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Well, I've tried just about everything you suggested already. They said that they needed solid tangible Proof that it is safe to drink. If anyone can suggest what I can do, please tell me.
 
To the OP:
You mentioned that you baked and they like your cookies and cake.
Well..no more cookies and cake for your friends because those items have raw eggs in them. And we all know that raw eggs are chock full of salmonella and will kill you if not prepared correctly. If they haven't died from eating the food you've prepared correctly, they probably won't die from your beer.

Seriously..no more cookies and cake for them.
 
Bowow0708 said:
Well, I've tried just about everything you suggested already. They said that they needed solid tangible Proof that it is safe to drink. If anyone can suggest what I can do, please tell me.

Are you dead? There's your proof.
 
Not sure what kind of proof they want. Bacteria that can make a person sick can't grow in beer.

The worst that can happen is you get an infection, your beer turns to vinegar, and you throw up if you try to chug it like you would trying to slug down a bottle of balsamic.
 
If they won't drink your beer, more for you. I've encountered this before with everything I've made, someone won't eat it or drink it because of concerns for their safety. If my consuming it and coming away perfectly fine doesn't prove it to them, that's their hangup, not mine. Let them eat their processed junk and drink their swill, that's what they want and it's what they deserve. Enjoy your homebrew and start looking around for people who appreciate the things in life that you appreciate. It's not hard to find fellow homebrewers. They tend to hang out at homebrew shops. They make really good friends, I've found, and they can usually follow a conversation even when you start geeking out over beer and brewing.
 
Well, you have access to google, yeah? Sit them around the computer and search "is home brewed beer safe to drink?" and get them edjumicated.
 
Well, I've tried just about everything you suggested already. They said that they needed solid tangible Proof that it is safe to drink. If anyone can suggest what I can do, please tell me.

If you have tried all that, showed them that you are not dead, and they still need more proof it is time to give up!
 
I'll just add on to my previous post.

My best friend, whom I've known since the third grade, is a big sweet mead and sweet cider fan. He likes beers occasionally but mostly just sticks to his sweet drinks. We've gone back and forth about this since we started discovering there was this thing called alcohol and it came in forms other than Bud, Miller, Coors, and Carlo Rossi. I largely can't stand sweet things. We love the same things. I love mead and cider, but they need to be dry. We even both love gin, but he loves sweet gin like Tanqueray, I love dry gin like Beefeater or Bombay Sapphire. He drinks white wine, I drink dry reds.

For us it isn't a matter of fear. He and I will frequently challenge each other to eat really bizarre stuff, watch Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods together and comment on what way we'd prepare whatever he's eating, etc. We both cooked in restaurants, we've both had food poisoning from improperly prepared food at least twice, and we've learned what we're doing. However, there are things he won't eat because of his own tastes and boundaries, and there are things I won't eat because of my own tastes and boundaries. Despite both of us eating these things without any observable negative consequences, there are things we simply will not eat.

Sometimes taboos are just so hard-wired that it becomes an act of truly epic willpower to overcome them, an act taken when the choice is between life or death, and under no other circumstances. Sometimes not even death is enough. We all have hangups, they vary from person to person but they're there.

So yeah. Let your friends enjoy whatever it is they will drink. They can't get over the inner block that's preventing them from enjoying what you have made. It really sucks, but that's ultimately their problem and you can't really invest that much energy into getting them to overcome it. That's their job, and it sounds like they're just not willing to take the leap. If you need to share your beer, find people who are into homebrew and share among them, enter competitions and make friends while there, join a homebrew club, or something like that. It's terrible not being able to share stuff with the folks you care about because they won't accept it, it's discouraging and it's kind of insulting, but it ultimately doesn't mean your product isn't worth it. It just means they're not the ones whose opinions you need to worry about in this particular instance.
 
You can definitely get methanol from fermentation. It's just in very small concentrations. The reason it is a problem with distillation is that it boils off early and in much more concentrated form.

Yep - Moonshiners need to toss the first few gallons of hooch because it has high concentrations of methanol. After that its good to go.
 
Well, I've tried just about everything you suggested already. They said that they needed solid tangible Proof that it is safe to drink. If anyone can suggest what I can do, please tell me.

There's only two possibilities left.

