Homebrew Hacks to Get You Out of a Pinch

Article originally written for and posted on Brewd Magazine

I’m sure every homebrewer has had their share of frustrating moments, no matter their experience level. As much as we try to plan and prepare for everything on brew day, Murphy’s Law will eventually kick in.
However, homebrewers are nothing if not creative, so I’ve compiled this list of solutions to some common homebrew problems to help keep your brew days running as smooth as possible.

Dropped Something in the Wort?

Big pots, lots of steam, sweaty hands, slippery StarSan. You’re bound to drop something in the wort at least once during your homebrew journey. When it happens, don’t panic!
If it’s something that won’t dissolve immediately in the liquid (spoon, thermometer, measuring cup, cell phone), use a pair of tongs, a slotted spoon, or mesh strainer to fish it out. Where you are in the brewing process will also determine if you need to sanitize them first or not (though it wouldn’t hurt to do it anyway).
Worried that your beer is contaminated?
Unless whatever fell in was disgustingly filthy, you can stop worrying. If you dropped it in before or during the boil, the heat will kill off any nasties. If you dropped it after the boil, it’s likely that whatever fell in was already sanitized. If it wasn't, say a little prayer to the homebrew gods and hope for the best!

Still Using an Ice Bath to Cool Your Wort?

Hey, no judgement here, so do I! It’s not the most efficient way to cool wort, but sometimes we have to work with what we got.
I’ve learned a couple tricks to speed up the cooling process.

1. Add rock/kosher salt to the ice bath to keep the water colder for a longer period of time.

2. If you have an auto siphon and some extra tubing, use it to circulate the cold water into warmer spots by manually pumping the siphon.

3. Drain excess hot water from the vessel containing the ice bath as the ice melts.

4. Finally, use a sanitized spoon to stir the wort occasionally during the cooling process. This will help keep the temperature of the wort even.

Runaway Carboy Bung

If you have a stubborn bung that won’t stay in your carboy, there are a few things you can try.
First, make sure that the bung and the opening on the carboy are dry enough to get a good grip on each other. Wipe them with a clean, dry, paper towel after sanitizing or simply allow ample time to air dry.
If you’re having this issue during fermentation, make sure your airlock or blow-off tube isn’t clogged. It could just be that the CO2 has nowhere to escape.
If it still won’t stay, tape that mother down!
Two long strips (one on either side of the airlock/blow-off tube should do the trick). Make sure the strips are long enough to get a good grip on the sides of the carboy, or the tape will just pop off, too. The type of tape doesn’t matter, but to preserve your sanity during cleanup, use something that won’t leave behind any sticky residue.

Lost Carboy Bung

Aluminum foil is a great temporary solution.
Rip a big piece off the roll and sanitize it. Wrap one side tightly around the end of a blow-off tube, insert the tube into the carboy, then secure the remaining foil around the mouth of the carboy. It’s not the best, but it will buy you some time to track down your bung or go buy a new one.

Easy Temperature Control

An old t-shirt or towel is a cheap and easy way to keep fermentation temps down (and block out light).
Wet it down with ice cold water or pop it in the freezer for a little while, then put it on the carboy. If you’re using a towel, you’ll need clips or tape to keep it securely wrapped. As the shirt/towel warms and dries, spray it with ice water to keep it cold.
You can also tuck ice packs or heating pads in between the wrap and the carboy if the fit is snug enough.

Short on Priming Sugar?

 If you’re lacking a few ounces of priming sugar on bottling day, any other type of fermentable sugar you have in the kitchen should do the trick; regular white sugar, honey, brown sugar.
In small amounts, the flavor should not be affected.
If you’re concerned about it, though, stick to plain white sugar, or choose a substitute that will blend well with the flavor of the beer.  For example, brown sugar in a fruit beer.
Tip: Avoid using confectioners (powdered) sugar, as it may contain cornstarch.

Have any other tips or tricks you’d like to add? Share them below!

Why Is the Floor Sticky?

About a month ago, I experienced my biggest homebrew disaster to date. It started like any other bottling day: I took a final gravity reading, boiled the priming sugar, prepared the bottles, and racked New Texican into the bottling bucket. I had to prop up the bucket just a little so my transfer tubing would reach the bottom, so I put it on top of a case of empty bottles, something I've done many times before. Racking went fine, and I moved the tubing from the auto-siphon in the carboy to the spigot on the bucket. I stood back up and was about to ask my husband to lift the bucket onto the counter (he's my muscle). Instead, what came out of my mouth, was "Oh no, no, nononono, shit!" as I watched a tsunami of beer flow across my dining room floor. It happened too fast for me to catch the bucket, and yet, it seemed like it fell in slow motion. I stood there in shock for a split second before both of us ran and grabbed every towel in the house to start sopping up the beer. I cried, I laughed, I bitched, I mopped (and mopped and mopped), and I bitched some more.

BEFORE

AFTER

Losing the batch hurt, especially since I had such high hopes for it. Like every other brewing fail I've had, though, this tragedy taught me a few things:
1. I should probably buy some longer tubing. If my tubing was longer, I wouldn't have had to prop up the bucket.
2. Make sure the box I use to prop up the bucket is actually full. You see, the box I thought was full of bottles was actually missing a couple, and the empty part of the box crushed under the weight of the full bucket.
2.5. Better yet, don't use a cardboard box full of glass to support a 5-gallon bucket full of precious beer.
3. Putting a lid on the bucket would probably be wise. A lid wouldn't have stopped the bucket from falling, but it probably would have minimized the amount of beer that ended up on the floor.
4. Our kitchen/dining room needs better flooring than wood laminate, preferably something waterproof. I cringe whenever think about what it might look like underneath those floorboards.
5. I know A LOT of cuss words!

