Just Found an old book, Funny stuff

I was at my University's library here at OU and I got out a book from the mid sixties about homebrewing. After reading it I come to find that it was first published in Britain and it is some funny stuff. The author talks about how draught beer doesn't have to be served with carbonation and he adds salt to every recipe he includes... funny stuff.

I believe the title of the book is How to Brew Beer Without Failure

Salts are to adjust water chemistry and they're still used.

And draught beer without carbonation is called cask conditioned, aka "real ale" if you're one of these snobby British types

Sounds like a fun book. We used a book like that when we were getting started. It had a lot of nutty advice and was written in a time when homebrew stores weren't really around and you had to improv a lot more of it. Thanks goodness for the quality grain, hops and liquid yeast, not to mention equipment we can all get now! It makes life so much easier. Cheers

It is a fun book, I'm still reading it because of its old school methods. Another thing that it states is that you can get yeast from store bought beers. The author says that all you have to do is "get a bottle of your favorite beer, pour it into a glass and wait a few hours. Pour most of the beer into another glass and at the bottom should be a yeast collection." Somehow I don't think this is possible anymore...

SkewedAle said:

It is a fun book, I'm still reading it because of its old school methods. Another thing that it states is that you can get yeast from store bought beers. The author says that all you have to do is "get a bottle of your favorite beer, pour it into a glass and wait a few hours. Pour most of the beer into another glass and at the bottom should be a yeast collection." Somehow I don't think this is possible anymore...

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Sure you can. It just has to be the right beer. Chimay, Sierra Nevada, etc. Anything that is a "live" beer will do it.

Problem there would be that if you left the beer out for an hour, you'd have other organisms in it as well, not just the yeast you were after.

cowain said:

Problem there would be that if you left the beer out for an hour, you'd have other organisms in it as well, not just the yeast you were after.

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I wouldn't be very worried about this. The yeast are settling to the bottom and bag guys might be coming into the top. If they survive the alcohol in the brew, that's bad. But, then you are going to decant the beer (with the nasties in it) into a second glass and leave the yeast sediment in the first glass.

Probably a pretty low chance of infection with this.

The one thing I question is why you had to use 2 glasses in the first place?! If the yeast is going to settle to the bottom of a glass, then that implies that it would have ALREADY settled to the bottom of the bottle it was originally in. You would just have to pour most of the beer into the first glass, and your yeast shouldbe at the bottom of the bottle.

-walker

Next you'll be telling us that the book suggests fermenting in open fermenters...like this crazy professional brewer from the funny British Isles...

That's a huge bowl of grits that guy's got there. Didn't know they ate them in England??

Grits=. In England, grit is something we put on the roads in winter to stop them icing up...too salty for my taste..

Grits are ground up corn, and salty is good.

Kind of like redneck polenta! I like mine with bits of country ham.

BlightyBrewer said:

Next you'll be telling us that the book suggests fermenting in open fermenters...like this crazy professional brewer from the funny British Isles...

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As a snobby british brewer i ALWAYS drop a black headed mouse into my open fermenter. However I NEVER drop my hammer in at the same time.
Classic school boy error.... I see it all the time....

cowain said:

Sure you can. It just has to be the right beer. Chimay, Sierra Nevada, etc. Anything that is a "live" beer will do it.

Problem there would be that if you left the beer out for an hour, you'd have other organisms in it as well, not just the yeast you were after.

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What he said...the theory is sound, but the methods are suspect. You'll find a lot of that in those old books...don't bother boiling...add a ton of sucrose...I wonder if they ever tried their methods or if they were just tolerant of a lower quality beer than homebrewers tend to make today?

cowain said:

Sure you can. It just has to be the right beer. Chimay, Sierra Nevada, etc. Anything that is a "live" beer will do it.

Problem there would be that if you left the beer out for an hour, you'd have other organisms in it as well, not just the yeast you were after.

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So, say i liked the taste of Sierra Nevada Wheat Beer, I want to use that particular strain of yeast. I just pour out the beer and take a look at the bottom of the bottle. To my knowledge i haven't noticed much down there in the past... do I try a yeast starter with some sugar and water?

This sounds like a very cool way to get certain types of yeast.

Yep. Actually, according to the Sierra Nevada web site (http://www.sierranevada.com/beers/wheat.html) they use the same ale yeast for all of their beers. You could probably buy a sixer of the pale ale if you wanted and get the starter from that.

Also, here's a list of beers and whether or not the yeast has successfully been grabbed from the bottle.

http://www.nada.kth.se/~alun/Beer/Bottle-Yeasts/#SeYeasts

I wouldn't do a starter with sugar, use malt extract. Be sure to sterilize everything really well because the amount of active or live yeasties in your bottle will probably be fairly low. Therefore if any nasties get in there, they will have ample growth medium and opportunity to grow.

yay for me, my first post here! anyways...

I graduated from ou athens last june, what campus are you at? i was so busy with graduate school work at the library, that i never thought of looking for beer books.

what i miss most about that town is the homebrew shop. the owner eric is a great guy, always happy to let me try his latest beers, and their supplies were sooooo much cheaper than in new england. the homebrew competitions he had were awesome, i hope you are taking your beer to them!

now get offline and go to the blue gator to have a good beer for me!

barrett

I'm at the Athens Campus of course, but for the moment I'm at home in cleveland for spring break. I only have about a year left, I might graduate in winter next year. Ya, Eric is awesome, he really is a nice person and he's always ready to answer a question. He knows that I like to use the Sam Smith 22 oz bottles so he always saves them for me and gives them too me really cheap.

I haven't tried any of my brews in any competitions but there's one this spring that I might submit something to.

I regularly hit up the gator, its a great place. Although they are being sued by BMI right now because of all the live music they have and the lack of a liscense do to so.

Caplan said:

As a snobby british brewer i ALWAYS drop a black headed mouse into my open fermenter. However I NEVER drop my hammer in at the same time.

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ROFL you own me a wee heavy Caplan.

"Hammer" is a fireman slang term for penis around here. I about fell out of my chair

Pumbaa said:

ROFL you own me a wee heavy Caplan.

"Hammer" is a fireman slang term for penis around here. I about fell out of my chair

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I guess you'd call it "Bobbitt Ale"?