1) Your friends are dicks.
2) Your beer is not good.
 
i have the total opposite problem.. my friends don't care how it was made as long as it taste like beer. they've never expressed any care about sanitation and have no idea its a very important part of making beer.. to them i am a wizard with a magical beer/alcoholic beverage wand i just wave around and drinks are formed!! to them if it comes out of a tap it must be good, only pros can have taps right? lol
i go off on rants about beer making and they loose concentration after about 2 mins
 
I have a few friends that pulled this on me last year and I haven't offered a single taste to them since. Its called ENVY. Someone you know sees you doing something and wants to downplay it because they are not doing it themselves. They don't want to try it because they are afraid that they might like it and that would somehow place you up on a higher level than themselves. People today have lost the ability to compliment others that are doing things they cannot.
I have offered my homebrew to true friends (non haters) and they were very grateful and offered some thoughts on how they thought it tasted. I believe that your friends are indeed HATERS!
Also, if someone tries your brew and doesn't like it, criticizes and tells you what they don't like about it, they are not a hater.
However, if someone has never tried your homebrew and defaults to something asinine like "i don't want to go blind" or "i don't want to die" they are true-life HATERS!
 
They've heard stories that moonshine could kill you or make you go blind if the moonshiner didn't do it right. And that's absolutely true. . . .

That's actually not true. Sure, the "heads" of a distillation will have a higher than normal concentration of methanol, but not enough to irreparably harm anyone. And those will have been discarded anyway if it's anything you'd actually want to drink.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-05/fyi-can-drinking-moonshine-really-make-me-go-blind

The trouble came about during prohibition when people were trying to "re-nature" industrial alcohols that were readily available. There was a pretty enlightening story about it in Slate a while back:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html
 
Is this a philosophical debate? Are your friends testing your ability to prove a negative, in the face of evidence spanning millions of non-commercial beer-drinkers throughout thousands of years of history?

Call logical fallacy bullsh!t on their butts, then offer them a nice home brew as their booby prize.
 
Also:

Do your friends eat yogurt? Ew gross, that stuff is chock-full of Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus!

Cheese? Yuck-o, there's a whole cavalcade of molds and other critters living in that nasty stuff.

Do your friends realize that not all bacteria and yeast are bad? I'm not knocking the modern advances in hygiene and sanitization (yay plumbing, yay sanitation) but sometimes I wonder if Clorox and Lysol ads are making us way too paranoid about living in a world chock-full of microorganisms.
 
Also:

Do your friends eat yogurt? Ew gross, that stuff is chock-full of Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus!

Cheese? Yuck-o, there's a whole cavalcade of molds and other critters living in that nasty stuff.

Do your friends realize that not all bacteria and yeast are bad? I'm not knocking the modern advances in hygiene and sanitization (yay plumbing, yay sanitation) but sometimes I wonder if Clorox and Lysol ads are making us way too paranoid about living in a world chock-full of microorganisms.

Ooo. But as long as you eat totally dead food you never have to deal with any of those gross microorganisms. Minute rice, wonder bread, pasteurized cheese product, cold cuts, canned vegetables, pasteurized fruit juices, meat cooked until charcoal, and wash it all down with ultra-pasteurized BMC. Yum yum.

Give me living food any day. I ferment my drink, I ferment my food.

Sanitation good, sterilization bad.
 
Your article says it is. And it is.

Read a little further. Paragraph 3 starts with:

Methanol is a byproduct of alcohol distillation, but only forms in tiny, non-toxic amounts during regular distillation, . . .

It then goes on to cite some recent incidents which were due to people either deliberately spiking their product with methanol, or using old radiators as condensors and leaching antifreeze and lead out of them.

Think of it this way, a pint of 5% beer has roughly the same alcohol as a shot, right? So even if the distillation process yielded a shot that had 10 times the normal ratio of methanol to ethanol, you'd get the same amount in 10 beers, right? If that were true, I think a lot of us would have ended up blind after over-indulging at a homebrew party.
 
Tenspeed said:
Ooo. But as long as you eat totally dead food you never have to deal with any of those gross microorganisms. Minute rice, wonder bread, pasteurized cheese product, cold cuts, canned vegetables, pasteurized fruit juices, meat cooked until charcoal, and wash it all down with ultra-pasteurized BMC. Yum yum.

Give me living food any day. I ferment my drink, I ferment my food.

Sanitation good, sterilization bad.

+1. I prefer my steaks still moo-ing. Cooked for 30 seconds each side just to warm it up... I think people are paranoid About germs because maybe they had sheltered lives? I've got my fair of cuts, scars, skin rubbed off, dirt in my blood just like most boys growing up and I'm fine.
But back to the op, if they truly will not try it after everything you've told them about it being safe, sanitary and delicious, you've invited them to a brew day? Then maybe GOOD beer isn't for them? Or you could bottle in a brew they like and trick them?
 
Read a little further. Paragraph 3 starts with:



It then goes on to cite some recent incidents which were due to people either deliberately spiking their product with methanol, or using old radiators as condensors and leaching antifreeze and lead out of them.

