(another) Alton Brown/Good Eats "Amber Waves" Episode Discussion

I personally think he might not have all the correct terminology and makes a few of us laugh at his techniques.

But if people get interested in brewing from his shows and it brings others into our community that are interested in learning to home brew.

I am all for it

fratermus said:

It's like reading Consumer Reports. Looks great until they review something you know about, then you get a "what planet are these people on?" feeling.

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This happens to me whenever MythBusters works on gun myths....or anything to do with high Performance Vehicles.

Short Drive said:

While the processes and terminology may be wrong. That particular show got me interested in home brewing. Being a chef I know better than to follow an A.B. recipe and or show. So that led me to you guys. I'll never be the same.

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I agree with Short Drive. He also got me interested in brewing.

Look, there is a lot of variability in brewing. You can do it quick and dirty, or all the way up to scientific and anal. Alton's method was based on the basics, and what a lot of people would be able to do in their kitchen. You get the gist of what's going on, and the ability to do it at home with no prior experience, and it's pretty entertaining as well.

Now, is it the be-all-end-all of brewing? Not even close, but the show is not supposed to make master brewers, but to introduce brewing to the common person. If he included much more technical info, it would be put-offing to the everyman. It's a good episode to get people interested in brewing, and to show how easy it can be to make your own beer.

polarbearbrewing said:

...do i know the proper way to cook a souffle (sp?) no...does alton? your guess is as good as mine

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In defense of Alton, he's much better at making souffles than beer. I've made his souffle recipe many times, it's great. I add a pound of drained, frozen spinach, otherwise it's his recipe exactly.

BlindLemonLars said:

In defense of Alton, he's much better at making souffles than beer. I've made his souffle recipe many times, it's great. I add a pound of drained, frozen spinach, otherwise it's his recipe exactly.

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Now that looks good. That would pair nicely in the summer with a malty light brown ale. Maybe even a strong porter on a cold winter day.

I've tried making his ice cream and it was great. I'm gearing up to try his pulled pork too. I wish I could afford to spend hundreds on a cooker, but $30 will get r done too. Plus, I get the science behind why to cook it that way.

Ever see the episode where he dresses up like the Holy Grail knight? He has a Patsy following him with coconuts and all! Hilarious!

I don't have food network, and have never heard of Alton Brown, so all this banter and bitching about him is rather amusing to me.

Homercidal said:

Look, there is a lot of variability in brewing. You can do it quick and dirty, or all the way up to scientific and anal. Alton's method was based on the basics, and what a lot of people would be able to do in their kitchen. You get the gist of what's going on, and the ability to do it at home with no prior experience, and it's pretty entertaining as well.

Now, is it the be-all-end-all of brewing? Not even close, but the show is not supposed to make master brewers, but to introduce brewing to the common person. If he included much more technical info, it would be put-offing to the everyman. It's a good episode to get people interested in brewing, and to show how easy it can be to make your own beer.

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THIS. Couldn't have said it better.

Overall a good episode and I've heard a lot of new brewers say it got them interested, so mission accomplished.

I do like Good Eats. Made the overnight cinnamon rolls the other day, turned out amazingly well...wife was very impressed.

I suppose I'm reviving a dead thread, but I figured I'd put my $0.02 in, since I wasn't a member back when the discussion was going on:

I love the show, and have seen every episode (up through the beginning of season 12) multiple times. I think it's great for learning cooking techniques and the science behind why food behaves the way it does and why recipes are formulated the way that they are.

On the other hand, I don't really trust his recipes. I've made three of them: The baked tomato sauce, the broccoli casserole, and the plain bread (from Dr. Strangeloaf). The tomato sauce was awful, the broccoli casserole would probably have been good if I'd used ranch instead of blue cheese dressing, and the bread, although quite good, was plain.

I have, however, made quite a few recipes based on his techniques, such as pouch cooking fish. I've even adopted his knife wielding style, since it offers so much more control than what my mother taught me.

I like the beer episode for introducing the hobby to a huge audience, but it bugs me because it seems like he didn't do enough research to get the things right that most people get from his show: technique and food science. Well... His researchers didn't get them right (and I know he has researchers; I have a cousin who dated one briefly).

