Here are some questions pitched straight to you homebrewers out there.
* Was is wrong to use tap water to dilute the boiled wort? Naturally my genius brain forgot that the Giant Eagle one block away has gallons of spring water for 79 cents. I guessed that municipal water is fairly clean, but maybe I was wrong about that.
* Priming yeast – overrated? Answer – no. I “primed” the dry yeast by soaking it in room temperature water for ~20 minutes. Apparently that wasn’t enough, or I didn’t check to see whether I temperature-shocked it, because the tepid fermentation tapered off after less than 48 hours.
* I couldn’t find a wort chiller at the nearest homebrew supplier’s website so I made my own with 3/8 OD copper pipe, some plastic tubing and a tap adapter. I hope this is ok.
* For the purists out there, is plug hops an acceptable alternative to loose leaf? I have a feeling that this by itself could spawn a thread-devouring flamewar, but in the long run that’s probably healthy.
* There has to be some way to tell whether your batch has gone bad before you go through the trouble of bottling it. Any advice about that would be much appreciated.
* Bonus question for the science-minded brewers out there (that’s you, Demi): neighboring labs work primarily on S. cerevisiae, the same species that bakers and brewers use. Logically I could use their stuff and never buy a yeast packet again. Right? This matters because a friend plans to graduate soon and I though it would be particularly cool to brew a batch using one of the strains that she based her work on.
Somebody pointed out on the last thread that brewing is an addiction more than a hobby. That is so not true. I know because I spent at least 80% of my day not thinking about how I am going to do better with batch 2 (an extra-hopped porter, syrup again).
As for the commercial stuff, the bottles that batch 1 eventually goes in will be a mix of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, a basic (for them) workman’s beer priced to compete with Sierra Nevada but much richer, and the surprisingly big Commodore Perry IPA from Great Lakes. In the likely event that you can’t get Commodore Perry where you are, mix a Lagunitas hop bomb with a 60 Minute from Dogfish Head and you’ll have the basic idea.
Xenos
Oh man I am so screwed. I wanted to take up beer making this winter but the more I learn the more overwhelming it seems. I need to get to the local beermaking shop and arrange for some lessons.
Perry Como
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
Walker
I just moved into a house with five apple trees in the back yard. The wife and I want to branch into hard cider next year.
Gus
I’ve never brewed, but even I can answer a couple of your questions. I’ve taken the brewery tour at Summit Brewery in St. Paul, and they use tap water. Also they use plug hops. And their beer is gooooooood.
demimondian
If you’ve boiled the tap water, there’s no reason to not use it to dilute the wort. (That’s certainly what I always did; I’m too cheap to buy spring water. Besides, my local tap water is really good, so I’m not going to get better stuff in any other way.) If you haven’t, though, the chlorination can both screw up your fermentation and leave funny aftertastes in the beer.
I always made a starter culture before I pitched my yeast. The night before I brewed, I’d make up a 1 gal of boiling water and dextrose solution, cool it, and then pitch the yeast into that, allowing it to get started overnight. I’d then pour off the supernatant, flame the brim of the vessel, and pitch the slurry on the bottom into my wort.
That was because I tended to stick to pure cultures. When it comes to brewing and winemaking, S. cerevisiae is not all one thing; different cultures cast off different cogeners. Humans can taste a lot of those cogeners at a few ppm, so the strains matter. In fact, when it comes to lager makers, different breweries treat their strains as trade secrets.
And, so, no — you don’t want to use the cultures from the lab next door. :)
Mikado
* Was is wrong to use tap water to dilute the boiled wort?
Depends on what the municipality puts in the water. Chloramines can change the taste or even slow fermentation. I stick with “drinking water” from the local chain foodstore.
* Priming yeast – overrated? Answer – no.
Correct. You should use a starter, which is a bit of malt extract in some water. Or get the packs of live yeast that you whack to start.
* I couldn’t find a wort chiller at the nearest homebrew supplier’s website, so I made my own with 3/8 OD copper pipe, some plastic tubing and a tap adapter. I hope this is ok.
It’s fine. Just put the chiller in for the last 10-15 minutes of the boil, to sanitize it. And, make sure the water hoses won’t pop off. I had to use three hose clamps.
