Superstitious brewers

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demonrichie

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Is anyone here superstitious about their brewing days? Do you have a certain band you have to listen to while brewing or be wearing a lucky shirt? I only ask because when I brewed with my buddy we had to listen to System of a down and somehow when we didnt something would go wrong. Im getting my own equipment and part of that list is a couple of SOAD cds. am i crazy or are there more of us superstitious brewers out there? whats your particular superstition
 
I think your crazy.

J/k ;)
But I do think that some music makes people concentrate more or feel a certain way. It might be that you both concentrate more because of the music. maybe a more mild type of music makes you not think or concetnrate as much?

I know my brother couldn't do his homework unless he had some heavy metal going. it was so busy he had to really pay attention to what he was reading or writing.
 
i see your point coy it makes sense i just thought thered be more ppl on here like me and artyboy we all worry about our brews so much yet youd think thered be more ppl with rituals
 
I have to wear my 5th SFG hat and listen to Grateful Dead or Bon Iver or The National ...LOL but i have to have my brewing hat
 
I usually wear the same t-shirt and pair of jeans every time I brew, but this is not because of superstition. That outfit is f*cking stained like crazy and I'd like to avoid ruining any other clothing.
 
I usually wear the same t-shirt and pair of jeans every time I brew, but this is not because of superstition. That outfit is f*cking stained like crazy and I'd like to avoid ruining any other clothing.

That's the main reason that I wear my ugly yellow sweatshirt.
 
I almost always drink beer while brewing.

+1. And it might be more OCD than superstition, but I always lay out every ingredient in a straight line before starting my mash water.

As far as music...no superstition, I just always listen to 3 days grace or similar (thank you pandora/slacker radio)
 
I for sure drink lots of beer and listen to blues jam band like gov't mule. I also make my German Shepherd Marshall hang out in the garage/brewery with me. It wouldnt be brew day without one of the above.
 
i aint superstitious about it, but i drink some past homebrews while doing anything to do with brewing. just seems like the right thing to do
 
+1 on drinking past cold brews and +1 on the straight line thing.....bit of OCD on my part, but I feel organization and cleanliness pay proper dues to the beer gods. Also, no brewing is goin' down if the snap~on mechanics roll around stool is absent from the garage....so I guess I have a few.
 
If came to listening to System of a Down or having a crappy brew day, I'd be having a lot of crappy brew days :)

I don't think any of this OCDness counts as superstition. There's nothing wrong with a rigid system. I used to have one and it served me well. I've been brewing for 8 years now and have less of a system than I did when I first started brewing. After a while I just started shooting from the hip and found that my rigid system I got used to keeps me doing the right things now that I've given it up.
 
I always spill a bunch of stuff on myself and swear a lot. But I don't think that's really a superstition. I'm just clumsy.
 
I agree with some previous posts about drinking a beer while brewing. I tend to drink the type of beer I am making. The last batch of IPA I made I drank Nugget Nectar while brewing. It gets me excited about the creation to come.
 
I like listening to music while brewing, but I generally leave the hard stuff off while my friend is helping. Usually when he's here there is no chance of listening to music anyway.

I like to wear a beer shirt, but not one in particular. Usually, but not always, it's the White Labs shirt I won in a homebrew competition last year.

So generally I just try and have a boil-over or two and a beer or two. Not sure that's superstitions or not, but it always seem to happen.
 
I must imbibe 3 beers prior to beginning my brew day. After the 3rd beer I take a shower and rinse off with another beer. Now my aura is aligned with the creation of the brew.

I put on my Dark Brown robe and tie it with a rope. Line up all the ingredients and prep the equipment. Queue the musicians and dancing wenches and we are ready to begin!

As the music and chanting force me into a zen like trance I am unsure what happens next, all I know is that the wort has begun to boil. I then drop my first hops into the wort moving my hand in a "pentagram" motion.

We then break fast with a snack of dried nuts, fruits and smoked meats. With the thirst demon now circling about we add in or 2nd batch of hops, fire up the musicians for one last dance then add the final addition of hops.

We then force the thirst demon into our coil of cold water, It's anger helps aid in the chilling of the wort. Once the demon has been fully disoriented we force it into an effigy made of old hops vines and barley stalks. We place the effigy on the "burning stone" and transfer the wort into its "primary creation chamber" and add the yeast and place the airlock.