Think of it this way, a pint of 5% beer has roughly the same alcohol as a shot, right? So even if the distillation process yielded a shot that had 10 times the normal ratio of methanol to ethanol, you'd get the same amount in 10 beers, right? If that were true, I think a lot of us would have ended up blind after over-indulging at a homebrew party.

the higher the % you bring your mash to the more methanol is created, its basically non existent in beers. but you start to get some in wine. turbo yeast can bring abv up to 20% but its makes alot more methenol.
so that's not exactly true
 
Also:

Do your friends eat yogurt? Ew gross, that stuff is chock-full of Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus!

Cheese? Yuck-o, there's a whole cavalcade of molds and other critters living in that nasty stuff.

Do your friends realize that not all bacteria and yeast are bad? I'm not knocking the modern advances in hygiene and sanitization (yay plumbing, yay sanitation) but sometimes I wonder if Clorox and Lysol ads are making us way too paranoid about living in a world chock-full of microorganisms.

Nice post. You ever read a James Herriot book? He was an English veterinarian and later author of many books in the mid 1900's.

He once wrote about a man whose living was disposing of dead cows. Long story short, the "cow disposer's" (I'm sure there is a correct name) children climbed on the dead cow's carcasses and bones for fun.

The kids were healthy as hale. JH's theory in a nut shell. With exposure to those germs the children built immunity to them. I'm sure there is cutoff point.

If you have any love for animals and have the time pick up a few James Herriots books. "All Creatures Great and Small" is a good place to begin.
 
Drink a gallon of homebrew infront of them and show them it has absolutly no effect on you :drunk:
 
It then goes on to cite some recent incidents which were due to people either deliberately spiking their product with methanol, or using old radiators as condensors and leaching antifreeze and lead out of them.

Yes, but it also makes the assumption that the concentrated methanol and other unpleasant/unsafe compounds were properly removed by a conscientious distiller. That's part of the problem. Obviously, distilling can be done safely---no one disputes the safety of commercially distilled spirits. Thus, if done properly at home, it's safe. The entire issue is whether you can trust that the moonshiner is, in fact, using proper equipment and techniques.

I don't know how wrong one would have to go in order to make poisonous bathtub gin, but there does seem to be a bit more to the idea that distilling carries real dangers. The fact that it's illegal in my jurisdiction is enough to keep me away.
 
Zeg,

First, let me say I am also neither advocating for, nor actively distilling anything at home. I'd have little interest in it even if it were legal since I don't have the patience to age anything for several years. However, since this old wives' tale apparently bleeds over into people's perceptions of homebrewing, I feel like we should be trying to debunk it, rather than following along.

If you read the article carefully, it says that it's produced in non-toxic amounts which can be eliminated entirely by disposing of the foreshots. It goes on to conclude:
That’s another way of saying that while the distillation process is inherently safe (and easy enough to make even safer through the discarding of any trace methanol that may have formed early in the process) there are various external factors [intentional and unintentional contamination] that can make the finished product decidedly dangerous to consume.

Doing a little more research, it seems that the only way methanol can be formed during fermentation is if methyl esters are present - as they are in many fruits and berries. Thus the higher methanol content of wine vs. beer that Greenbasterd alluded to. So I will grant that it could be theoretically possible - albeit highly unlikely - to produce a dangerous brandy. However, it seems that fermentation of grains or pure sugars will produce zero methanol, and thus most rotgut produced by even the most careless moonshiner would be safe (so long as you're not using old truck parts in your still).

http://homedistiller.org/intro/methanol/methanol
http://moonshine-still.com/distillation-purity/

I guess I'll stop now lest this turn into a "distillation" thread and get the lock. I'll just end by saying that I encourage everyone to research for themselves and see what you find instead of believing what your grandmother told you about the hooch they bought in the '30s.
 
My grandma was one of the best shiners I ever knew. Her keg charred moon was clear & smooth. I litterally cut teeth on it. she had this cut lil smile when p[op told her I liked it when my teeth would hurt comin in. some things are so dear you never forget them. She was hard to get next to,but once you did she was a friend for life. Her ...let me see...grandpa was the Apache chief. she looked like she could be Geronimo's sister. From what I've found,he could be my 3 times removed uncle. she had the same sort of way about her. A hard worker,she would make the best batch of whiskey or cherry wine you ever had. Easy to drink & get you,as pop used to be so fond of saying...higher than a Georgia pine. I learned pretty early on what he ment.
Where I'm going with this diatribe is simple. I grew up from a toddler on home distilled & fermented spiruits & wines. And I'm here,healthy as can be at middle age from hard manual labor all my life. If they still won't drink it,I'
ll personally get together with you & them & explain it in simple terms as well as scientific. I also got straight "A"'s in the living sciences. So much so that the teacher had me helping him with the other students. So let me talk to these small minded paranoid types. I've had enough of this yuppie BS.
 
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