SpentBrains
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Ours can be a very scientific hobby. So if you clicked on this post, it's likely you have at least a basic understanding of Diane Vaughan's concept taken from her book on the Challenger disaster. Guilty of straying from some of the hard fast rules, I am a self proclaimed deviation. Although I have yet to brew a beer that was a complete disaster, I wonder why certain norms have developed in home brewing as absolutes when they aren't held as standards in the world of commercial beer production or even some large micro breweries. Here's several examples:
1) Sanitize everything. Well, I'm not saying don't sanitize things, but I watch videos on youtube about home brewing and the amount of sanitizer some people get in their beer is mind boggling. I've made at least a few beers in near open ferment style and haven't seen whatever it is the sanitizer sales people must be telling people can happen. Mine that work this way are usually mid range gravity, quick fermented, high off gassing ales, so I agree the window of opportunity for vomitus infectiolutus or some other foul yet named microbe to find its way in, is small. Im not arguing for no sanitizer in the process, but harken back to the 19th century where much of the beer was made because it was a better alternative than the surface water and I pause...how much beer did our forefathers dump? Is my perceived over sanitizing compulsion some engage in, something newer brewers do while they are making youtube videos, or am I the deviant?
2) Oxidation fascination. From the start, I kegged. I never messed with bottles to begin with, for all the reasons the rest of you have all but quit bottling. But occasionally I find myself with a few quarts (liters for you people that refuse to convert) of extra beer that didn't fit or broke siphon or any number of reasons. A while back I picked up some swing tops and more recently bought a truckload of homebrew stuff from a cragslists ad. That haul included a capper and a gross of bottles. So on occasion now I will fill a few bottles with the dregs of decanted beer once I've filled kegs, or racked everything I wanted off the yeast cake. I've splashed it around, exposed it to oxygen, even arguably "oxygenated" it in the process of dumping the beer off settled yeast of multiple containers to consolidate enough to fill a few bottles. Guess what? The bottled beer turns out every bit as good and in some cases even better than the clearest keg draws. I know what O2 does to foods like apples and avocados & I rack beer into kegs that have been purged with CO2, but my bottle experiences are starting to tell me that some of this oxidation fear is BS. Am I the deviant?
3) Long primary and even longer secondary fermentations? I have a brown farmhouse ale that has been in my 7.5 gallon carboy (30 liter demijohn for you EU and down under types) since Sunday evening. Today is Wednesday morning. About 72 hours since the pitch and It's done. 1.054 to 1.017, which is exactly where I along with friends and family have drank every previous keg of this particular beer with it's seductive head retention and creamy brown fall/winter dinner pairing goodness. It's one of my favorites, a many time repeat in my house. The only reason I don't force carbonate it and have a pint this afternoon, is because there is no room in my keezer. So? I do it. Big breweries do it. Short turn around times, that is. Aside from highly complex high gravity beers, it seems that the common advice is much longer times in fermentation. Just look at most of the instruction sheets that come with all grain kits or the procedure section of almost every home brew recipe on line. Before you bother typing out a lecture about yeast "cleaning up after themselves" and diacetyl rests, tell me how we balance these long process and bottle age ideologies when mass production turns beer in 3-4 days and popular marketing leans in this direction:
http://freshbeeronly.com/The_Fresh_Beer_List.html
Am I the deviation?
1) Sanitize everything. Well, I'm not saying don't sanitize things, but I watch videos on youtube about home brewing and the amount of sanitizer some people get in their beer is mind boggling. I've made at least a few beers in near open ferment style and haven't seen whatever it is the sanitizer sales people must be telling people can happen. Mine that work this way are usually mid range gravity, quick fermented, high off gassing ales, so I agree the window of opportunity for vomitus infectiolutus or some other foul yet named microbe to find its way in, is small. Im not arguing for no sanitizer in the process, but harken back to the 19th century where much of the beer was made because it was a better alternative than the surface water and I pause...how much beer did our forefathers dump? Is my perceived over sanitizing compulsion some engage in, something newer brewers do while they are making youtube videos, or am I the deviant?
2) Oxidation fascination. From the start, I kegged. I never messed with bottles to begin with, for all the reasons the rest of you have all but quit bottling. But occasionally I find myself with a few quarts (liters for you people that refuse to convert) of extra beer that didn't fit or broke siphon or any number of reasons. A while back I picked up some swing tops and more recently bought a truckload of homebrew stuff from a cragslists ad. That haul included a capper and a gross of bottles. So on occasion now I will fill a few bottles with the dregs of decanted beer once I've filled kegs, or racked everything I wanted off the yeast cake. I've splashed it around, exposed it to oxygen, even arguably "oxygenated" it in the process of dumping the beer off settled yeast of multiple containers to consolidate enough to fill a few bottles. Guess what? The bottled beer turns out every bit as good and in some cases even better than the clearest keg draws. I know what O2 does to foods like apples and avocados & I rack beer into kegs that have been purged with CO2, but my bottle experiences are starting to tell me that some of this oxidation fear is BS. Am I the deviant?
3) Long primary and even longer secondary fermentations? I have a brown farmhouse ale that has been in my 7.5 gallon carboy (30 liter demijohn for you EU and down under types) since Sunday evening. Today is Wednesday morning. About 72 hours since the pitch and It's done. 1.054 to 1.017, which is exactly where I along with friends and family have drank every previous keg of this particular beer with it's seductive head retention and creamy brown fall/winter dinner pairing goodness. It's one of my favorites, a many time repeat in my house. The only reason I don't force carbonate it and have a pint this afternoon, is because there is no room in my keezer. So? I do it. Big breweries do it. Short turn around times, that is. Aside from highly complex high gravity beers, it seems that the common advice is much longer times in fermentation. Just look at most of the instruction sheets that come with all grain kits or the procedure section of almost every home brew recipe on line. Before you bother typing out a lecture about yeast "cleaning up after themselves" and diacetyl rests, tell me how we balance these long process and bottle age ideologies when mass production turns beer in 3-4 days and popular marketing leans in this direction:
http://freshbeeronly.com/The_Fresh_Beer_List.html
Am I the deviation?