Seriously! What kind of elitist, pretentious whiners are you trying to serve?
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Seriously! What kind of elitist, pretentious whiners are you trying to serve?
amandabab
Well-Known Member
if you've been brewing a while, often break out the techno-babble about fermentation variables, conversion rates, co2, esters, boil rates, alpha acids, etc. your friends kinda get the idea you know what your doing. even if they have NO idea what you're going on about.
beer is a mystery to most people. its a food product and its just sits around at room temp (room temp to them, 62 vs 70 doesn't come into it for them).
so its not unreasonable for the reaction to " hey I bought a beer making kit a while ago. Want to drink this?" to be slowly backing away from the mad hooch chemist.
they come around after bit.
beer is a mystery to most people. its a food product and its just sits around at room temp (room temp to them, 62 vs 70 doesn't come into it for them).
so its not unreasonable for the reaction to " hey I bought a beer making kit a while ago. Want to drink this?" to be slowly backing away from the mad hooch chemist.
they come around after bit.
Methanol can be produced by an overly hot fermentation. Enough to give the brew a 'hot alcohol' flavor, but not enough to cause any problem.
OP - no need to prove anything. They don't want to drink it, so stop offering them any. They can bring their own beer.
OP - no need to prove anything. They don't want to drink it, so stop offering them any. They can bring their own beer.
knuckleheadbrewing
Well-Known Member
THe number one concern I get from non homebrew drinkers is "IS this gonna give me diarrhea?" Because every one has known some one to make some toilet wine, or something or equal crappness and it made them sick....I typically just laugh and say only if i effed up!
I dont care....drink it or dont....I enjoy it, and BJCP judges have enjoyed it (reflecting in some scores to contests i'v entered) so I dont care if "they who know nothing about beer" enjoy it.
I dont care....drink it or dont....I enjoy it, and BJCP judges have enjoyed it (reflecting in some scores to contests i'v entered) so I dont care if "they who know nothing about beer" enjoy it.
Only insomuch as ethanol can be produced from acidic hydration of ethylene (known in 18th century as coal gas). Or C2H4+H2O->CH3CH2OH to split hairs. And wood still qualifies as plant material.
You're right though,forgot methyl alcohol is also made from wood,was called wood alcohol. Also made from Carbon monoxide,carbon dioxide,& hydrogen.
So we're right basically.
![Craft A Brew - Safale BE-256 Yeast - Fermentis - Belgian Ale Dry Yeast - For Belgian & Strong Ales - Ingredients for Home Brewing - Beer Making Supplies - [3 Pack]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51bcKEwQmWL._SL500_.jpg)
Whew. Boy,did I get side tracked on that one. It's amazing that as you get older,& farther away from those A's in high school science classes that you really do loose it if you don't use it. Being half right wasn't in my paradigm.
Aaaanyway,That how beer saved the world is a wonderful way to give the skinny on this subjecy in an amusing,easy to understand fashion. I'd def go with that one. It's the quickest & easiest way to prove to the contrary. They should freak over how ancient Egyptian beer had high levels of tetracyclene that kept them strong & healthy. Not sick. And "we" didn't discover it till something like 1938. God,I love that one.
If this video doesn't do it,they don't desrve to be crat beer enthusiasts. Or at least real beer enthusiasts.
Aaaanyway,That how beer saved the world is a wonderful way to give the skinny on this subjecy in an amusing,easy to understand fashion. I'd def go with that one. It's the quickest & easiest way to prove to the contrary. They should freak over how ancient Egyptian beer had high levels of tetracyclene that kept them strong & healthy. Not sick. And "we" didn't discover it till something like 1938. God,I love that one.
If this video doesn't do it,they don't desrve to be crat beer enthusiasts. Or at least real beer enthusiasts.
You can definitely get methanol from fermentation. It's just in very small concentrations. The reason it is a problem with distillation is that it boils off early and in much more concentrated form.
TheDom
Well-Known Member
I'm with bringing both their manhood and lineage into question until they come around.
PondScum
Active Member
To the OP:
You mentioned that you baked and they like your cookies and cake.
Well..no more cookies and cake for your friends because those items have raw eggs in them. And we all know that raw eggs are chock full of salmonella and will kill you if not prepared correctly. If they haven't died from eating the food you've prepared correctly, they probably won't die from your beer.
Seriously..no more cookies and cake for them.
You mentioned that you baked and they like your cookies and cake.