Perhaps that was more like $0.05... longer than I'd intended

AB actually corrected a lot of the mistakes with this show in his latest book "Good Eats the Early Years". He uses a muslin bag for the specialty grains and actualy removes them after steeping for 30 mins at 155 degrees, boils for an hour and has the correct hop additions. He even adds Irish moss toward the end of the boil and let's the yeast warm up to room temp before pitching the yeast. Though he still uses ice to cool the wort. I think I recall Papazian adding cold water and using bleach in TNCJOHB though heh.

also, I see in one of this season's episodes that he has a bottle of starsan in the background of his beer/wine room. Must have been a nod to the angry homebrewers out there

I'm joining the forces of the people who never thought of brewing before that episode. He may not be perfect, but at least he's not craigtube http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=sAJKWCdaPq4&feature=related

well, i'm sticking my name out there as someone who got into brewing because of AB, just a few days ago in fact!

thursday i went to the brew store and picked up the equipment AB suggested and made his recipe. Now that it's sitting in the fermenter i decided to pass time by joining you guys and read the "joy of homebrewing". Luckily I have decided to let it ferment for more than his recommended 7 days and will take in all of this newfound knowledge. I hope this batch still turns out well!!

jamezracer said:

well, i'm sticking my name out there as someone who got into brewing because of AB, just a few days ago in fact!

thursday i went to the brew store and picked up the equipment AB suggested and made his recipe. Now that it's sitting in the fermenter i decided to pass time by joining you guys and read the "joy of homebrewing". Luckily I have decided to let it ferment for more than his recommended 7 days and will take in all of this newfound knowledge. I hope this batch still turns out well!!

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Yeah, me too. I had a couple of friends in college who homebrewed but the whole process seemed mysterious and inaccessible to me. (Their beer wasn't that great either). But after watching the Amber Waves show I saw how simple it was. It's funny how quickly this show becomes cringe-worthy though. I've only got about 6 weeks under my belt and looking back on it I can already pick out all the errors. These forums are an amazing resource.

sorry to revive an old thread but as a complete noob it would be nice for someone to post a list of things he gets wrong and a list of things he gets right.

samhell said:

sorry to revive an old thread but as a complete noob it would be nice for someone to post a list of things he gets wrong and a list of things he gets right.

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that's a very good idea. My good eats brew is currently conditioning in the bottles and my second batch of beer is now in the fermenter. Just from reading this site here are the big mistakes i can now recognize:

1) AB left the specialty grains in for the boil. They should be removed after the 30 minute steep with a strainer or just put into the water in a cheesecloth/steeping bag for easy removal. Otherwise you get a horrible bitter astringency from the husks of the grains.

2) You can't use a number of days or time between bubbles as a way of checking the progress of fermentation. the best way of checking the progress is with a hydrometer which he throws away at the beginning of the episode. If the hydrometer reading is consistent for 3 straight days then it's safe to say the yeast is done converting sugar to alcohol. However, leaving it in the fermenter longer will let the yeast condition the beer and it will improve.

are there any other significant mistakes he made that can mislead noobs like me?

jamezracer said:

... are there any other significant mistakes he made that can mislead noobs like me?

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3. You should not use bleach as a sanitizer (use StarSan or Iodophor instead), because:
a. Bleach needs rinsing, which means you are washing off your protection with unsanitized water.
b. Bleach, if not properly rinsed, produces some really nasty (and strong) flavors, even in really small amounts.

4. He got a few terms wrong. I know he said "sparge" when he meant something else, but I can't remember the others or how he used them.

5. He shoved everything into his bucket to sanitize, forcefully. This could scratch the inside of the bucket, leaving places for bacteria to hide from sanitizer, leading to an infection at some point in the future. If he had used StarSan, he could mix some up and put it in a spray bottle, and just spray the larger items immediately before using them. StarSan only needs about 30 seconds of wet contact time.

Any others I'm missing? Somebody want to watch the episode again to find the misused terms?

(watched it today)

6) Poured in the LME, didnt mix, and cranked the heat to high *burn!*
7) pitched cold yeast into near 90* wort.
8) called straining the finished wort into the fermentor "sparging"
9) did like a 10 minute boil with whole leaf hops. haha, so much for extracting those AA

On Youtube:

Part 1:
Part 2:

I love how many people pick apart this show, but in reality (as many people have already mentioned) it's brought so many people to the hobby.
While Alton does make some mistakes, he also gives a great basic idea through the process.

YMMV. For me? I stopped brewing for years, but then after watching the Amber Waves, tied in with a homebrew shop opening close to home? I was back in it.

One of things AB does very well is take complex cooking techniques that usually require expensive equipment and make everything doable for a first timer with modest equipment. The guy tackled smoking meats with a cardboard box and a hot plate (and made it work). Does anyone really think he is suggesting that cardboard boxes makes the best smokers? No. But for a first timer who just wants to try it out without investing a bunch of money on gear, it makes perfect sense. If you like it, then you start investing in gear and learning in greater detail. Without that shoestring DIY approach, a lot of people would never make that first attempt.

