Women do the darndest things....

So heres my situation, I left home a few months ago for my work season which lasts about 10 weeks. I had a bunch of ingredients arrive for a batch of ginger mead that I was planning on brewing but since it was my last day I just didnt have time. Didn't want to let the ginger go to waste and have the honey sit for 3 months, so I thought that my very capable and intelligent girlfriend could do it for me while I was gone. She has watched me brew probably a dozen times and asked questions while I was doing it so I thought that she would have absorbed something during that time. I left her a couple of brewing books and gave her detailed instructions and told her to call me if she had any questions. Well... a couple of days later I get a call from her in a flood of tears saying "I ruined your mead and your brewing equipment!" apparently she had forgotten all about the vital step of cooling the must before pouring the contents into the carboy. She poured 2 gallons of boiling hot wort straight into my plastic betterbrew carboy! the thing immediately shrank down to the size of a 3 gallon carboy. So, and this is the kicker, in her panic she grabbed my other carboy and poured the must into that one!!!! This time it only shrank a little bit and left it looking kinda like a muffin. So this was all I heard about it. I told her to put an airlock on it and that it might all be alright (in my head i didn't think it would stand a chance). When I got home I saw that she had taken my words very literally, and had not bothered to pour the remaining 2 gallons of cold water into the carboy. On top of that, she no longer had another carboy to put it into a secondary, so it had been sitting in a big pile of yeast for 3 months AND she took two dry airlocks, one bubbler type and stuck it in the top of my three piece WITH NO WATER.

So heres the best part, miraculously, unbelievable, incredibly. I tasted this doomed concoction, it has been there for three months and has cleared, and it doesn't taste bad. It doesn't taste very good either though. The problem is that all 12 pounds of that honey was brewed into 2 1/2 gallons of water. Its sickeningly sweet and thick. So here are my two questions.
1. Since the heat of the must had an obvious effect on the plastics of the carboy, would it be unsafe to use?
2. Could I just brew a batch of 2 1/2 gallons of dry mead and mix the two prior to bottling or in a secondary fermentor?

I dont really wanna throw away 50 bucks in ingredients if there is an easy way to salvage it, and have to wait another 6-12 months for ginger mead. What do you guys think?

Yeah, women sure are stupid about brewing and meadmaking and winemaking.

I am laughing so hard right now. So funny.

Sounds like those instructions might not have been as detailed as you thought.

I'd be tempted to decant it to a new fermenter, add water to the intended volume and hit it with fresh yeast.

david_42 said:

I'd be tempted to decant it to a new fermenter, add water to the intended volume and hit it with fresh yeast.

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I think this is the way to go. As for the safety aspect I would think that if it doesn't have a melted plastic smell or taste to it, you should be fine.

Please post pics!
Would like to show the other half on what not to do

Yooper said:

Yeah, women sure are stupid about brewing and meadmaking and winemaking.

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I'll apologize to yooper and the other awesome brew mistresses out there for you. The title should read "inexperienced and improperly instructed people do the darnedest things"

Yooper said:

Yeah, women sure are stupid about brewing and meadmaking and winemaking.

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Win!

lschiavo said:

I'll apologize to yooper and the other awesome brew mistresses out there for you. The title should read "inexperienced and improperly instructed people do the darnedest things"

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You're just sucking up because you're low on beer and you want to come over and drink some of mine!

Yooper said:

You're just sucking up because you're low on beer and you want to come over and drink some of mine!

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See. Women can also see right through you. It's safest to stay on their good side

All I can say is wow....that sucks... my first move would be to buy 2 new carboys personally....

I would buy 2 new carboys, glass this time. Also, I agree with the advice here. No real harm seems to have been done. Except to your carboys. Transfer to new carboy with more water, hit it with yeast again, stir well, and it should be fine. The clearing will actually be to your advantage. This is a great example of the yeast not being able to work with the gravity so high. At most you just delayed your brew, I think.

Also, assure your girlfriend that things will be ok. Honey and water are fairly resiliant. You also may want to put more nutrients in it too as they may have dropped out with the yeast. You may tell of your own brew disasters to her to help comfort her. I think a number of brewers have even accidently tossed yeast into hot must/wort at one time or another. I think that for doing it on her own she has done well. It may be time to describe the why of things to her though. Not just the what.

Who knows, you may just invent a new technique. Minus the brew bottle killing.

Matrix4b said:

I would buy 2 new carboys, glass this time...

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Yeah, but then the next time his girlfriend pours boiling hot wort in them, they shatter!

Just remove the heating part from instructions next time. Not sure why it was needed anyway!

Hey guys, thanks for all the advice and info. Im glad everyone got a chuckle out of it, I personally laugh every time I think about it. No offense meant to any of the lady brewers out there, just trying to be funny with the title.

Yeah already got my new carboy's on order, id prefer glass but since I live down in Key West the shipping costs are crazy, like the same price as the carboy, but with northern's flat rate shipping I get both of em shipped for 8 bucks.