* For the purists out there, is plug hops an acceptable alternative to loose leaf?
Yes. Plugs are just loosely-packed leaf.
* There has to be some way to tell whether your batch has gone bad before you go through the trouble of bottling it. Any advice about that would be much appreciated.
Taste it before bottling?
* Bonus question for the science-minded brewers out there (that’s you, Demi): neighboring labs work primarily on S. cerevisiae, the same species that bakers and brewers use. Logically I could use their stuff and never buy a yeast packet again. Right? This matters because a friend plans to graduate soon and I though it would be particularly cool to brew a batch using one of the strains that she based her work on.
Well, bread yeasts are a separate sub-strain, bred to produce more gas than alcohol. As long as your friend used beer yeast, you’d be fine. If she used bread yeast, you won’t like the results.
Xenos
I tried the hard cider approach when I was 14. Got a gallon of cider from Star Market and poured in a packet of Fleischman’s yeast, capped the jug firmly and left it on the radiator. The results were interesting, at about 4:00 am.
Guido Montefeltro
You don’t need a wort chiller for an extract beer. Put 2 gallons of grocery store drinking water (NOT distilled!) in the back of your refrigerator the night before you brew. Boil the extract in another 2 gallons of water and transfer to a plastic fermenter. Add the chilled water and the wort will be ~70F in a matter of minutes.
You can experiment with other yeasts, but watch out – I once made of batch of swill that was so undrinkable I couldn’t even give it to broke graduate students
protected static
demimondian beat me to it, but it bears repeating – brewing (yay! foamy yeasties!) is to municipal water treatment (boo! foreign organisms!) as… oh, I dunno, Preservation Jazz Hall is to ‘heckuva job, Brownie.’
You probably haven’t done anything fatal to your brew, but it’s best to boil your tap water and let it sit before adding it to your wort.
Tim F.
Ooo, if bread yeast is bad then genetics research yeast is probably bad to the nth power. Munton’s it is then.
Dave
Cleanliness is paramount as the wort is cooling and after.
I use diluted clorine bleach and rinse everything: spoons, containers, tubes, etc. I have never had any beer go bad
in 10 years of homebrewing. Oh, and I use tap water.
demimondian
There are ways to tell if the batch has gone bad.
If you don’t bottle from the primary — I always racked the green beer over for a secondary fermentation to clear the brew a bit more — then if it’s contaminated, it will usually, but not always, be full of rope before you get around to bottling. That doesn’t get more subtle contamination, as one sees with lactic acid bacilli, but it gets the grosser, “there’s snot in my beer”, class of ickies. (If you’ve had reasonably complete fermentation, the pH SHOULD be low enough that you don’t have the possibility of things that will actually cause you food poisoning. At least, not at first.)
If you dry hop the secondary, then be very careful, as that can introduce wild yeasts you may not want. I’ve never found a good story for sterilizing dry hops, though, so I always just acted like a man and poured the hops in, hoping for the best.
Epicanis
On the other hand, you COULD always go find a Hefeweizen that you like and see if you can isolate live yeasts from that…
I’m under the impression that a lot of people worry that if they culture their own yeast (including yeasts originally from packets or whatever) that over time the yeast populations might develop undesirable characteristics. I have no idea if this is really a major problem, and when I finally get some time after this semester, I intend to try to find out…
demimondian
I’ve never done the experiment, but enough brewers who have tell me that, yes, unless you want to keep agar slants in your basement — and, no, Tim, that’s beyond even me — you really can’t keep a stable culture.
F. Frederson
1) No, if your tap water is of good quality.
2) I recommend liquid yeast, which doesn’t need a starter for most beers. See #6.
3) A wort chiller is a nice-to-have, mostly in the summer.
4) I’ve always used pellets and that form works fine.
5) Taste it. It won’t taste great if its good but if its bad you’ll know.
6) There are quite a number of beer yeast strains. The lager/ale/belgian/lambic divisions are important, but below that the distinctions are fairly fine.
Really, it’s not. There are a lot of steps but the whole process no more difficult than lasagna.
stickler
I’ve been brewing since 1992. Mostly pretty good stuff (and I’m finishing a pint of homebrewed witbier as I type this).