Well..no more cookies and cake for your friends because those items have raw eggs in them. And we all know that raw eggs are chock full of salmonella and will kill you if not prepared correctly. If they haven't died from eating the food you've prepared correctly, they probably won't die from your beer.
Seriously..no more cookies and cake for them.
Bowow0708 said:
Are you dead? There's your proof.
rifraf
Well-Known Member
Not sure what kind of proof they want. Bacteria that can make a person sick can't grow in beer.
The worst that can happen is you get an infection, your beer turns to vinegar, and you throw up if you try to chug it like you would trying to slug down a bottle of balsamic.
The worst that can happen is you get an infection, your beer turns to vinegar, and you throw up if you try to chug it like you would trying to slug down a bottle of balsamic.
MisterTipsy
Well-Known Member
Sorry, but your friends are paranoid idiots and they don't deserve your beer.
If they won't drink your beer, more for you. I've encountered this before with everything I've made, someone won't eat it or drink it because of concerns for their safety. If my consuming it and coming away perfectly fine doesn't prove it to them, that's their hangup, not mine. Let them eat their processed junk and drink their swill, that's what they want and it's what they deserve. Enjoy your homebrew and start looking around for people who appreciate the things in life that you appreciate. It's not hard to find fellow homebrewers. They tend to hang out at homebrew shops. They make really good friends, I've found, and they can usually follow a conversation even when you start geeking out over beer and brewing.
Gameface
Well-Known Member
Well, you have access to google, yeah? Sit them around the computer and search "is home brewed beer safe to drink?" and get them edjumicated.
If you have tried all that, showed them that you are not dead, and they still need more proof it is time to give up!
I'll just add on to my previous post.
My best friend, whom I've known since the third grade, is a big sweet mead and sweet cider fan. He likes beers occasionally but mostly just sticks to his sweet drinks. We've gone back and forth about this since we started discovering there was this thing called alcohol and it came in forms other than Bud, Miller, Coors, and Carlo Rossi. I largely can't stand sweet things. We love the same things. I love mead and cider, but they need to be dry. We even both love gin, but he loves sweet gin like Tanqueray, I love dry gin like Beefeater or Bombay Sapphire. He drinks white wine, I drink dry reds.
For us it isn't a matter of fear. He and I will frequently challenge each other to eat really bizarre stuff, watch Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods together and comment on what way we'd prepare whatever he's eating, etc. We both cooked in restaurants, we've both had food poisoning from improperly prepared food at least twice, and we've learned what we're doing. However, there are things he won't eat because of his own tastes and boundaries, and there are things I won't eat because of my own tastes and boundaries. Despite both of us eating these things without any observable negative consequences, there are things we simply will not eat.
Sometimes taboos are just so hard-wired that it becomes an act of truly epic willpower to overcome them, an act taken when the choice is between life or death, and under no other circumstances. Sometimes not even death is enough. We all have hangups, they vary from person to person but they're there.
So yeah. Let your friends enjoy whatever it is they will drink. They can't get over the inner block that's preventing them from enjoying what you have made. It really sucks, but that's ultimately their problem and you can't really invest that much energy into getting them to overcome it. That's their job, and it sounds like they're just not willing to take the leap. If you need to share your beer, find people who are into homebrew and share among them, enter competitions and make friends while there, join a homebrew club, or something like that. It's terrible not being able to share stuff with the folks you care about because they won't accept it, it's discouraging and it's kind of insulting, but it ultimately doesn't mean your product isn't worth it. It just means they're not the ones whose opinions you need to worry about in this particular instance.
My best friend, whom I've known since the third grade, is a big sweet mead and sweet cider fan. He likes beers occasionally but mostly just sticks to his sweet drinks. We've gone back and forth about this since we started discovering there was this thing called alcohol and it came in forms other than Bud, Miller, Coors, and Carlo Rossi. I largely can't stand sweet things. We love the same things. I love mead and cider, but they need to be dry. We even both love gin, but he loves sweet gin like Tanqueray, I love dry gin like Beefeater or Bombay Sapphire. He drinks white wine, I drink dry reds.
For us it isn't a matter of fear. He and I will frequently challenge each other to eat really bizarre stuff, watch Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods together and comment on what way we'd prepare whatever he's eating, etc. We both cooked in restaurants, we've both had food poisoning from improperly prepared food at least twice, and we've learned what we're doing. However, there are things he won't eat because of his own tastes and boundaries, and there are things I won't eat because of my own tastes and boundaries. Despite both of us eating these things without any observable negative consequences, there are things we simply will not eat.
