Fellow blogger David Flaherty from GrapesAndGrainsNYC.com has posted a video of his brew day that went horribly, horribly wrong. In the end, the beer is in the sink and my heart is in my throat, because as someone who’s about to take the plunge and start to homebrew, it’s my greatest fear.
Of course, I’d probably ferment and bottle the botched wort because I don’t know any better.
Check out poor David’s saga below.
Beer & Whiskey Brothers 
That sucks….when I brewed with extract I always bought mine fresh (kind of) from the spout at my local homebrew shop. Only once did I use the other stuff and it came in a can. I probably would have used the moldy stuff anyway.
Just call it Penicillin Porter!
Relax, don’t worry. Have a home brew. Charlie Papazian’s mantra.
No matter how good of a brewer you are, bad batches will happen. They are learning experiences. You learn more by messing up than by being perfect the first time in. Even big companies have bad batches, just ask Blue Moon about last month and a 10,000 barrel loss (20,000 kegs worth of beer).
Don’t over think it and for goodness sakes have fun with it. That’s what it’s all about isn’t it? Look at it this was even if you mess up you still usually get beer in the end.
@marvin…amen…I practically live by papazian’s verse. I really would have persevered…the money’s been spent, after all, and plus, the bacteria probably was only on the surface. who knows…a unique sour may have been birthed? I pitched a batch down the drain because the iron pellets in the end of my thermometer (and glass) broke into the batch. The actual thermometer didn’t. Probably could have saved that one, but like David, I felt it was better to be safe than sorry.
That’s the spirit for sure, Marvin. But as a total rookie, I’m super-curious about what can go wrong and how to prevent it. In this case, check your stuff before you boil! It’s a good lesson and I’m glad David shared it. After all, I don’t have a homebrew to console myself with – the first batch hasn’t been made. I think I’m about 10 days away and I’m totally stoked!
Well Jim we can learn from this. Check all your ingredients before you begin to brew! If he had done this he would have seen that his extract was moldy and saved the rest of his ingredients to brew another day. We are new so we need to learn from other’s failures.
Amen to that, bro.
Very very sad. Watching this is the equivalent of a woman watching The Notebook and crying her eyes out.
Ha ha! That’s a perfect comparison, Billy. Or like seeing Jack fade beneath the surface in Titanic…
Gentlemen, I appreciate your sentiments of longing. Thankfully the moment of despair was caught on film to further bond us in misery— as Biil Murray says in Caddyshack, “So I got that going for me.”
Don, I will certainly be checking everthing next time…and the moral for me: even it requires brewing in the wee hours of the morning while pulling a 60 hour work week, you get your ass behind that stove when those ingredients are fresh.
Another lesson – procrastination leads to infestation. A gem for sure!
Thanks for stopping by, David. I’m really digging your site.
Aside from the ‘that sucks’ factor, I find the comments interesting. On one hand we can dump it because its obviously bad, but on the other hand we have gears turning about how it might be saved. Neat stuff!
Doesn’t theold saying go “disaster is the mother of invention”? Well in this case at least.
@scott the “that sucks” comment was meant in a ‘poor guy, sympathetic, I’ve been there’ sort of way….perhaps came out harsh….didn’t mean it to be!
@nate I think it came out the right way. Sympathetic for sure.
@ Scott I never thought that a problem could be an innovation waiting to be discovered, so I think it’s neat, too.
@jim…phew, good. David seems like a swell guy…here at work becuase I have no time for web/blog stuff i suffer from “type first, proof/revise/think later” syndrome. Penicillin beer sounds good by the way. i hate the taste of the pink stuff.
I’d choose the penicillin beer option every time. Heck, I’d probably get sick on purpose so I could lay around and drink with a clear conscience for a day.
Jim,
Don’t worry. You have a pretty good circle of people who are around you, quite a bit of help (if you need it), and our 9 article series on extract brewing http://thankheavenforbeer.com/category/how-to-brew-series/…had to give us a plug on this one. The reason I’m so passionate about helping people get started is because I never had anyone to help in in the process. I taught myself extract and mashing. My point is, you can do it on your own. But you don’t have to. Just look at the support group that’s around you right here…that, in and of itself, should be a huge encouragement. We’re cheering at your soccer game, so to speak.
I’m two posts into your series and it’s great. I’ve also picked up John Palmer’s How to Brew and Papazian’s book as well. Between the books and the web I should be fine – I’m brewing extracts after all. All I need is an EZBREW oven, right? 😉
Remember to put the books into your total cost of your first batch!
Thanks for the compliment. I think the EZBREW oven would do the trick. Papazian’s book is great. Stephen Synder’s book is also very useful.
Cha Ching, Cha Ching…Hear that sucking sound Jim? Hold onto your wallet!
Too late for that, Don…
While you’r at it Jim, I could use a brew pot too… 🙂
I’ll send you my new one as soon as I realize it’s too small to brew 10 gallon batches and I need a keggle instead…
Sorry Nate, I think we both meant the same thing. It does indeed suck, but I suppose it happens to everyone at some point – kinda like dropping motorcycles.
Jim, it seems your first batch is going to have to be stellar to get Don off your case!
Yeah, I’m getting that feeling, too Scott! I just want to do everything I can to be prepared. You’d think I was delivering a baby!
Is there a “What to Expect When You Are Expecting to Brew” book Jim can buy!
“What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Brew” would be an awesome book, Don. The Beer Doctor is IN!
thanks…I gotta be more careful. I still haven’t laid down my bike, but it’s an old rust bucket from the ’70s.
I purposely stayed out of the conversation about whether to brew or not. If it’s something you want to do, you should just try it. We tried it about 15 years ago and it was fun at first. We had a really good batch to start with and had one that didn’t turn out so great. It is a huge mess and a huge time commitment and the smell of malt in the house was overpowering for (I say weeks) a long time (my husband says it wasn’t weeks and he liked the smell). As Marvin said, you can expect bad batches and I just think it wasn’t worth it. Future LD beer brewing: I say no way! That’s why God made Trappist monks.
I’m curious to see if we’ll stick with it as well. I hope so-I’m excited to see how it turns out and i want to learn what goes into making each style.
I thought about the wort smell (been on a brewery tour before) and got an outdoor propane burner for cooking our wort. Hope fully that’ll take care of that and it comes with the added bonus of making me feeling like a moonshiner sitting out in the woods cooking a batch.
I love the smell of the malt, so that’s not a problem. Also, I’ve never had a bad batch of beer. I think saying that you will is somewhat of a myth. If you pay attention to sanitation (the most important thing), then it doesn’t happen. You may have a beer that isn’t what you were hoping it was but sloppy sanitation is the number one killer.
So cleanliness is next to godliness? Good to know. I think I’m going to be crazy about sanitation, as i’ve had an infected beer recently and I don’t want my babies to turn out like that!
You will never brew a horrible beer with good sanitation but you could ruin a great one without it. It is absolutely paramount that you clean.