UKC

Just want to vent/moan............

T'other night, I spilled 18 litres of wine, pulped fruit etc (mainly blackberries, with elderberries and damsons) down the stairs ! A mess of truly mammoth proportions. Ended up on the wooden floor in the hall area, which was easi-ish to clean. Ended up splattering the walls, couch, radiator..........and yes, carpet and couch are beige (were beige!). Was more bothered that 13 pounds of fruit has been wasted, and this was going to be my best yet. Kids found it hilarious, watching me down to my grundies cleaning it up. Bugger !! It was all slow motion...........I weep now thinking about it.

Any other disasters to share?

(didn't stop me making another batch next day tho............)

In reply to mick taylor:

The ginger beer my 14 year old brother made. The grand opening of the first bottle in the newly decorated dining room. Re-wired, newly wall-papered, newly painted ceiling, all beautiful. All done by my dad, yet to return from work. Ginger beer had been merrily brewing - in a rather warm environment. Sister suggests taking the first bottle outside to open it. Brother says no need. Eases open first bottle.

Cork explodes out of the bottle and hits the ceiling, followed by ginger beer exploding out of the bottle, seemingly expanding massively as it shot out, hits the ceiling, spatters ginger beer all over newly painted ceiling, onto newly wall-papered walls. Ginger beer runs down light fittings and the electrics go in a wee bang. Silence ensues.

Followed very quickly by 5 kids and mum in a frantic clean-up operation to get rid of the worst of the mess before dad gets back from work. A few missed ginger beer stains were still on the ceiling when mum sold the house some 15 years later.

In reply to mick taylor:

Not exactly a disaster but your post did remind me of this;

Out walking the dog - dog sees deer and gives chase - several hours later after I'd walked fields etc to try to find her/ensure sheep were ok, she reappears covered in blood - I take her home (in shame) and decide dog needs a bath/shower.

If you have ever tried to give a very reluctant dog/cat a wash you will be able to imagine what happened next. After finally releasing the dog into the garden and assessing myself for injuries/ticks etc I finally decided to go back into the house to clean things up.

What greeted me was a scene more akin to a horror movie - three weeks later and after considerable expense I finished redecorating the house and allowed people to visit me again.

In reply to Welsh Kate:
We had a similar accident with actual beer a few weeks ago. We think too much yeast may have got into the bottling stage... 1st time we've had to clean our ceiling!

In reply to mick taylor:


Yep - my Christmas ale ended up smelling of sick (bacterial infection). Couldn't bring myself to ditch it until the new year. Gutted! Not a patch on you though - made me smile! Thanks!

In reply to ByEek:

20 lits Home brew beer bottled too early
The bottles exploded in the pantry and in the process split cans of beer open. Floor of pantry awash with beer and glass and all the boxes on the floor of cereal and so on ruined. Luckily door was shut as it could have killed someone.
I poured the remaining out in the garden under the hedge – not sure why I didn’t do it down the drain. It was hot and dry at the time so the place stank

In reply to mick taylor:

A litre of olive oil on a newly tiled and grouted kitchen floor goes a long way...

In reply to mick taylor:

At the end of one summer, when my kids were young I decided to invest in a set of chimney sweeping brushes and rods to save money in the long run.

I carefully spread news papers over the lounge hearth and set to work screwing the rod sections together and pushing the brush up the chimney. Now we lived in a bungalow so I was surprised how long it seemed to be taking for the brush to reach the top and I sent the kids outside having asked them to shout when the brush appeared. Nothing happened and I could see the kids standing in the garden looking up. Eventually I yelled "Any sign of the brush yet?" "No dad" they chorused back. Eventually I used the last rod and went out to see what the hell was happening. A line of rods with no brush on them was sticking up into the sky from the top of the chimney!

I exclaimed to the kids "Why didn't you tell me the rods had come out with no brush on them?" "You told us to look out for the brush" they responded indignantly.

Anyway I was in a pickle now with the detached brush stuck somewhere half way up the chimney. So I went next door and borrowed my neighbour's extension ladder, which I erected against the chimney stack and climbed up it.

By shining a torch down the flue I could see the stuck brush, so I set about attempting to push it down from above using the rods. I sent the kids down into the lounge to shout as soon as the brush appeared.