I posted a pic for all those wanting to see her handy work. I haven't told her I posted a thread about this either figured she'd chew me out for making her look dumb!

Oh and thankfully my girlfriend isn't too traumatized to give it another go. Really she just made one vital misstep and that was forgetting to cool, even adding the cold water to the carboy first would have probably prevented it from shrinking! After that I think she was just panicked and not thinking straight.

Good news===Less headspace in the carboy now

+1 what everyone else said about adding water, plenty of ladies brew, blah blah blah.

as for the mead, don't boil it anyway. other than warm tap water, it shouldn't be anywhere near hot enough to shrink any plastic.

as for chemical leaching into your mead......yeah...so...that's the bad news. first, i am not one of the "sky is falling, everything is killing us" kind of people. what is true, is the fact that when you heat up plastic to the point when it is any softer than when it is room temp, you are releasing massive quantities of BPA out of the plastic and into your food or drink. if that was hot enough to permanently change the shape of your plastic container, no way i would drink it. i realize most will disagree, but i just wanted to let you know. these chemicals need to build up in your body, so if you don't heat up tupperware in the microwave regularly, probably be fine. if you do heat up plastic all the time, probably get cancer anyway, so drink up.

+1. i would dump it. plastic is scary and i wouldn't take the risk personally.

Better Bottles are supposed to be BPA-free anyway...

yeah better bottles are BPA free. As for heating, I've always heated my must. I usually bring it to about 160 F for about 10 minutes, but I didn't think the GF could handle regulating the temperature, so I told her to just follow the instructions straight out of Papazian's book. Besides I didn't really think she would be 100 percent on top of sanitation so boiling was def. the way to go..... until she ruined my carboys.

ok, well, insert random chemical name here, will leach out of plastic when it is heated. heat up a petroleum product and junk comes out of it, bottom line. if its not bpa, its the thing we will call the next bpa, let's call it bpb.

adamorantares said:

yeah better bottles are BPA free. As for heating, I've always heated my must. I usually bring it to about 160 F for about 10 minutes, but I didn't think the GF could handle regulating the temperature, so I told her to just follow the instructions straight out of Papazian's book. Besides I didn't really think she would be 100 percent on top of sanitation so boiling was def. the way to go..... until she ruined my carboys.

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I NEVER heat my honey! It's not necessary (no disrespect to Papa Charlie!). Oh, well. It looks like it'll turn out just fine anyway.

That's a pretty serious airlock situation you got going there. Think you could get her to do a picture tutorial for a thread to sticky?

That airlock is awesome. Better bottles are food grade and BPA free, so there shouldn't be anything leaching out of them. How do you think they make them? They heat plastic to it's melting point and blow it into a mold.

160 for 10 minutes actually comes from Ken Schramm's book. The honey I get is pretty raw, we have a lot of good honey suppliers here in S. Florida so I don't have to buy the crap they sell at the homebrew stores. I think that with raw fresh honey there might be slightly more risk of wild yeasts, and low temp heating for 10-20 minutes will kill these off without destroying too many of the enzymes that contribute to honey's overall flavor and aroma compounds. besides I hear that heating the honey will speed up the fermentation process. IDK, for my book when im waiting months on end and forking out 50-60 bucks a batch, id rather err on the side of caution.

pure honey is too acidic for ay wild yeasts to survive in. if they could survive in it, you couldn't store honey in your pantry for decades. really, look into it, it never goes bad.

when they are blowing those molds out.....do you have beer in it? nope.
also, when they are blowing those molds out, do you think those fumes are healthy? think that factory smells like roses or something?

heat plastic, things come out of it.
when room temp or colder, it's inert; heated, it is not inert. if it's not BPA, it's pthalates or the next thing.

from the beekeepers handbook:
"sugar tolerant, or osmophilic, yeast spores, under high moisture conditions, are able to germinate in honey and metabolize its sugars...probably all honeys contain osmophilic yeasts."
the reason honey doesn't ferment in the pantry is because the water content is too low. honey that has a moisture content of less than 17 percent (all quality honey) and the yeast is inhibited. Add water in the carboy with fresh raw honey and you've just changed that moisture content considerably. Im not an expert, I only have 3 books on the subject of honey and mead and have done 3 meads prior, but every publication I own on honey warns against wild yeast. I know that many people out there use the "no heat" method with great success, so its def. possible to brew great mead without heating, but I certainly wouldn't say its 'useless'.

Regarding the plastics, i'm still up in the air about it. Thats really why I started this thread, to get the general consensus. So far we've had about half say don't worry about it and the other half say i'm going to get cancer from it, lol. So i'm still trying to figure out where I stand.

adamorantares said:

from the beekeepers handbook:
"sugar tolerant, or osmophilic, yeast spores, under high moisture conditions, are able to germinate in honey and metabolize its sugars...probably all honeys contain osmophilic yeasts."
the reason honey doesn't ferment in the pantry is because the water content is too low. honey that has a moisture content of less than 17 percent (all quality honey) and the yeast is inhibited. Add water in the carboy with fresh raw honey and you've just changed that moisture content considerably. Im not an expert, I only have 3 books on the subject and have done 3 meads prior, but every publication I own on honey warns against wild yeast. I know that many people out there use the "no heat" method with great success, so its def. possible to brew great mead without heating, but I certainly wouldn't say its 'useless'.

