9 replies to this topic

[Big Nake]

... I was about 15 to 20 seconds into my chill this afternoon when the tubing on the cold side of my chiller burst right next to the stainless port... about a half-inch gash in the tubing with water spraying directly upwards hitting the ceiling of the garage and then raining down on me.  I quickly turned off the water, cut the tubing, secured it in place and resumed my chill.  When I started chilling again I noticed some schputz on my thermometer dial.  I looked up and my mountain bike was above me and the water shooting up had landed on the bike dripping dirt and crushed limestone downwards.  I have no idea if any dirt got into the kettle but I quickly chilled and continued on.  The primary is bubbling away and hopefully all is good.  Whew.  

[positiveContact]

you better make some sort of offering to the beer gods just to be safe.

[Steve Urquell]

I did something similar a few weeks ago dropping a spring clamp into fermented beer during my transfer. Makes you wonder how much it actually takes to infect a beer.

[Big Nake]

It happened once before where the clamp on the IC came loose and hose water sprayed into the wort.  I was so concerned that I put the kettle back on the propane burner and brought it back to a boil and THEN chilled.  On that one it was very close to the end of the chill so the wort was down around 80° and vulnerable.  Here the wort was still close to boiling so my guess is that all is fine but damn did that catch me off guard.  The pressure was really high and the water was a super-fine mist blasting straight up.  I took a jolt but I'm okay.    Cheers.

[MyaCullen]

I did something similar a few weeks ago dropping a spring clamp into fermented beer during my transfer. Makes you wonder how much it actually takes to infect a beer.

 I had a yellow jacket land in my cooling wort one time.

[macbrak]

Got swarmed by a bunch of gnats/small flies two batches ago. Well into chilling, turn around and they are everywhere. Stuck to my arm sweat and the kettle. Had to bring the kettle inside to transfer to fermentors. Fished a couple out of the kettle, seemed to have avoided infection. Not repitching that yeast.

Edited by macbrak, 05 August 2018 - 09:29 AM.

[BarefootBrews]

How did the beer turn out?  Just curious.

[Big Nake]

How did the beer turn out?  Just curious.

I had to go look up which batch it was because I didn't mention it in the post.  This was my "pale vienna lager" made with Omega Bayern and it's on tap now and very good.  No issues at all.  I need to snap a pic of it and get it into the picture thread.  Cheers.

[BarefootBrews]

We've all had mishaps like that on brew day that in the end turn out okay. Sometimes I am amazed at how few serious accidents we actually have. Most of us are dealing with open flame on burners outdoors. Boiling hot liquids. Glass carboys. Potential clogged airlocks. Maybe even a bottle bomb from over carbed beers.

Maybe should be a new thread of worst thing that happened homebrew related. I've broken a glass carboy full of beer ready to go into a keg. Sliced open a knuckle on the rim of a keggle reaching inside to grab a floating thermometer and bled into the mash tun (luckily that one was a Red Ale anyways :-) ). Fought a stuck runoff for over an hour in August high humidity in SC sweating into the mash tun the whole time. Had an airlock instead of blowoff tube on a blackberry blonde without closely monitoring the rise of krausen...you can imagine having to clean the ceiling of blackberry wort. I could go on. If you have been accident free while brewing, you are either very lucky or you don't brew often enough.

[Big Nake]

I think my worst beers were made by using yeast that may have not been in the best health, old, etc.  I bought some Omega ale yeast and thought I might be able to use it like I might use a Wyeast pack in a 5% beer... smack it and pitch.  I've done that many times with no worries.  But the Omega packs don't have a nutrient pack in them so I just opened it and pitched it.  It took three days for the fermentation to begin and the resulting beer tasted like a Belgian Hefeweizen (it was supposed to be a blone ale).