Next we all hold hands and chant for about 10 minutes while the "seer" calls to the spirits to be absorbed into the wort.

We then all grab a brew from a brew days past and light the effigy. We enjoy our brews and exchange stories.

When the fire of the effigy dies we then clean up all of our equipment and supplies so that to the untrained eye we would appear to have never been there.
 
I must imbibe 3 beers prior to beginning my brew day. After the 3rd beer I take a shower and rinse off with another beer. Now my aura is aligned with the creation of the brew.

I put on my Dark Brown robe and tie it with a rope. Line up all the ingredients and prep the equipment. Queue the musicians and dancing wenches and we are ready to begin!

As the music and chanting force me into a zen like trance I am unsure what happens next, all I know is that the wort has begun to boil. I then drop my first hops into the wort moving my hand in a "pentagram" motion.

We then break fast with a snack of dried nuts, fruits and smoked meats. With the thirst demon now circling about we add in or 2nd batch of hops, fire up the musicians for one last dance then add the final addition of hops.

We then force the thirst demon into our coil of cold water, It's anger helps aid in the chilling of the wort. Once the demon has been fully disoriented we force it into an effigy made of old hops vines and barley stalks. We place the effigy on the "burning stone" and transfer the wort into its "primary creation chamber" and add the yeast and place the airlock.

Next we all hold hands and chant for about 10 minutes while the "seer" calls to the spirits to be absorbed into the wort.

We then all grab a brew from a brew days past and light the effigy. We enjoy our brews and exchange stories.

When the fire of the effigy dies we then clean up all of our equipment and supplies so that to the untrained eye we would appear to have never been there.

+1. That's pretty much the same thing I do.
 
I know it's blasphemy but for me...no beer drinking until totally finished with the beer brewing. Then again, I usually dough-in between 7-8 AM (I know that's no excuse but w/e).
 
Usually, if I remember (swiss cheese memory here) have a homebrew while mashing and another during the boil. Always have the XM playing, whether it is classic rock or Opie & Anthony; but I'm not superstitious, I just know what the beer gods like... ;)
 
Usually, if I remember (swiss cheese memory here) have a homebrew while mashing and another during the boil. Always have the XM playing, whether it is classic rock or Opie & Anthony; but I'm not superstitious, I just know what the beer gods like... ;)

maybe thats it the beer gods hangin out in my buddies garage like SOAD
 
I always order a pizza delivery during the brew day - usually sometime during lautering when it occurs to me that I'm dying of starvation. It'll usually arrive during the early part of the boil. I don't know if it's superstitious, but it has gotten to be a sort of ritual for me to scarf it down while watching the wort boil. Pizza is the official food of brew day. There will be no other.
 
My SWMBO bought me a khaki pair of Dickies overalls that I wear when I brew. I used to always wear an apron but now it's the overalls. As long as the music I'm listening to is good I don't really care. I don't think there is anything superstitious about my brewing routine.
 
I try to wear galoshes over my shoes, its more of a 95% likelihood rather than superstition that I am going to spill ample amount of water on one or both feet at some point in the brew day. It looks funny though if I have to make a trip to the store wearing shorts, galoshes, and a ratty T-shirt.

I also tend to change into a clean white shirt if I have one before I get to the parts where clean equipment is important, it just makes me feel better that I won't be brushing an auto-siphon across a taco stain from earlier or something, and white lets me see dirt/hair.

Yes I thought of this thread out of the blue while I was putting on my galoshes, getting ready to make a watery mess like last night when I got my shoes wet.
 
Freeze pops. Lots of them while I brew in the FL heat. Green ones only! No freeze pops, No Brew!!
 
I put in a cup of the gunky crap left over from the previous batch; the beer won't "go" without it.

(lame riff on the "superstitions" our brewer ancestors must have had :cross:)
 
i love to grill while mashing/the boil. just feels right to have the mixing aromas of malt and meat. :rockin:
 
+1 to above. I always drink homebrew while brewing.

I usually drink homebrew too, but the supstitious/tradition part is that I tend to try and drink the last bottle of the last batch of whatever I'm making...but sometimes I'll get a commercial example of the style, or some of what I'm cloning or what inspired my recipe.
 
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