After a while the yelled up at me that mum was VERY cross. By this time I was stripped to the waist and sweating like a pig. I climbed down the ladder and went into the lounge to find to find the air full of a thick black mist of soot. This has spread over all the carpet, curtains, and furniture including the almost new three piece suite. The wife had gone out with the kids without so much as a good by, see you later.

Dripping soot soaked sweat I padded out through the hall to the front door again, leaving black foot prints all over the hall carpet.

It took me the rest of the day to have three baths to get off all the soot, then drive into town to hire a carpet cleaner and work until nearly mid night cleaning down all the furniture curtains and carpets.

I was banished to the spare bedroom for the rest of the week, and the suggestion that we might have sex to make up went down like a lead balloon. Women just don't see life in the same way as men.

Thereafter we hired a chimney sweep each year.

I've since been told that when using a chimney brush you should screw the rods against the tread to stop the brush unscrewing.........

In reply to mick taylor:

I hate wasting homebrew. Last summer I had to tip 175l of pale ale that was destined for my niece's wedding after it got infected and had a taste of DMS. Bummer!

In reply to mick taylor:

Used to brew beer, wine etc at home in my teens usually without problems other than occasional complaints about the smell of hops. But my mum was more than upset when a demijohn (5 litres ?) of applewine exploded - it was on top of a high cupboard and a mix of liquid plus apple pulp & yeast was spread over a large area of ceiling, cupboard & floor

In reply to mick taylor:

Had a mate of mine crash out in my room. Coz of the embarrassing nature of what followed, I'll keep him anonymous. Anyway, we drank way too much and Big Dave crashed out on a single mattress that he'd flung on the floor next to do the door. Nature called for both reasons, but what he didn't realise was that he couldn't open the door of my bedroom because he was stood on the matress jamming it shut. The inevitable happened, followed by him staggering around squelching in his own liquid jobbies, treading it all over my room. Bad, well bad.

In reply to mick taylor:

Dropped four pints of milk just as I'd taken the lid off, as it dropped I tried to catch it,squeezing it at the exact time it hit the floor, as it shot up I breathed some in and started choking on it and rolling around in it, when I finally sat up everything was covered and my wife was stood there staring at me. We both just burst out laughing. Took me ages to clean it up though.

In reply to mick taylor:

If I could give you another 5 likes for that you'd have 'em! Made I laugh!!!

In reply to mick taylor:

I once had a large framed in glass, copy of the london underground tube map in my bedroom in New Zealand. It was a souvenir from when I visited the UK as a young lad, and I liked the look of it so had it framed. I was a student at the time, who also lifted weights - so I also had 3-4 emergency cans of tuna stored in my room, underneath this picture. This is probably enough information to see where this is going... One early morning, as a compressor in another room turned on - the tiny metal hook holding the picture, took its final straw. The picture fell down the entire height of the wall straight down and onto 3 cans of tuna. The glass shattered and exploded little shards everywhere on the carpet - but not to be outdone, the cans of tuna also exploded open, spraying my wall, thick pile carpet and bed with chunks of tuna and manky oil. Great way to be woken up...

In the same room, I once stored my plastic box of glassware. It was in the middle of the carpet, about a metre from the bed. During the night, I woke up to pee. I pulled off the blanket, and started to step out of bed - but somehow I fell off the bed instead. I instinctively put my hand out in front of me to break the fall - only to hear a sickeningly loud smashing/crunching noise, as my hand piledrived through a foot of glass beakers and flasks straight into the box. I sat silent for a moment, hoping this was just an absolutely shit dream. But no, it was not. The sound of big drops of something liquid falling onto the bottom of a plastic box indicated I was in fact bleeding heavily and not in a dream. I turned on the light, and managed to bandage my hand in this dazed state. It slowly dawned on me what a miracle that the glass I'd piledriven had not not severed anything important, and only made one small laceration which went on to be fully healed in a matter of days.

In reply to iusedtoclimb:



We had a ginger beer explosion when I was a kid, like you, we were lucky no one was in the larder at the time.

In reply to mick taylor:

Years ago when I was brewing in my bedroom, in a house full of lads, I was under pressure to produce stronger beers. The fermentation kept getting stuck, and I came up with the bright idea of adding sugar halfway through. So, I dissolved a kilo of brewers sugar in a little water and tipped it into a part brewed 5 gallon bucket. It frothed a little. Then it frothed a bit more. Then the froth started rising. It kept on rising, and I started to panic. Soon it was over the edge of the bucket and pouring onto the carpet, and it kept on getting wilder. I put the lid on and held it down but it just sprayed out the gaps and covered a bigger area. By the time it had calmed down a couple of gallons had escaped. The room still smelled like a brewery when I moved out. We lost our deposit on that house, although the brewery smell only had a minor part to play in that. That brew was crap too.

