Alton Brown - Homebrew - You Tube

Part I of II:
[youtube]Vlv1wBy7Z5w[/youtube]

part II of II:

[youtube]HA7jQ6Wwnqk[/youtube]

My take - relative n00b with about a dozen brews under my belt - he is going to end up with beer; but could (and probably would - I do admire Alton) do better next time.

Discuss

This has actually been discussed ad nauseam here before. Do a search for "Alton" - he's everywhere!

Most of us agree that he could do a lot better, but his show and a copy of TCJOHB were what sparked my interest in the hobby, so I can't badmouth him too much!

I saw the discussion, several of them, had to go find it to see what all the fuss was about.

This time there are links to the actual program in thread.

Also, someone more polite than me might be able to get those links into the Mr. Beer sticky without having the goblin delete my sarcasm.

Thank you Yuri.

First off, let me say that I love alton. He is the reason that I love to cook now. He also resparked my interest in home brewing. i had been wanting to get into it a few years back but just never got around to it, till I saw his homebrew episode. After actually brewing my own beer, I realize that his process could have been better but for a basic beer he was spot on. Will it be great, no, but drinkable at the least.

Plus they had to cram an entire brew day, and fermenting, priming, and bottling into a 30 minute episode. I thought the show was great. Good eats is my favorite show. For touching on the basics of brewing, and how to get started, I think Alton and crew hit the nail head on!

I like AB too but was dissapointed by his show on brewing beer. Kind of made me wonder about his expertise in everything else.

Damnit, I've been doing dryhopping all wrong.

Oh my GOD! We need to contact the food network and get that censored quickly. Think of the crappy beer people are going to have after boiling 1/2# of husks and 'sparging.'

What a tard. I liked his show...until now.

He's really not paid to be the master of every recipe he shows on Good Eats. They likely do 3 days worth of research on the topic, write the script, and shoot. I'd follow his process over the Mr. Beer instructions any day. I think it's most commendable that he brought home brewing to the masses even if he doesn't get it exactly right.

jezter6 said:

Oh my GOD! We need to contact the food network and get that censored quickly. Think of the crappy beer people are going to have after boiling 1/2# of husks and 'sparging.'

What a tard. I liked his show...until now.

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Oh CHRIST! You mean I am not supposed to boil my grains until I have released all of their goodnes????? DAMN IT!! OH THE HUMANITY.(just kidding)

I love AB and his show. His mistakes in this episode aren't reason for me to change my opinion. Quite honestly, I don't know anyone who brewed stellar beer on their first try. This beer would've probably turned out drinkable. I'm sure people would've done other research on the topic before investing in the equipment. The important part is him exposing the hobby to so many people...

I'm not advocating burning him at the stake. However, what he is making on the show is not going to turn out to be good. And if someone does follow his show recipe (7# can of LME, 1/2# Crystal left in the boil, 1.75 oz for 20 minutes and 'dry hopping' for 10), they are going to make beer that will suck and be unhappy with the results.

I've been wrong from time to time. I understand that it happens. However, I'm just a dude posting on a forum, not one with script writers, editors, and the like. At least they could have had some sort of 'technical expert' in the recipe before going nuts and boiling up grains.

He even puts on that he's a homebrewer and says "This is how *I* do it" when you know darn well he hasn't brewed a batch a beer in his life if he's making this recipe.

Kinda funny story.

LOL. Well, at least one good thing came out of the show for me. I finally figured out what that stick was for. LOL. Since, buying my brew kit few months ago, could not figure out what that thing was for. At one point, maybe I thought it was some kind of weird stirr. LOL. When the bottling wand thingy melted, I was like " WTF what kind of crap is this?" LOL

Now I can bottle beer with bit more ease. Thax AB. hehehehehe

even as a noob with a few brews under my belt i could see him doing stuff wrong, but as a few people have said he provided them with inspiration to get started!

the quite bad thing he did was tell people not to bother with the hydrometer. i also wasn't sure about his no-siphon move to the bottling bucket. surely that's not as effective as it could be.

He and his staff obviously didn't know about this forum or he would have avoided all the mistakes. I think even experts have to take some liberties when trying to convey the process to the masses. I mean look at Jim Koch's homebrewing video. You KNOW he doesn't ladel his hot wort over ice in real life. You can't do a half hour show (with commercials) and even tell half the homebrew story. Maybe I'm just a biased fan, but I think people are being a bit too hard on the guy.

It was also 5 years ago.
Can you look at your brewing self 5 years ago and say, "You've got it all down, no point in learining anymore brewing stuff."

I cringed when he jammed the bucket lid into the primary with all his might.