First things first: the first ten batches or so, you will be a whiny, needy, paranoid little girl about your beer. This seems to be an unavoidable phase. After all, you’re potentially brewing five gallons of slug bait. And you’re never sure if it’s going right. And, despite your paranoia, you’re STILL making stupid mistakes. Right. Now. AAAUUGGH! Admit it: you’ve already spent at least thirty minutes counting how many times the airlock has blurped.
This phase will pass. In my experience, it will pass a hell of a lot faster if you find a homebrew club and attend a few meetings. Lots of old homebrewing coots who will clue you in on how to brew award-winning beer on a serious budget. (Super-secret homebrewer’s tip: never, ever, use bleach for sanitizing!)
Simply put, here are three golden rules never to be violated. You may not win gold medals, but you’ll avoid serving your guests stuff that tastes like feet (most of the time):
1. Sanitize. (Not sterilize, but do be attentive to handwashing and cleaning all surfaces that come into contact with the wort.)
2. Give your critters every unfair advantage possible. In my experience, this means using glass carboys instead of plastic buckets, pitching a well-bloated smack-pack of liquid yeast, and trying to stick to fermentation temperatures (a garage at 58F and a yeast that prefers 70F are not two great tastes that go great together).
3. Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew.
stickler
Hm. I was unclear on a couple of points there.
1 (a). Use StarSan or Iodophor. Dilute them to the proper ratio with tapwater, then dunk everything in the solution. They don’t need rinsing. Really.
2. (a) I’m actually fermenting a Pale Ale in a plastic bucket right now. But the only batches I’ve had that went seriously south did so in plastic. Glass is unbeatable. (If fragile. Which leads me back to the bleach: not only can it kill a fermentation; it makes glass slippery, which can make you drop a glass carboy. Trust me on this when I say you don’t want to experience this.)
Shirt
Using tap water without boiling is a bozo nono.
One thing that yeast need to start a healthy fermentation is oxygen. As that hot wort cools in your heat exchanger, it is totaly devoid of that. So, let it splash (and not flow quietly) into your fermenter. Do not let it splash above where the final level of the brew will be. It will become a source of infection.
A really good counterflow heat exchanger can be made with 25 feet of copper tubing, a garden hose and some fittings. DO NOT use exhaust water to irrigate a rose bush. It’s agonized screaming will haunt your dreams for the rest of your life — I know.
Don’t worry, relax, have a homebrew.
(wished I had my cellar back).
Don SinFalta
Was it wrong to use tap water to dilute the boiled wort?
I’ve used boiled tap water and store-bought spring water pretty much interchangeably, can’t say I’ve noticed a difference in quality.
Priming yeast – overrated?
I’ve never used that dry cake stuff. I’ve always had excellent results with White Labs tubes and Wyeast packs just following their directions. For high gravity batches, I make a starter the night before much as demimondian does, but I only make a liter in an erlenmeyer flask and just pitch the whole thing without pouring any of it off or sterilizing the flask again.
I couldn’t find a wort chiller at the nearest homebrew supplier’s website so I made my own with 3/8 OD copper pipe, some plastic tubing and a tap adapter. I hope this is ok.
I’ve never used a chiller for an extract or partial mash 5 gallon batch. I boil about half the wort, chill it in ice water in the sink, rack it into the carboy, and add the rest of the water at room temperature.
For the purists out there, is plug hops an acceptable alternative to loose leaf?
In my experience, yes.
There has to be some way to tell whether your batch has gone bad before you go through the trouble of bottling it. Any advice about that would be much appreciated.
I’ve never actually had a batch go bad, although I’ve had some that ended up a tad sweeter than I’d hoped. I usually do secondary fermentations and taste the beer at the end of the primary and secondary. One thing I’ve learned from that is not to jump to the conclusion that your batch is bad just because it tastes awful at either of those stages. I’ve thought I had bad batches on more than one occasion but bottled them anyway, only to open a bottle 3 weeks later and be very pleasantly surprised.