Sometimes taboos are just so hard-wired that it becomes an act of truly epic willpower to overcome them, an act taken when the choice is between life or death, and under no other circumstances. Sometimes not even death is enough. We all have hangups, they vary from person to person but they're there.
So yeah. Let your friends enjoy whatever it is they will drink. They can't get over the inner block that's preventing them from enjoying what you have made. It really sucks, but that's ultimately their problem and you can't really invest that much energy into getting them to overcome it. That's their job, and it sounds like they're just not willing to take the leap. If you need to share your beer, find people who are into homebrew and share among them, enter competitions and make friends while there, join a homebrew club, or something like that. It's terrible not being able to share stuff with the folks you care about because they won't accept it, it's discouraging and it's kind of insulting, but it ultimately doesn't mean your product isn't worth it. It just means they're not the ones whose opinions you need to worry about in this particular instance.
Yep - Moonshiners need to toss the first few gallons of hooch because it has high concentrations of methanol. After that its good to go.
LandoLincoln
Well-Known Member
There's only two possibilities left.
1) Your friends are dicks.
2) Your beer is not good.
I stand by my earlier statement..... NO beer for them.
Greenbasterd
Well-Known Member
i have the total opposite problem.. my friends don't care how it was made as long as it taste like beer. they've never expressed any care about sanitation and have no idea its a very important part of making beer.. to them i am a wizard with a magical beer/alcoholic beverage wand i just wave around and drinks are formed!! to them if it comes out of a tap it must be good, only pros can have taps right? lol
i go off on rants about beer making and they loose concentration after about 2 mins
i go off on rants about beer making and they loose concentration after about 2 mins
GarageDweller
Well-Known Member
I have a few friends that pulled this on me last year and I haven't offered a single taste to them since. Its called ENVY. Someone you know sees you doing something and wants to downplay it because they are not doing it themselves. They don't want to try it because they are afraid that they might like it and that would somehow place you up on a higher level than themselves. People today have lost the ability to compliment others that are doing things they cannot.
I have offered my homebrew to true friends (non haters) and they were very grateful and offered some thoughts on how they thought it tasted. I believe that your friends are indeed HATERS!
Also, if someone tries your brew and doesn't like it, criticizes and tells you what they don't like about it, they are not a hater.
However, if someone has never tried your homebrew and defaults to something asinine like "i don't want to go blind" or "i don't want to die" they are true-life HATERS!
I have offered my homebrew to true friends (non haters) and they were very grateful and offered some thoughts on how they thought it tasted. I believe that your friends are indeed HATERS!
Also, if someone tries your brew and doesn't like it, criticizes and tells you what they don't like about it, they are not a hater.
However, if someone has never tried your homebrew and defaults to something asinine like "i don't want to go blind" or "i don't want to die" they are true-life HATERS!
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gr8shandini
Well-Known Member
That's actually not true. Sure, the "heads" of a distillation will have a higher than normal concentration of methanol, but not enough to irreparably harm anyone. And those will have been discarded anyway if it's anything you'd actually want to drink.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-05/fyi-can-drinking-moonshine-really-make-me-go-blind
The trouble came about during prohibition when people were trying to "re-nature" industrial alcohols that were readily available. There was a pretty enlightening story about it in Slate a while back:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html
Is this a philosophical debate? Are your friends testing your ability to prove a negative, in the face of evidence spanning millions of non-commercial beer-drinkers throughout thousands of years of history?
Call logical fallacy bullsh!t on their butts, then offer them a nice home brew as their ****y prize.
Call logical fallacy bullsh!t on their butts, then offer them a nice home brew as their ****y prize.
Also:
Do your friends eat yogurt? Ew gross, that stuff is chock-full of Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus!
Cheese? Yuck-o, there's a whole cavalcade of molds and other critters living in that nasty stuff.
Do your friends realize that not all bacteria and yeast are bad? I'm not knocking the modern advances in hygiene and sanitization (yay plumbing, yay sanitation) but sometimes I wonder if Clorox and Lysol ads are making us way too paranoid about living in a world chock-full of microorganisms.
Do your friends eat yogurt? Ew gross, that stuff is chock-full of Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus!
Cheese? Yuck-o, there's a whole cavalcade of molds and other critters living in that nasty stuff.
Do your friends realize that not all bacteria and yeast are bad? I'm not knocking the modern advances in hygiene and sanitization (yay plumbing, yay sanitation) but sometimes I wonder if Clorox and Lysol ads are making us way too paranoid about living in a world chock-full of microorganisms.
