Funny things you've overheard about beer

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Do people really buy sht like this?.... 200$ to make bubbles..... ok

chocolate-milk-blog1.jpg
 
What efficiency are you assuming? I bet his was lower than what you used. And why British yeast? Why not bread yeast? And/or bacteria that would take it down to a lower gravity.

This is why homebrew has a bad rep!

The mash efficiency is a bit academic when all you're doing is crystal malt and table sugar. That's just a big-ass steep :)

I assume British beer yeast because the author is British and actually does make a big point in using beer yeast and says that in the bad old days (which are thankfully long past, according to him) people used bread yeast and what a bad idea that is.

Bacteria taking the gravity down actually might make sense. He actually has instructions that are impossible to follow without accidental infection!
 
After talking to a newer coworker of mine, I heard a comment I just didn't know how to respond. Somehow the subject of a brew day came up and led to beer and all that. And he started off with what I thought was going to be a seemingly old stand by "I just don't like dark beer, I've tried some and, " what I was expecting was the whole conversation about how Guinness isn't really heavy or aggressive and all but what I got was. " I mean Bud Platinum is just way to dark for my tastes so I haven't ventured much past that."

I was utterly lost for words, having admittedly never had Bud Platinum, all I could do was ask what he meant and change the subject.
 
After talking to a newer coworker of mine, I heard a comment I just didn't know how to respond. Somehow the subject of a brew day came up and led to beer and all that. And he started off with what I thought was going to be a seemingly old stand by "I just don't like dark beer, I've tried some and, " what I was expecting was the whole conversation about how Guinness isn't really heavy or aggressive and all but what I got was. " I mean Bud Platinum is just way to dark for my tastes so I haven't ventured much past that."

I was utterly lost for words, having admittedly never had Bud Platinum, all I could do was ask what he meant and change the subject.


He must be comparing it to Bud Light. Only Bud light.
 
The Mrs and I stopped at a convenience store at the edge of town. I parked in the shade out back and the Mrs. was going in to pick up a couple of things. She asked if I wanted something to drink for the hour+ drive home. Staring out the driver's side window I said, "Bud Platinum". She knew I was not serious, shook her head and went inside. Meanwhile I got out and picked up all the empty blue bottles scattered under the trees, stuffed them in their box and set it alongside the locked dumpster 100 feet away. I guess I should be pleased that the bottles weren't broken all over the asphalt rather than disappointed that they were scattered under the trees.
 
The Mrs and I stopped at a convenience store at the edge of town. I parked in the shade out back and the Mrs. was going in to pick up a couple of things. She asked if I wanted something to drink for the hour+ drive home. Staring out the driver's side window I said, "Bud Platinum". She knew I was not serious, shook her head and went inside. Meanwhile I got out and picked up all the empty blue bottles scattered under the trees, stuffed them in their box and set it alongside the locked dumpster 100 feet away. I guess I should be pleased that the bottles weren't broken all over the asphalt rather than disappointed that they were scattered under the trees.

You know that you can recap those blue bottles.........but you can't get the labels off to save your a$$, and who wants to have any one see that you actually used those bottles.

:mug:
 
After talking to a newer coworker of mine, I heard a comment I just didn't know how to respond. Somehow the subject of a brew day came up and led to beer and all that. And he started off with what I thought was going to be a seemingly old stand by "I just don't like dark beer, I've tried some and, " what I was expecting was the whole conversation about how Guinness isn't really heavy or aggressive and all but what I got was. " I mean Bud Platinum is just way to dark for my tastes so I haven't ventured much past that."

I was utterly lost for words, having admittedly never had Bud Platinum, all I could do was ask what he meant and change the subject.


Bud platinum is too dark? Compared to what? Zima?
 
The Mrs and I stopped at a convenience store at the edge of town. I parked in the shade out back and the Mrs. was going in to pick up a couple of things. She asked if I wanted something to drink for the hour+ drive home. Staring out the driver's side window I said, "Bud Platinum". She knew I was not serious, shook her head and went inside. Meanwhile I got out and picked up all the empty blue bottles scattered under the trees, stuffed them in their box and set it alongside the locked dumpster 100 feet away. I guess I should be pleased that the bottles weren't broken all over the asphalt rather than disappointed that they were scattered under the trees.