Bonus question for the science-minded brewers out there (that’s you, Demi): neighboring labs work primarily on S. cerevisiae, the same species that bakers and brewers use. Logically I could use their stuff and never buy a yeast packet again. Right?
Everything I’ve read about this agrees with the previous answers you’ve gotten on this, but I can’t say from experience. Science-minded in my case means computers, not biology, as far as any sort of expertise is concerned. And while I’ve been tempted to do the experiment with bread yeast or something just out of curiosity, I’m just too lazy to do all that work to make a batch that I expect in advance is likely to be undrinkable. I’m more tempted to try to make a starter from the stuff at the bottom of a bottle of hefeweizen, but my understanding is that would be lager yeast for bottle conditioning and not a tasty hefeweizen strain, so it’s probably not worth the bother either.
Darkness
Xenos says:
What, people intentionally make hard cider? I thought that happened by accident when you left the gallon jug in the back of the fridge for a month. Then, you leave it on the back porch when it’s, say, 25 degrees or so overnight, and then you wedge the ice off the top… ;-)
Blake
With respect to water, yes, it matters what’s in your tap, but it’s not usually a big deal. Filter it all through something like a Brita (warning: painfully slow), or use water from the dispenser on your fridge (which IS hooked up through a filter, right? RIGHT?). Or go buy the BIG drinking water containers at the grocery store. I was always more worried about plastic taste than chlorination. If you’re a newby, you’re probably using bleach for sanitizer anyway, so what are the odds you won’t have ANY ppb of chlorine left on your equipment? Which reminds me, don’t use bleach for sanitizer :). Iodophor is easy and you can sanitize with cold water.
As for the yeast and hops, again, it depends. Do you want beer you’d like to drink? Then you MUST use fresh hops and liquid yeast (or make a starter, but who wants to be that organized, really?).
Blake
A couple more points:
With respect to contamination, rack a couple ounces of wort into a glass when bottling. If it’s ropy like the other brewer mentioned, obviously it’s bad. If not, taste it, duh :). It’ll taste like flat beer if it’s good, or it’ll taste like bad flat beer if it’s bad. But it won’t be bad, because you sanitized everything really, really well.
Note to Xenos: you are so NOT screwed, this is really easy. It’s only intimidating the first time. After that you realize the rewards are so great that you’ll try anything. And you can’t hurt yourself (other than maybe a tragic burner accident or something), or make yourself sick. The worst that will ever happen is you’ll waste 20 bucks and a little bit of time on something you can’t drink. And you’ll only EVER do that once, because you’ll be extra careful about sanitizing afterwards :).
Michael D.
I have used tap water. Put the amount you need in a glass carboy and let it sit overnight to let the chlorine go out of it.
Taste it?
jeff
Chlorine in tap water can be a problem. I haven’t home-brewed since college, and that was in Kansas. In that case I used boiled tap water and had no problems (aside from an ill-conceived attempt to make Lambic). I have a breadmaker though and don’t get good yeast growth with Pittsburgh water. I switched to bottled water and had no problems.
Bombadil
I always use tap water. Never had a problem.
Yeasts can be specific to the type you’re brewing, so if you’re going for a particular type (e.g., a stout, or a steam beer) the kind of yeast you use plays a big role.
Your homemade wort chiller sounds just like the one I bought — I just wasn’t handy enough to do it myself. That should work quite well.
I generally use pellet hops and things come out just fine. I’ve used plug hops for dry hopping (during fermentation) and the clean up has been a bitch. I generally will keep them in a bag now, if I use them at all — may not get all the hoppy goodness out of it, but clean up and racking is a hell of a log easier. One thing I did learn, though — never try to dry hop in carboy. Getting that leafy goop out of a narrow bottle opening is not worth any benefits from the hops.
If a batch is bad, you’ll probably know it before you get around to bottling it.
demimondian
Xenos — let me chime in here. You are so not screwed. Yes, if you want to, you can make home brewing into a laboratory experience, as I do. Home brewing is for FUN, dude. I enjoy the picky little details of brewing, and sanitizing, and being organized.
And the home baked bread afterwards. Not so much the beer, which I can’t drink anyway.