CplHunter said:

I cringed when he jammed the bucket lid into the primary with all his might.

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I just found this:
http://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Season6/EA1F10.htm

I bet the boys at Marietta Homebrew Supply wince everytime it airs.

OK, the steeping grains left in the boil bugged me, the hops schedule bugged me, but who knows, plenty of styles I don't know very well.

The one that bugged me was not _wearing_ gloves while he was bottling. (I don't). What I heard him say was "wearing gloves prevents cross-contamination."

Unless he has some special gloves with UV radiating force fields that remark is, ummm, false.

When I saw him dump the grain right in I thought, that's odd, no bag, maybe he'll strain them out before boiling...ugh.

The hop schedule isn't all that odd. I've done blondes with only a single 60 minute addition and nothing else (same for Belgian Wit).

You could say that gloves are a whole lot easier to sanitize than hands but I agree, you could only prevent cross contamination if you change them between activities (which medical people do for that very reason).

olllllo said:

I bet the boys at Marietta Homebrew Supply wince everytime it airs.

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They are no longer in business.

Wow, I'm a hardcore AB fan, but the unbagged grain left for the whole boil bothers the hell out of me. Oh well, at least a lot of people will get to see how easy brewing beer is.

I still like AB, I don't care how crappy his brewing techniques are. His cooking still rocks.

I've only brewed with hop pellets. I'm kind of shocked to see that one ounce of fresh hops is a heaping cereal bowl full! I guess it does make sense though, no where near the same density as the pellets...

My bigest complaints aren't the grain in the boil or his crappy terminology. I've seen both plenty of times from noob friends and their brew has turned out pretty OK.

But when he measured the wort temp after cooling and said... "87* F, that's good enough to pitch," ... uh, no AB.
Plus he never once mentioned aeration, WTF?

These are two pretty important issues that most newcomers screw up with. Never pitch above 70*F and always aerate before pitching.

This is hell of a lot better than a lot of homebrew videoes I've seen on YouTube. I think this is great for complete homebrew noobs, if only to spark interest in homebrewing.

Edit: At least to keep it them away from that one guy who said he dropped his yeast, swept his yeast off the floor, picked out bird feathers and pitched it

Madtown Brew said:

Plus he never once mentioned aeration, WTF?

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Wouldn't running the wort through the two strainers in the manner he did aerate the wort enough to be passable?

It's a good starting point and AB makes it accessible to the average joe.

Madtown Brew said:

Never pitch above 70*F and always aerate before pitching.

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Really? White labs (which is the yeast AB was using) recommends pitching between 70-75f. Better let them know. This Good Eats episode if filled with bad mistakes, but I remember watching it shortly before I became a homebrewer and it really got my interest peaked. Alton Brown is a jack of all trades and a master of none, at least when it comes to cooking, baking, brewing, etc., but I still dig his show immensely.

Blue bottles? Seriously?

I love his show.. I've cooked his salmon pouch recipe(ish) and it was fanastic

Tonedef131 said:

Blue bottles? Seriously?

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Yeah, seriously. And if I could find 'em for a decent price, I'd buy 'em.

There are WAY more mistakes to critique than Alton's bottle choice.

...and I won't badmouth the episode too much. That show and a quick read through Papazian got me hooked.

I really dont understand the bashing. Not perfect obviously. But were ****ing brewers of course were going to find something wrong to critique! Im actually thinking about following his "recipe" as close as possible and see how it turns out. If I can even find some Goldings! I sure that show inspired many people to try hombrewing and if they had any brains they would do some research and learn some better techniques.

His recipe makes damn good beer. I've made it twice (altered slightly to avoid boiling the grain, etc...).

What degree crystal?

20L, IIRC.

Well thats officially my next brew. Probably gonna have to sub out those goldings but oh well.

I added about 4 oz wheat and 2 oz chocolate to it, and it really made a nice, malty amber-ish beer. I'm tempted to try it with no modification, just to see what happens.

If you listen to what he says in the episode, his facts are mostly right. Most of the problems with the episode are from the video and his actions not really matching with what he says he's doing. The whole "mashing" part is a big case. I think it was mostly due to trying to add a ton of technical brewing information into 22 minutes and make it seem easy enough for anyone to try. Like Yuri has said, just a little nit of reading will get anyone on the right track.

It just occurred to me that I have two beers bottle conditioning right now, an Alt and a brown. Coincidence? I think not.

Brewsmith said:

Most of the problems with the episode are from the video and his actions not really matching with what he says he's doing.

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That and he doesn't have boobs. I wanna see Giada, she's totally hot.