New Brewers - one thing to remember...

Be wary of absolutes.

This beer making process is extremely flexible and forgiving. As long as you are sanitizing carefully and following a few very basic steps, you almost can't screw it up. So be wary of anyone who tells you that there is a "best" way to do anything. There are probably as many variations in proceesses as there are people who post here...if not lots more.

Ask questions to get a feel for what has worked for others, try out different things but don't shy away from experimenting and but take everything you hear (and read here) with a grain of salt, especially if anything is expressed in absolute terms (except for sanitizing, which you really should do carefully).

Once you find a style or technique that works for you, don't feel like you need to switch or adopt something else because of what the more experienced brewers say. Remember that ultimately, most of us are brewing primarily for one person only, and as long as that person is pleased with the outcome, then nothing else much matters.

And don't ever pee in your wort.

Damn. That's what I did wrong...

budbo said:

And don't ever pee in your wort.

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...or anyone else's.

Be sure if you sample anothers brew and do not like it explain why you don't.

The brewer may get pissed, but he may also learn something if you explain it to him/her.

Also, if you like it explain why...

good advice steve. i think it's important for novice brewers to understand the basics and but not be to worried. i see tons of posts that start out "omg i think i killed my beer". very rarely is this the case though. it might not turn out optimum, but it will more than likely be ok.

the only thing i could add is seek out a homebrew club. they are very fun and you will learn a lot.

Among the thigns that I have seen done to beer that 'broke the rules' and turned out just fine:

-used 'expired yeast'
-sneezed in primary while racking
-oxygenated wort during xfer to 2ndary
-put wort in a dirty carboy
-put wort in a clean but unsanitary carboy
-put finished beer in a dirty bottle
-failed to sanitize various bits and pieces during brew
-put unsanitized hand in cooled wort up to elbow
-never quite got beer up to a real boil-- just hovered below a boil
-broke carboy and all others were full-- sanitized a small garbage can and used that instead

I'm sure there's more.

It's not surgery-- it's controlled spoilage of barley soup.

Kornkob, you sure the beer turned out OK in those cases, or do you just have a very forgiving palate?

Just kidding... good to know that it's tougher to really screw this up than most of the books make it sound. Still good to err on the side of sanitation, though.

kornkob said:

-put unsanitized hand in cooled wort up to elbow

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I am betting that this was to retrieve a gasket for your air lock or blow off tube. This is one thing that almost all of us do at least once. I think of it as a rite of passage.

It's not surgery-- it's controlled spoilage of barley soup.

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dude! yer drinkin yeast piss think about that next time someone gets all beer snob on ya

I think of it as a rite of passage.

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first session ever i did that

I am in absolute agreement..... or not.

Aw, c'mon my way is the ONLY way I thought you guys knew that Just kiddin of course- heck my methods have changed quite a bit since I started reading this forum, there is a lot of info here that I never knew about or thought of and I've been brewing for awhile.

the_bird said:

Kornkob, you sure the beer turned out OK in those cases, or do you just have a very forgiving palate?

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That list was a 'top of the head' list of mishaps that my father or I did over the past 30 years of homebrewing. There have been the occasional bad batches, but in those cases they were okay not always exactly as we hoped they'd be, but definately beer.

The biggest mistakes that caused issues were things like:
-leaving the door to the closet that the glass secondary was in open, which allowed the morning sun to stream in and directly hit the beer for 3 hours in the am.
-setting the primary down next to the heat register in the middle of winter
-walking away during the boil and getting 'distracted' by the cute girl next door.
-handing an 8 year old the filled golosch bottles and telling him to close them and put them on the aging shelf only to discover 2 weeks later that none of them had gaskets.
-not watching the secondary bucket during racking and discovering that the dog was drinking the beer
-same as above only add a 4 year old who came to see what the dog was so interested in (and now you know how I got my first beer)

My personal pride and joy:
-taking a bottle of beer, a bottle of mead and a bottle of whiskey and setting them on the seat of the car before going to a party. Then running inside to take a phone call from a family member on Antarctica. 40 minutes later trying to figure out how one goes about getting mead, irish ale and makers mark out of the upolstery. (Thank god it was a convertable)

budbo said:

And don't ever pee in your wort.

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Unless of course your making Budweiser, then this would be part of the recipe.

There seems to be only one rule I know of that you must do to make certain the sucess of the brew. Drink homebrew... and if you dont have homebrew then drink something you enjoy. Brewing seems to go much smothly when your buzzed

kornkob said:

-walking away during the boil and getting 'distracted' by the cute girl next door.

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Would Cheesefood's picture count?



....sorry...I thought we needed this picture in another thread....

uhhhh what was the question

If brewing were really as stressful as all that, would it be as popular as it is?
I doubt it.

I pushed the stopper for my 6.5 gallon carboy all the way in. I was just trying to see how far it could go. I poured the wort out into the bottling bucket then with some yellow construction string and a sate skewer I was able to get it out. First time brewing and I thought I really screwed the pooch on that one.....

PasoHomeBrewer said:

I pushed the stopper for my 6.5 gallon carboy all the way in. I was just trying to see how far it could go. I poured the wort out into the bottling bucket then with some yellow construction string and a sate skewer I was able to get it out. First time brewing and I thought I really screwed the pooch on that one.....

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They have stoppers that wont do that anymore. They are pretty universal and have a lip around the top so you cant push it all the way through.