But normal brewers don’t view the process of making beer as a bunch of tiny things that can go wrong, but as a fun hobby. You know what? Maybe their beers can’t sit on a shelf for eight years and still be drinkable, but 90% of their beers will sit on a shelf for a month and still be drinkable when the last bottle gets consumed. Isn’t that enough?
Fe E
It’s been alluded to (several times actually) but go out and read “The Joy of Homebrewing” and this will walk you through almost ALL of your anxieties. I had a friend from a larger metro area pick me up a homebrewing kit and the makings for a nut brown ale once upon a time. The night before I brewed I took inventory about fifteen times, read and re-read the directions that came with the kit, and pounded through the Joy of Homebrewing’s first couple of chapters (that is in fact a very quick lighthearted and enjoyable endeavor in itself, really). And that was it. The next morning I was off.
I fretted over every detail, and was rather manic on sanitization, using an oxygen cleanser instead of bleach, I think I used pretty much every dish in the apartment rather than risk contamination, and do you know what? It turned out fine. Demi’s right, you can go over-the-top bonkers in pursuit of magical beer, if that’s what you’re into, or you can just be conscientious about cleanliness and following instructions and settle for merely great beer! It’s your hobby, and your beer, so you get to choose! :)
A side question to Demi: you can’t drink your beer, and you still homebrew? I just gave away all of my stuff because alcohol doesn’t agree with my pancreas, but know I’m starting to question my decison. Homebrewing was FUN!
Son Of Slam
Just want to second (or third, or whatever) using liquid yeast instead of dry. It was explained to me that the strains for dry yeast are selected more for their survivability than taste. I’ve had some good experiences with the smack packs, look forward to trying some others.
Darkness
Xenos (the stranger), I’ll also point out that once you try a round of homebrewing, the instructions which were formerly overwhelming suddenly look really useful and helpful rather than intimidating. Make a party out of it. Tell people they don’t get to drink it unless they come help make it.
But, honestly, we haven’t homebrewed in 14 years because the beer has improved so very much and our local pub has 80 on tap. We thought we were brewing for fun, but it turns out we were brewing because back then, the only beers (Bud/Miller/et al) were (and still) are undrinkable.
binzinerator
I use cold tap water, never had a problem, either. The idea of storing it in your fridge overnight sounds like a good idea — it’ll chill the wort and lose the chlorine. However, the insides of refridigerators are not particularly clean (when was the last time you cleaned yours? a while ago, if you’re like me), certainly not sterile. So there could be pros and cons to that. I probably won’t bother with experimenting with that. My tap water brews up just fine for me.
On the other hand, if your home uses a water softener (my does), take the water from a tap that bypasses the softener. The sodium in the softened water absolutely *will* change the flavor. My kitchen sink’s cold water line by-passes the softener for that reason. (no not because of brewing, but water drinking — though that should’ve been the real reason, right?)
I think it’s odd that some people are concerned about chlorine in tap water, yet so many brewers use “no-rinse” sterilizing solutions for bottles, etc. Like what the no-rinse stuff leaves behind is somehow insignificant while the ppm of chlorine in tap water is not? I rinse my stuff even if I’m using no-rinse. And yes, I rinse with tap water. Hot tap water. Never had any problems.
Some people have mentioned concerns about micro-organisms in tap water contaminating the brew. Uh, I think it’s only common sense that if you’re worried about microorganism in the tap water contaminating your brew, then you shouldn’t be drinking anything from your tap.
Another thought: Water can have its own regional characteristics due to dissolved minerals in the water, and certain breweries become famous for a particular brew because it can’t duplicated elsewhere without the unique minearls and/or hardness of the local water. Papazian mentions a couple examples of this in his Guide, but I can’t recall them right now.
Other stuff: Wort chiller, wort schmiller. Kitchen sink with cold water and ice cubes.
Drink some of your brew just before bottling. It’ll be flat, but it’ll give you a clue of what’s up by then. If it goes bad after bottling, review your washing/sterilization methods. Unless, of course, you were trying to brew some of that chicken beer or marijuana beer. It’ll taste like liquid shit no matter what. Serves you right; some things just don’t belong in beer and it’s the brewing gods’ way of telling you so.