Nominated for the Best Hemmingway-style Post in a Beer Forum Competition. :tank:
 
You know that you can recap those blue bottles.........but you can't get the labels off to save your a$$, and who wants to have any one see that you actually used those bottles.

:mug:

I was worried enough about contracting chicken herpes or an unidentified lip fungus just picking them up. Didn't even think about trying to clean, sanitize and then *shudder* drink homebrew that had been in them. I'm a little nauseous thinking about it now, days later.
 
The Mrs and I stopped at a convenience store at the edge of town. I parked in the shade out back and the Mrs. was going in to pick up a couple of things. She asked if I wanted something to drink for the hour+ drive home. Staring out the driver's side window I said, "Bud Platinum". She knew I was not serious, shook her head and went inside. Meanwhile I got out and picked up all the empty blue bottles scattered under the trees, stuffed them in their box and set it alongside the locked dumpster 100 feet away. I guess I should be pleased that the bottles weren't broken all over the asphalt rather than disappointed that they were scattered under the trees.

Nominated for the Best Hemmingway-style Post in a Beer Forum Competition. :tank:
I was thinking something similar, but more along the lines of "...and that's how one writes when one is not completely sober, but not wasted either." Which I suppose describes Hemingway... :drunk:
 
I was thinking something similar, but more along the lines of "...and that's how one writes when one is not completely sober, but not wasted either." Which I suppose describes Hemingway... :drunk:

I was rethinking Gary's posts from yesterday as a Faulkner/Cormac McCarthy stream of consciousness style dystopian brewing western just last night. I got a headache, fixed it with beer. Then I read a McCarthy book. On the molecular level.
 
And more adventures in Homebrew Without Failure: cutting edge brewing in 1965.

The first lager recipe is the first one to include any form of base malt whatsoever. Well that's a form of progress at least.

Pretty similar to the ale, an eight hour mash in a plastic bucket at 150 degrees. 3.5 pounds of white sugar in a four gallon batch.

What's interesting here is that the author seems to have no clue what a lager is. There's no mention of using different yeast and you're specifically instructed to "leave in a warm place" (emphasis added) while fermenting.

There's also a dark lager. It's dark because it has treacle and brown sugar in it, the necessary ingredients of any dark beer!

And then there's the pale ale. Oh **** me, he's breaking his own records on the sugar usage.

For a 4 gallon batch the ingredients are: 2 lb crystal malt, 2 lb pale malt, 5 lb sugar, 6 oz hops, teaspoon salt, 1/2 oz citric acid, yeast, nutrient

Making some rather ass-pull assumptions for the recipe (how do you calculate the IBUs of a ten minute hop "simmer"? and am arbitrarily choosing some 15l crystal for his generic "crystal malt") we get the following results:

Original gravity: 1.085 Final Gravity: 1.021 ABV: 8.32% IBU: 42.13 SRM: 6.61 Matches Style: **** no

And remember, don't bottle it until it hits a FG of 1.005! How, I'm not quite sure.

After reading his booze-bomb pale ale recipe it's interesting to go back and read his lecture against high ABV beer in favor of moderate session ones.

One interesting thing about this book (aside from me learning that a dessertspoon is an actual unit of measurement) is his hop simmering. He uses a plenty of hops (6 oz for 4 gallons of pale ale) but mostly just simmers them instead of boiling them (one minute boil, add 4 oz hops, 40 minute simmer, add 2 oz hops, ten minute simmer). It seems to be getting more and more popular to get hop flavor out of hops in ways aside from boiling them (first wort, dry hopping, hop stand, etc. etc. I just read about someone having good results adding hops to the MASH and then taking them out with the grains, with good reported results). This guy is wrong about so many things, but could he actually be on to something about the hops?

As an alternative to a hop stand, could you put in bunch of hops and simmer them for a while like this guy does (either never boiling any hops at all or doing a one minute boil like he does) or just put lots and lots into the mash and leave it at that? Seems like that'd save time if you're doing stove top brewing, as it takes a while to bring the mash water up to a boil. Maybe something worth trying as an experiment, I've got two pounds of high AA hops coming in the mail soon and plan to brew up some saisons because I don't have a good temp control system and I shouldn't have to do much of anything to some summit hops to get enough AAs out of them for a saison considering that has AAs in the upper teens.
 
And more adventures in Homebrew Without Failure: cutting edge brewing in 1965.