In reply to Trangia:


Not even going to try to top that one!! :-D

In reply to Big Ger:

Who says ukc isn't as good as it used to be..?

Genius thread, some vivid pictures of unfolding disaster being painted...!

In reply to mick taylor:

My Grandfather used to fish for char in Windermere. He'd clean them, then lay them on a tray to drain/dry, and place the tray on the chest freezer in their garage. One night, my Grandma bobbed into the garage to get something out of the freezer, didn't notice the 15 char on the tray (it was dark) so accidentally tipped them behind the freezer when she lifted the lid up.

A week later, they matched the incredible stench with the appearance of flocks of maggots crawling out from under the freezer.

In reply to mick taylor:

Two offers from me, don´t know which one was worse:

A pail with ten liters of milk directly from the farm falling over in the back of the car. Even after ripping out all carpets and steam cleaning everything the smell was so bad that you could only drive with the windows open for the next few summers, or

an almost full 1l bottle of olive oil falling off the table, landing precisely on its side. The resulting explosion left no bit of glass bigger than a cm. The entire kitchen floor ended up covered in a mix of oil and needle sharp glass splinters. Of course such a mess happens just when guests arrive for a children´s birthday party.
CB

In reply to Wsdconst:


This is, hands down, one of the funniest things I've read in a good while.

In reply to Infinite Granite:

Agreed.

Following the exploding theme, I was once servicing my bike in the kitchen. As it was raining outside the kitchen was the obvious choice, complete with a nice lino floor so any drops of oil could be wiped up easily. I started on the forks, old Boxxers. I stripped off the lower legs and gave them a clean, and then carefully removed the damping cartridge for it's once in a lifetime service. With the cartridge securely held in the bike stand, and with a bucket underneath it to catch the drips, I released the air pressure by pushing on the valve at the top with a small screwdriver, hearing a satisfying pssshhh noise as the air slowly escaped. Job done, time to undo the bolt at the top that holds all the gubbins in. I cracked it open a little and listened to make sure no more air was leaking out. Nothing, great, carry on. I unscrewed it all the way and suddenly had a blinding pain in my eyes. Much shouting ensued, followed by me blundering to the sink to rinse my eyes out. My mate laughing in the doorway wasn't much encouragement in my blinded state, until I turned around and through blurry eyes saw the ceiling, all four walls and every kitchen surface and appliance liberally coated in film of years old suspension oil... Not a drop in the bucket though.

Over the next few weeks I learned a lot about PVA glue and stain sealing paint! We got the damage deposit back on that house.

In reply to mick taylor:
Hmm, this is all very thought-provoking. Some of you dear folks will recall that I am making my first attempt at apple wine (see threads while ago). I was just wondering if it has to stop fermenting before being bottled ... I think this thread has told me the answer

In reply to mick taylor:

I've also had an exploding booze disaster. Homemade cider in those swingtop grolsh bottles. All sat happily in the corner of the kitchen/living room. Watching an action move on TV and suddenly we seemed to get surround sound when an almighty BANG happens, almost instantly followed by a wave of cider and glass from behind me. Whole room covered in sticky booze and glass, and to top it off the lid from the bottle was embedded in the coving at the top of the room.

It stayed there long after the booze was cleaned up as a talking point, only removed when we redecorated

In reply to BusyLizzie:

Hows it looking?

In reply to BusyLizzie:

Yep definitely. No bubbles through the air lock at all, and I usually move the demijohn somewhere warmer for a couple of days before bottling just to be absolutely sure it's finished. Sometimes a bit of heat kick-starts it again a little bit.

In reply to mick taylor:


Well, ir looks great! Apple-juice coloured. Goes "blupp" regularly. Not, I'm afraid, in any sense transparent, but perhaps that will come.

L

In reply to DaveX:

That's a good thought, thank-you!

In reply to iusedtoclimb:



yeah - been there and done that with homebrew ginger beer in lemonade bottles. Stored in the airing cupboard (full of towels) when one exploded. All towels had to be washed. Joy!