It does make me wonder about the accuracy of other topics that I have a normal knowledge of.

From a mathematical perspective, many if not most experienced people on this forum would be in the top 0.1% of the population (that would be 310,000 in the US) when it comes to knowledge of the brewing process.

I agree with everyone. This was a good show to bring people to homebrewing and learn the very basics of it, and it obviously worked.

However, it still fun to watch him mess it up.

It would be interesting to know how many homebrewers were inspired by that episode.

I use use his turkey fryer ladder set-up in my BIAB system. Plus his pancakes are so great that I could never bash him.

I have watched and have been inspired by AB's good eats episodes to try out some of his contraptions. I especially liked the and the clay pot . Watching his amber waves episode was disappointing, but until I saw this thread I had never seen it before. Alton is human after all and not Spock's third cousin. Glad I didnt learn brewing from AB. Still love the AB just not this episode..yikes

ok. Speaking as a home brewer and huge Alton Brown fan... let's cut the guy some slack. Honestly, what do you expect from a half an hour cooking show?

Sure, he screws up some of the lingo and I would probably be hard pressed to actually drink the beer that he brewed on that episode, but I'm also willing to bet that that episode may have introduced a few people to the concept of home brewing that may have known nothing about it, beforehand. I know, for me, I saw Emeril Lagassi (or however the hell you spell his name) make some beer on TV once, about 10 years ago and, though I don't remember the details I'm sure they were way off, too, but seeing it done on tv like that was enough to spark my interest and see how easy it really is to get started.

If you try it and like it, you are going to want to learn more, branch out, and seek more reputable, in-depth sources of information and improve, from there.

I look at this episode as more of an advertisement, than anything else; it was an opportunity to spark interest in home brewing with a larger, more general audience.

rockytop714 said:

ok. Speaking as a home brewer and huge Alton Brown fan... let's cut the guy some slack. Honestly, what do you expect from a half an hour cooking show?

Sure, he screws up some of the lingo and I would probably be hard pressed to actually drink the beer that he brewed on that episode, but I'm also willing to bet that that episode may have introduced a few people to the concept of home brewing that may have known nothing about it, beforehand. I know, for me, I saw Emeril Lagassi (or however the hell you spell his name) make some beer on TV once, about 10 years ago and, though I don't remember the details I'm sure they were way off, too, but seeing it done on tv like that was enough to spark my interest and see how easy it really is to get started.

If you try it and like it, you are going to want to learn more, branch out, and seek more reputable, in-depth sources of information and improve, from there.

I look at this episode as more of an advertisement, than anything else; it was an opportunity to spark interest in home brewing with a larger, more general audience.

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Hell, I saw it when I was still starting out and knew (a little) better. I was not offended by it though recognized shoving the lid in the bucket was a bad idea. Hopefully since it is a short show most people will google search home brewing and go from there rather thank taking AB's advice at face value. Everyone, ourselves included, are biased on process and they are not necessarily the ideal methods.

I just prefer to think that that episode did more help for homebrewing than the BWW commercial hurt.

I wasn't going to post on this thread but as someone else resurrected it I might as well.

Some of his ideas are useful. As Revvy pointed out, using his drying suggestions works great with hops. I've also added vanilla beans to corn sugar per his advice (he does so with cane sugar but I'd recommend this just the same for that hint of vanilla flavor) although I tried it once with DME and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're going to boil the bean too. I even used his rice method to do rice wine earlier this year to make sure I didn't sneak in any burnt pieces.

That said, I can also add two people who got interested in homebrewing because of the Amber Waves episode. I was at work when they started talking about making their own beer after seeing an episode of his and we talked more about it and they're both still brewing today (in Alabama no less although I can't verify they started before 2 weeks ago. ). I went back later and watched the episode and viewed it more as comedy than anything else but it really only takes a few deviations to make decent beer. As was mentioned above taking the steeping grains out before boiling prevents astringency. Being too rough with the fermenter is a bad idea but I'd argue that I only made 2 or 3 batches in a bucket before switching to carboys. With that in mind, the bucket was only a stepping stone. I have zero issue with the bleach and have apparently just been really lucky with using it as it's all I used for years until investing (splurging) in starsan a couple years ago. All in all though, I thought he did a reasonably decent job of demystifying the idea of the process. I consider it in the same general tone as the Mr. Beer kits that helped introduced numerous current brewers to the hobby.