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That's why some people will sulfite the must. It is pretty good about knocking out and potential wild yeast, but doesn't really affect wine/mead yeast at the recommended dosage.

I cold mix all of my meads, and have really good success. If you create the best environment for your wine/mead yeast (proper O2, pH, nutrient, etc.) you shouldn't really need to worry about wild yeast in honey.

adamorantares said:

from the beekeepers handbook:
"sugar tolerant, or osmophilic, yeast spores, under high moisture conditions, are able to germinate in honey and metabolize its sugars...probably all honeys contain osmophilic yeasts."
the reason honey doesn't ferment in the pantry is because the water content is too low. honey that has a moisture content of less than 17 percent (all quality honey) and the yeast is inhibited. Add water in the carboy with fresh raw honey and you've just changed that moisture content considerably. Im not an expert, I only have 3 books on the subject of honey and mead and have done 3 meads prior, but every publication I own on honey warns against wild yeast. I know that many people out there use the "no heat" method with great success, so its def. possible to brew great mead without heating, but I certainly wouldn't say its 'useless'.

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this is one of those cases that seems like great science for boiling your mead, until you know more about osmophilic yeast. they only reproduce is very high sugar concentrations. mix 30 pounds of honey into your five gallon batch, and you "might" have a problem. at regular mead making amounts, they can't reproduce. they act nothing like the yeast we use.

They may not be entirely reliable, but have you tried contacting the better bottle company regarding the safety of overheating their products?

Thats all very interesting info regarding the osmophilic yeast. I'll definitely have to scour the internets and learn some more about them. Like I said I never normally boil my mead, just gently heat it to a temp that will kill off wild yeasts. It really is about the easiest thing you could do. I've followed a number of threads on here debating this very thing, seems to be a very active debate. When you're used to all grain brewing something as simple as no heating just about feels like im cheating! Lol.

I looked on the better bottle website, and on the first page it says "BPA free" but a quick email to them would probably be very helpful in making my final decision as with what to do. I have a feeling that for liability reasons they will advice me to throw it out. Its a lot easier for them to advice that than risk anything.

WineChief said:

Yeah, but then the next time his girlfriend pours boiling hot wort in them, they shatter!

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Actually it's thick walled glass. A very low chance of shattering. I have followed Ken's instructions on heating the must in 2 gal of water for 14-16 pound to 160 for 5 min and I have slowed it down to just getting it warm enough to easily melt and stir the honey into the water. The brews have actally turned out no differnet. So I would recomend only melting the honey then cooling and tossing the yeast. Stir and then put in your carboy.

For cleaning reasons, I have put hot water in my glass carboys before. Not boiling but just shy of it and have not had problems.

Hmm, you need to order your carboys, Sorry to hear that you don't have a HBS near you. I recommend next time you need carboys, troll for a bit on Craigslist. For some reason unknown to me, people start brewing then give up on it. Coming into my 4th year myself and if anything, need more honey and more carboys. Also, I find brew buckets cheaper than the standard carboy. Every time I need to do oaking, or fruit or anything but a little tiny hops bag of spices, rack to the bucket. Also if I have a large brew 6+ gal then I go to the brew bucket. My large one handles 6.5 gal easily, My little one will handle 6 gal. I only have 1 6 gal carboy and 4 5 gal.

Hope it turns out well,

Matrix

frydogbrews said:

ok, well, insert random chemical name here, will leach out of plastic when it is heated. heat up a petroleum product and junk comes out of it, bottom line. if its not bpa, its the thing we will call the next bpa, let's call it bpb.

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Agreed. Even plastic water bottles begin to leech out chemicals if they're reused. Plastic degrades, no matter what, and that **** has to go somewhere (ie into your drink). Just because it doesn't have BPA doesn't mean it's safe; I'm confident there's other compounds that are just as unhealthy that we just haven't identified yet. I've heard stomach cancer is one of the worst types; the cost-to-benefit just wouldn't be there for me to want to drink it.

As for the yeast in honey: after my first batch of mead where I Campdened it, I've never heated or treated my honey since (I warm it slightly in a water bath to make it less viscous) and have never had an issue w contamination, even when adding fruit into primary (though I always freeze my fruit before brewing [to break down cell walls]). I've brewed dozens of gallons of mead at this point, sometimes with less than ideal sanitation methods.

In part, this probably has to do with the nature of osmophilic yeast that Frydogbrews mentioned. As well, the amount of yeast you're pitching is a force to be reckoned with in terms of out-competing spoilage micro-organisms. So unless you're making a brochet (or is it bochet?), there's no reason to heat the honey.