wide variation in temperatures and long travel time.

Well dad made a batch and they where duly left in the coal house for what must have been 6+ months. When opened the first test bottle was pure nectar, to this day I've never tasted a brew that has come even close to it.

The second & third bottles went in to competition were they got rave reviews and cleared the board in competition (it is still spoken about in hushed tones even today)

The disaster was that bottles 4-24 were all terrible. Oxidized apparently, we didn't drink one more drop.

Moral of the story, sample 4 before you waste it on a competition. I still gaze at that trophy plaque with a hint of resentment.


Cheers


Dave

Where is Iain, Last time we spoke was January 07 on the mobile?

TWO DISASTERS:

The first was my first brew. The beer seemed and smelled fine. But the kit came with one of those thingies that you hit with a hammer to put the lids on.

Five stitches later, I have a mere three beers. They were very nice....but I had to chuck out about 20 litres of beer.

The next day I headed down to the local home-brew shop and purchased one of them thingies with the handle - much easier.

Second catastrophe:
A cat fell in my brew!
To be fair, it was my (her) cat, and it fell through a tea-towel. But that was another many litres of beer that did not reach my liver.