How many bits of bad information in this article?

Looking at Ehow.com and saw this article about how to brew beer. Saw a few pieces of not so great advice... thought I'd see how many we could collectively spot.
How to Make Beer | eHow.com

Place the fermenter in a dark place at room temperature. Allow it to sit until air bubbles stop bubbling through the airlock. Your liquid is now beer

Add ¼ cup of sugar to the beer in the bottling bucket and stir well.

Doesn't seem like much to me.

Not really much. I'd like to find the large liquor store that sold homebrewing ingredients and recipe kits, and what the heck is wert?

I dunno....doesn't look like a terrible list intended for someone just getting peeked at making their first home brew. Sure, that person reading won't get educated about the process of fermentation or that conditioning your beer improves it. But the person thinking about getting into it just wants to see what making a batch is like....the specifics/ intricacies of the process are something that comes along with experience. From what I remember of my first ever brew: it didn't have very many steps beyond what this list recommends (I think I remember racking to secondary and trying to see what dry hopping was).

I still think that "Home Brewing the Easy Way" on youtube is the most "un-beerlike" techniques for brewing I've ever seen. But hey, Craig and his followers like their concoctions: so more power to them. They have their beer, and I have my finely aged imperial stout on tap

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAJKWCdaPq4&feature=related]YouTube - Home brewing the easy way part 1[/ame]

I thought the let it sit until the bubbles stop wasn't good advice because there's no indication that bottling that soon could be a way to make bottle bombs, or some pretty low abv batches. I also thought the "stir it well but try not to mix too much air in it" to be rather lacking.

McKBrew said:

Not really much. I'd like to find the large liquor store that sold homebrewing ingredients and recipe kits, and what the heck is wert?

Click to expand...

Yeah I picked up on the wert spelling as well..

BUT there is a large liquor store here in Port Huron that has an aisle of beer and wine making supplies (1 pound bags of grain, coopers and wine kits, a few packets of dry yeast gear and a limited supply of hops (but when the do get them in they are still selling them at pre-shortage prices.)

It's one of the 3 places I can get stuff in town..the other two are a small LHBS that grinds grain, and a make your own wine shop...THe nice thing about the liquor store is that they are open late...nothing like being able to grab a bag of Crown Caps late on a Sunday night when the other places are closed.

The instructions even say leave beer 2-3 weeks before drinking...so you know I like that one.

But they do promote the use airlock as fermentation gauge stuff....which means we'd get a bunch of "stuck fermentation" threads on here...

Boiling pre-hopped extract for an hour? What's the point? Better to boil the liquor, take it off the heat, stir in the extract (dry & hopped syrup). Done. Quicker, too.

Wert. Pfaugh.

0.25 cups of sugar? Insufficient.

Add priming sugar solution to the bottling bucket first, to avoid having to stir.

And the whole "airlock as fermentation gauge" thing.

All in all, it's not too bad as 'lies to children' go. You can make fresh, tasty beer like that. I did, lo these many years ago, and I still make the odd "tin and some DME" beer (I call it "Summer Swill"!).

Bob

P.S. 'Lies to children' is a concept put forward as an approach to understanding science by Cohen & Stewart. Google it if you're interested.

People, there are a few problems with the page, but although we all know not to use the airlock as a gauge, many do. I think that if they had mentioned that people should buy a "hydrometer", then it might scare people from trying to make beer.

I think the instructions are intended to make the average person off the street able to brew beer without having to buy any more equipment than necessary.

No excuse for spelling it "wert" though.

Homercidal said:

No excuse for spelling it "wert" though.

Click to expand...

Yeah, really! Everyone knows that werts is whut frogs give you! Like, DUH!
</sarcasm>

Hey, don't stop reading before you get to the 2 comments at the bottom of the article....

this is my favorite:

"allow it to cool to 70 degrees F"

(no mention of ice bath or IC)

Yeah, that was one of the things that caught my eye too... I think it might have been better to say "cool to 70 degrees as quickly as possible" or something similar. I can just see people deciding that it'll get to 70 by the next morning if they just leave it alone.... or how about people who live where it doesn't get down to 70?