Earlier this year I was asked to brew for a wedding. And not just any wedding, but the wedding of Mrs. Hacksaw's best friend. I consider this one of the highest honors I've been given to date as a homebrewer! I was asked to make 10 gallons, which means two brew sessions for me as I have a 5 gallon setup. I'll tell you all about the recipe and the wedding itself another time. Just keep in mind this was a very special occassion and the first wedding I had ever brewed for.
I brewed back to back days with plenty of time to allow this beer to ferment and carbonate and be ready for the wedding. This was fairly unique as I had never brewed the same recipe back to back with the intention of having 2 kegs filled with the same beer. Both brew sessions went off without a hitch and 2 weeks before the wedding day I was preparied to transfer both fermentors to their respective kegs. I had done this 20 or 30 times at this point in my career so it's usually pretty straightforward. On this occasion however... It's actually hard to even write this as I think back to what I did.
I pulled both fermentors into the garage along with the kegs the beer would be transferred into. I use Starsan to make up my sanitizing solution, but the stuff isn't cheap so when possible I try to conserve it. I put a half ounce in the first keg and filled it up with a few gallons of water. I sloshed the water around some to get the whole thing nice and sanitized Then I dumped that solution into the other keg to sanitize it as well. Great way to save a little Starsan right?
While the second keg was being sanitized I started transferring the first 5 gallons of wedding brew into the first keg. Everything was rolling along wonderfully at this point. I'm thinking about how much everyone is going to enjoy this beer and of course having mini flash forwards to my own brewery.
Right after I finished transferring into the first keg I moved my siphon over to the next fermentor and started transferring into the second keg. Knowing that there was about a gallon or so left in the fermentor, the keg began to overflow with beer. I thought to myself... that's really weird, I even said it out loud to Mrs. Hacksaw who said "yay extra beer!" But I know extra beer doesn't just happen. I knew I hadn't brewed significantly more than 5 gallons and yet the keg was clearly overflowing with beer left to be transferred. The color though was extremely light... "hmm that's concerning" I thought to myself.
Suddenly it hit me. I never dumped out the sanitizer water from the second keg. What. Have. I. Done.
Yes I had transferred almost the entire 5 gallon batch into the same keg as several gallons of sanitizer water-- effectivly destroying all my hard work and ruining this batch.
I had a brief glimmer of hope that my error was recoverable. But a quick sample of the beer sanitizer mixture sitting in my keg confirmed my worst fears. I had completely ruined an entire batch of beer. I fell on the floor of the garage with my head held in my hands. Mrs. Hacksaw came out because she heard my cry out in despair.
This picture was taken as all the thoughts were going through my head of how I had ruined this batch.
If I had used a full 5 gallons of sanitizer water the keg would have overflowed sooner and I would have realized what was going on sooner and saved most of the beer. If I had not tried to do all 10 gallons in the same transfer session this whole fiasco could have been avoided. If, If, If... all I had were IFS! All of the hard work was over - the brewday, the fermentation, heck I had even transferred the beer into a sanitized keg! To ruin a batch of beer at this point was unthinkable.
While this is one of the worst mistakes I've ever made, when Mrs. Hacksaw asked me if I was okay, I got up off that garage floor and declared that I would be having an EMERGENCY BREWDAY. I had just enough time left to pull it off if I brewed immediately, the yeast did their job, and I force carbed with the shaking "hack"!
So while this story goes down as my worst mistake ever, the overall story of brewing for the wedding had a happy ending. Newly Wedded Wheat was enjoyed by all. Let my mistake be a lesson to all the homebrewers out there at how a simple oversight can wreak major havoc. Take your time, no amount of time is worth pouring 4 gallons of beer into the grass.
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