brewing confession

[Gridlocked]

HA! I went to school to be an art teacher so I think differently than you guys.

 

[o4_srt]

HA! I went to school to be an art teacher so I think differently than you guys.

Ah, the classic left brain vs right brain dominance

 

[profmorrismsu]

I am a electrical engineering professor and I break all the brewing rules.

 

[jiggs_casey]

I jot my notes down on yellow sticky pads. Rather unorganized. Because of this, sometimes I forget to take gravity readings. ...and everytime it's, "damn, I really need to find a better way to take notes..."

 

[gr8shandini]

HA! I went to school to be an art teacher so I think differently than you guys.

Aerospace engineer here with a brother with an MFA. It certainly is a different thought process, but it's a good team if you can find someone in the other camp. My brother's done several stints doing industrial design and while I could never make something look as nice as he does, I've helped him out on more than one occasion when he's come up with something that'll obviously break the first time out or is just impossible to manufacture for less than a million bucks a copy.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we need all sorts in the hobby/profession. I'm primarily a water/malt/hops/yeast guy, but I'm sure glad that at some point some crazy bastard decided to throw some coriander or pumpkin in a brew and let us nerds figure out how to perfect it.

 

[trigger]

I am a biochem/physics double major, and I hate, absolutely can't stand, detest, and revile mixing up stock solutions, so I don't do any water adjustments. If I'm brewing a darker english style I drop some burton water salts in the mash. That's it, everything else just uses good old hose water. And yea, I tried the water adjustments. They didn't make a lick of difference that I or anyone i know could taste in my American style beers.

Oh yea, one other thing. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Malty is actually a conspiracy founded by Breis and White labs to upsell malt extract and pitchable tubes. The owner of my LHBS uses exactly 1 expired smack pack of yeast per 5 gallon batch and wins lots of awards. I myself wash yeast, which means I underpitch the first batch with a new smackpack and grossly overpitch subsequent batches. The beer tastes identical. Pitching rates are overrated.

 

[Gridlocked]

It certainly is a different thought process, but it's a good team if you can find someone in the other camp.

I agree completely gr8shandini!

 

[rambler]

Ive been known to drink 1or 2 (ok 4or 5) of the uncarbonated beers I was bottling. I keg now but still just cant help myself.

That isnt really cutting a corner, but definitely impatient.

 

[lylo]

I can't even pronounce attenuatwhateveryousaid.

 

[emetcalf]

I have only done a few batches, so this might change in the future, but I also slack on gravity readings. I take 1 at the end of the boil, and one at the end of bottling to see what my abv is. I took 1 from the fermenter on my second batch, but I do small(1.5-3 gallons) batches in a 5 gallon fermenter, so getting a sample out to check the gravity is kind of a pain. A wine thief would take 4-5 dips to get enough for a sample, and my turkey baster doesnt even reach the beer so I used a couple pumps from my autosiphon to get enough beer for a sample. I dont care enough to do that again.

And I dont take very much notes during my brew day, but thats mostly because I'm still more focused on getting good at the process.

Oh, and I still haven't gotten around to marking off gallons in any of my containers, so I still don't know exactly how much wort/beer I have at each step.

 

[dfc]

I don't make a hydrometer reading and do another one 3 days later. I just wait no less than 3 weeks and transfer to a bottling bucket.

 

[unionrdr]

At first I was overly picky about SG readings. At least once a week,maybe twice. Now,I wait a minimum of 2 weeks before even giving a ****e,since I now know on average,it'll take that long for even a cooper's os lager to finish & clean up.
But,when done on bottling day,I've been pretty lazy about cleaning the fermenter beyond just washing the spent cooper's yeast out of it.
Now that we have the cooper's micro brew fermenter,& a BB ale pale,I'm gunna change that. My wife is using US-05 in her ale pale,so I figured we'd learn yeast washing together. Besides the fact that the ale pale arrived in time to give it to her as a mother's day present to go with the BB summer ale kit she bought with some tax return money some 2 weeks ago.
Maybe things will get easier with a co-brewer? It's a lot of work from BK to bottle. Cleaning bottles the 1st time is the worst! I'm going to clean out my 5G fishin bucket to soak them in PBW for 2 days,then dobie & bottle brush real quick. If I use my BK at the same time,I can have her help knock them out. It'll be way easier after I collect enough bottles for 3-4 batches,plus the cooper's PET bottles.for,say,house brew...

 

[Nightbiker]

Uhm, just WHAT exactly, are GRAVITY readings? Seriously, I don't usually bother with readings. Depends on how I feel at the time (grin). So far, it has worked out very well, and surprisingly consistent. I'm kind of afraid to change and actually start taking them -it may change the way I brew!

 

[unionrdr]

You're measuring the specific gravity of the wort,ie,fermentables. As the brew ferments,it looses "gravity",or weight,if you will,of said fermentables. Since alcohol is lighter than the fermentables,you can use it as a gauge to see when it's all done fermenting. These measurements are also useful if you're brewing to style,or at least trying to duplicate a brew as closely as possible.

 

[ArtVandelay]

I hot side aerate the sh*t out of my wort when I pour from a bucket to the boil kettle

 

[o4_srt]

I hot side aerate the sh*t out of my wort when I pour from a bucket to the boil kettle

How does your wort end up with **** in it to begin with? Good to see you're removing it.

 

[beaksnbeer]

Stopped using glass carboys have been using old lexan water bottles (I know I know) but I keg as soon as it clears Going on 8years never a problem KNOCKS ON WOOD

 

[gregger]

i can understand you not feeling like taking gravity readings, but i don't understand why. It's incredibly simple and not difficult. It provides you insight as to if your brew is done fermenting or not and how much abv ur brew has. If you're just making your run of the mill brew, i guess you might not care that much, but if you're making something high abv like a barleywine or an imperial, without taking gravity readings, i can't imagine having to wait a few months to figure out whether or not something went wrong.

