McAnally's (The Community Pub) > The Bar

The Brewmaster is in.

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DominicJ:
Just placed my first order.
A Cerveza, an Australian Lager and a Ginger Beer (probably should have got a proper ale, but, oh well)
Along with loads of equipment to have a crack at some winey related social lubricants.

Paynesgrey:
Biggest thing:  Keep your workspace and utensils clean.  I use chlorine bleach in water, then rinse, rinse, rinse the chlorine off as well.  Cross-contamination is the biggest brew killer out there.  Say you stir the wort and set your spoon down on an unsanitized counter, or wander off to read a book while things simmer, and you come back and handle your utensils without washing your hands... then you could ruin the whole batch by literally inoculating it with any of the common molds or bacteria just lying around. 

Avoid mouth syphoning if you can, because the bacteria in your mouth will turn the whole mess into skunk snot.  If you must mouth syphon, rinse your mouth with grain alcohol like Everclear or something above 150 proof.

Finally, after you boil your wort, when you cool it, you want to set the whole kettle in a sink full of icewater.  Keep adding ice as it melts.  Between around 80 and 90-ish degrees farenheit is the temperature zone where the aggresive, unwelcome contanimant organisms multiply the fastest, so you want move your wort through that contamination window as quickly as possible.  (Don't add your yeast until the wort is below 75 degrees farenheit, or it will die screaming in the heat, or at least give your brew an off flavor.)

DominicJ:
I've got 5L of vimto "red wine" nice bubbling away, and 23L of Ginger Beer from a can thats being very lively. 
Going to try a 5L ginger beer with powdered ginger this weekend and possibly move the ginger beer into bottles and get one of the lagers going.

Snowleopard:
Just remember to use the right bottle for the right product.
A friend told a story of one of her friends who decided to try to make champagne.
Only problem was that he hadn't realized that champagne bottles are built heavily for
a very basic reason - to contain the pressure, and he used ordinary wine bottles.
He'd put his bottles in the garage and he started hearing loud noises from the garage.
There was a side door and he looked in before opening the main door.
The pressure of the bubbles was literally blowing the bottom off the wine bottles and launching
them like glass rockets.
Wisely he just closed the door and went away until all the crashing noises stopped.

DominicJ:
Yep, Bottle Bombs could be rather dangerous.
Mine are in plastic pop (Soda for the colonials) bottles so should take quite a bit of pressure, and fail none catastrophicaly.

Bottled the Ginger Beer with additional sugar, good god I hope the flavour improves with age, its tastes like someones eaten loads of ginger then had a wee.
Also making a 5 litre ginger beer from ginger powder (probably messed up quantities) but that bubbled like mad for the first 36 hours, so should be potent if nothing else.  Seriously, I was worried the water was just going to be blown out the airlock!
Yeast Vit and "super" yeast, wheres the plastered smiley?

Assuming something drinkable comes out the end, I quite like this brewing lark.
Bit more time consuming than I thought at first, sterilising 12 2L bottles is a pain, but never mind.

I'm saving up "sparkling wine bottles" (other half drinks supermarket brand Asti :-[ ::)) so will have "proper" storage soon enough.  Wonder how much it costs to dig out a cellar under the house?

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