The first lager recipe is the first one to include any form of base malt whatsoever. Well that's a form of progress at least.

Pretty similar to the ale, an eight hour mash in a plastic bucket at 150 degrees. 3.5 pounds of white sugar in a four gallon batch.

What's interesting here is that the author seems to have no clue what a lager is. There's no mention of using different yeast and you're specifically instructed to "leave in a warm place" (emphasis added) while fermenting.

There's also a dark lager. It's dark because it has treacle and brown sugar in it, the necessary ingredients of any dark beer!

And then there's the pale ale. Oh **** me, he's breaking his own records on the sugar usage.

For a 4 gallon batch the ingredients are: 2 lb crystal malt, 2 lb pale malt, 5 lb sugar, 6 oz hops, teaspoon salt, 1/2 oz citric acid, yeast, nutrient

Making some rather ass-pull assumptions for the recipe (how do you calculate the IBUs of a ten minute hop "simmer"? and am arbitrarily choosing some 15l crystal for his generic "crystal malt") we get the following results:

Original gravity: 1.085 Final Gravity: 1.021 ABV: 8.32% IBU: 42.13 SRM: 6.61 Matches Style: **** no

And remember, don't bottle it until it hits a FG of 1.005! How, I'm not quite sure.

After reading his booze-bomb pale ale recipe it's interesting to go back and read his lecture against high ABV beer in favor of moderate session ones.

One interesting thing about this book (aside from me learning that a dessertspoon is an actual unit of measurement) is his hop simmering. He uses a plenty of hops (6 oz for 4 gallons of pale ale) but mostly just simmers them instead of boiling them (one minute boil, add 4 oz hops, 40 minute simmer, add 2 oz hops, ten minute simmer). It seems to be getting more and more popular to get hop flavor out of hops in ways aside from boiling them (first wort, dry hopping, hop stand, etc. etc. I just read about someone having good results adding hops to the MASH and then taking them out with the grains, with good reported results). This guy is wrong about so many things, but could he actually be on to something about the hops?

As an alternative to a hop stand, could you put in bunch of hops and simmer them for a while like this guy does or just put lots and lots into the mash and leave it at that? Seems like that'd save time if you're doing stove top brewing, as it takes a while to bring the mash water up to a boil. Maybe something worth trying as an experiment.

Someone needs to brew some of these recipes and report back.
 
Someone needs to brew some of these recipes and report back.

My father did back when I was a kid. He'll be visiting in two weeks so I can get some information about how they worked out from him and which recipe he used. We had a saison once together and he said his old homebrew tasted a lot like that, which seems to indicate that he fermented hot and that the yeast esters drowned out the oh my god, you used THAT much sugar booziness.
 
And more adventures in Homebrew Without Failure: cutting edge brewing in 1965...

<snip>

These are great posts. Someone on the HBT team needs to collect these and showcase them in their own permanent thread, like a weird sort of museum exhibit.

Please, keep them coming, when you can!

:)
 
I was worried enough about contracting chicken herpes or an unidentified lip fungus just picking them up. Didn't even think about trying to clean, sanitize and then *shudder* drink homebrew that had been in them. I'm a little nauseous thinking about it now, days later.

I once saw Les Shroud squeeze water right from a pile of elephant crap into his mouth. If that doesn't kill a person, cleaning and sanitizing a blue bottle found under a tree, behind a convenient store, really doesn't scare me, even with the chicken herpes! However, having to explain to someone why I have Bud Platinum bottles in my possession does. Oh, the horror!

What does that say about my character? Have I become a beer snob? Oh, the horror!

:mug:
 
One interesting thing about this book (aside from me learning that a dessertspoon is an actual unit of measurement) is his hop simmering. He uses a plenty of hops (6 oz for 4 gallons of pale ale) but mostly just simmers them instead of boiling them

Isn't a "simmer" just a gentle boil anyway? From a temperature point of view, the liquid is still at 212° F (100° C) in both cases, the only difference is the rate at which the liquid is being converted to steam. As far as hop utilization goes, wouldn't there be no difference?

I mean, there are other reasons you want a vigorous boil (I guess... the only one I can think of is to increase boil-off rate and concentrate the wort), but anything dependent on temperature (alpha acid isomerization, protein coagulation, etc.) shouldn't care whether it's a rolling boil or a gentle simmer, right?
 
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