I started brewing with a Mr. Beer Kit several years ago. Had a ton of fun doing it as someone gave it to me as a gift and I made a TON of beer. I never joined this forum until October when I realized you could make more beer with even better fermenting and bottling equipment and recipes.

The Mr. Beer instructions are extremely short and "close minded". They mention nothing about wort chillers, steeping grains, attenuation, refractometers, gravity, nothing. So I made ALOT of great beer without doing those things or even knowing what they were. I seriously never heard of any of those terms until 7 months ago.

I upgraded all my equipment to 5 gallon batches, I read books, and even started making better recipes, still haven't done the gravity readings to this day. Coming from me, I don't need to, but I won't exactly tell beginners that they don't need to as well. I still make great beer - ales, fruit wheat beers, stouts, porters, reds - no barleywine or imperial yet, someday maybe though.

It's not so much that I refuse to do so, it's more of "why start now?" I brew with extract, steeped grains, and pellet hops. You can make great beer without knowing the numbers. Eventually I'll start, who knows, just to find out what all the HOOPLA is about

 

[BrewerinBR]

None, as long as I haven't had too many on brew day. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I usually take 3-4 pages of notes during a batch, with another 1-2 pages during fermentation, bottling and tasting.

I've been known to take pictures of each fermentation at set intervals for future reference if I ever brew a recipe again.

Take notes, pictures, plan every detail ... start times, stop times, pre-boil gravity, original gravity, final gravities... fermentation times and videos. Heck I an preparing a full blown presentation with Power Point and spreadsheets with the calculations I use to get expected efficiency based on malting sheets.... so and so on .... maybe I been planning and running to many software projects .... need to retire and brew beer....

 

[PVH]

I do not take gravity readings, use airlock bubbling as a sign of fermentation, transfer to secondary even when I am not dry hopping, oaking, or adding fruit, sanitize exclusively with bleach, carry all my glass carboys without a crate or carboy carrier, start siphons with my mouth, expect my bottles to be carbed up in one week, and sprinkle dry yeast directly into the wort.

Boom.

 

[dancness]

I make starters just to watch mini fermentations...even if I'm not gonna use the yeast anytime soon. I store the fermented starters in the fridge for a month or more, and still use it to ferment beer.

I rigged up a hilarious looking contraption above my kitchen stove to support the BIAB bag when I need to drain the grain. With my fridge to the left of my stove and lowe's hardware store buckets stacked on a milk crate to the right, and a 8 ft long 2x4 spanning the two across the top. And I hang the bag from that with a rope.

Ghetto brewing...is fun.

 

[andyveedub]

I do not take gravity readings, use airlock bubbling as a sign of fermentation, transfer to secondary even when I am not dry hopping, oaking, or adding fruit, sanitize exclusively with bleach, carry all my glass carboys without a crate or carboy carrier, start siphons with my mouth, expect my bottles to be carbed up in one week, and sprinkle dry yeast directly into the wort.

Boom.

Haha. Awesome!

 

[Stevo2569]

I do not take gravity readings, use airlock bubbling as a sign of fermentation, transfer to secondary even when I am not dry hopping, oaking, or adding fruit, sanitize exclusively with bleach, carry all my glass carboys without a crate or carboy carrier, start siphons with my mouth, expect my bottles to be carbed up in one week, and sprinkle dry yeast directly into the wort.

Boom.

That's great. Boom. Ha ha.

 

[jtakacs]

i cut wort cooling... haven't seen (personally) a correlation between that and clarity, taste, or any other benefit enough to change my practice.

personally i geek out on yeast and gravity readings (i think they "tell the tale" so to speak).

i do start every siphon with my mouth - but my mouth is usually sanitized with beer or gin beforehand.

 

[Nightbiker]

You're measuring the specific gravity of the wort,ie,fermentables. As the brew ferments,it looses "gravity",or weight,if you will,of said fermentables. Since alcohol is lighter than the fermentables,you can use it as a gauge to see when it's all done fermenting. These measurements are also useful if you're brewing to style,or at least trying to duplicate a brew as closely as possible.

Uhm, I wasn't serious. While I don't always measure my starting and finishing gravities, I DO understand what they are and why (grin).

 

[Malstorme]

StarSan feels like cheating...

I started brewing in '94 and used bleach for cleaning/soaking and sanitizing for several years. It was cheap, effective and I *thought* relatively painless. It worked great and infections weren't a problem.

I got back into the hobby about a 2 months ago and started reading here shortly afterwards. Well spoken of, I decided to give StarSan a try... Mixed it up, stuck some in a spray bottle and went to town.

Really, it's this easy? It's the best $9 HB item I ever bought and it feels like cheating.

Mals

 

[blkandrust]

I would look into purchasing a Fermtech Wine Thief. It's about $10 and worth every penny. it has a float valve on the bottom, so you just dip it in ur carboy, drop the hydrometer in and take the reading. then you can either tap it on th1e side of the carboy to release the liquid back into your carboy or tap it on the side of a glass so you can have a nice sample. It's incredibly easy and inexpensive.

my 2 pesos

+1 on the wine thief..I love mine!

 

[EzMak24]

+1 on the wine thief..I love mine!

Great product!

 

[McMalty]

+1 on the wine thief..I love mine!

yes, i do provide amazing insight. thank you

 

[McMalty]

i do start every siphon with my mouth - but my mouth is usually sanitized with beer or gin beforehand.

......well, you're probably not completely serious, but in case you are......you cannot sanitize your mouth with beer.......beer is not a sanitizing agent.