The good thing about being a brewer is that I can always make more. So worry not, my friends, I do have plans to revisit New Texican in the future. In the meantime, I have a couple other brews in the works. The moral of today's story: Mistakes=learning, learning=better beer

Love, peace, and hoppiness,
🍻Angelica🍻

Whatcha Cookin?

I said that when we moved to Texas, I was going to make the switch to all-grain brewing and upgrade my equipment, and I did- sort of. I had a full 3-tier system in mind when I said that, but limited storage in our apartment meant that I had to do something different. After a little bit of research, I opted for the Brew-In-A-Bag Method instead. All I needed was a big ass pot, a propane burner, mesh bag, and a paddle, so off to the store I went. This is when things got interesting. Anyone from the South knows that these items, minus the mesh bag, are also needed for crawfish and/or seafood boils. Crawfish season was already over when I was buying the stuff, so the guy in line behind me at the register got curious. The conversation went something like this:
Guy: "Whatcha cookin?
Me: "Beer"
Guy: *laughs*
Me: "Seriously, I homebrew"
Guy: "Oh, you can do that?"
Me, trying to pay and get out of the store: "Yup, it's fun. Have a nice day."

Next step was to go to the homebrew supply for the mesh bag and ingredients. It was August, so I was buying stuff for the 2nd edition of our anniversary brew, 9 Year Itch. This was my 1st visit to the (only) shop in my area. They had everything I needed, and it was a good experience so far, so I decided to ask for advice. My last regular shop was a great place to ask questions and get tips and they never made me feel stupid for asking, so why should this place be any different, right? HA!
Me: "This is my first try at BIAB, any tips for me?"
Store Employee: "Yeah, don't do it." (Really?!)
Me: "I have limited space, so this is pretty much my only option for all-grain right now."
Store Employee: "That's too bad. Your efficiency is going to be really low. I would suggest getting a mash tun as soon as you can."

Needless to say, I walked out of there a little disappointed. When I got home, I turned back to the good old Internet and homebrew forums and found a ton of pointers! (Not all HBS stores are created equal, my friends, but that's not the point of the story.) Flash forward to brew day. We decided to set up by the pool, which is close to our apartment, but far enough away to satisfy the 10-foot rule for open flames at the complex. August is HOT in Galveston, so as the day went on, lots of people
passed through the pool area. Almost every time, we ended up in a conversation similar to the one I had at the store:

People:"Whatcha cookin?"
Us:"Beer"
P:*cue laugh* "Really? Is that legal?"
U: "Yeah, take a look."
P:"Oh wow, that's cool!" Or "Well if you need a taste tester, I'm in Apt #___" *Wink, wink, awkward laugh.*
 (I joke about it, but I really love people's reactions, and you know I love talking about beer and brewing to anyone that asks.)

The brew session went well, and we made it to the waiting period. Now, 9 Year Itch is a big beer at an estimated 9% ABV, so I expected it to take some time. I didn't expect to learn a lesson about stuck fermentation. I check my numbers at 2 weeks and 3 weeks in before I bottle, just to make sure fermentation is over and my target has been reached. Well, after 4 weeks, my gravity readings were still the same as week 2, and way too high for the beer to be considered done. Back to the internet, and it was confirmed- fermentation was stalled, but there was a way to start it back up again! All I had to do was add more yeast, Saison yeast to be exact. This strain is a monster and will eat any fermentable sugar in the wort, even if conditions are less than perfect. 2 weeks after adding it to the carboy, my numbers were right where I needed them to be, and it was time to bottle. Well, due to the extra samples I took before I realized fermentation had stalled, as well as the extra trub  from the 2nd yeast addition, I lost about a gallon worth of beer. Did I factor this is when I was preparing the priming sugar? Of course not! In fact, I used extra because I wanted it to have the high carbonation levels characteristic of Belgian beers. Luckily, I didn't get any bottle bombs in the batch, but the majority of them were gushers. We have learned, and instructed everyone who got a bottle, to open the bottle over the sink and immediately pour it into the largest cup they could find (so much for proper glassware). I'm also lucky that none of these issues affected the taste in a bad way, there was just less of it to enjoy. The beer was still delicious, and we are down to our last few bottles.

The moral of the story: brewing comes with its share of challenges, but it's always worth it in the end. And that's why I love it.

CHEERS!

That Time I Tried To Make A Sour

Tried is the key word in that title. What I actually made was  . . . something weird. Settle in, because this story is gonna take a little while.
Let me start by saying that I LOVE sour beers! I've been a fan since I had my first one at Ale Industries’ place, The Pig & The Pickle (which is now closed, unfortunately). I wish I could remember what it was called, but this was 3 years ago, when I was still a young grasshopper in the world of craft beer. For those of you who are not familiar with the style, a sour beer  is created by using wild yeast strains during fermentation or by introducing bacteria to the brew liquid. It sounds bad, but the results can be very tasty if it goes right. The majority of them are very tart, which is why they appeal to me. I grew up in the age of Warhead candies, and ate those suckers til I had cuts in my tongue. That being said, it was definitely a style I wanted to take a stab at, but I felt very intimidated by the whole thing. Brewing in itself can be a gamble, but sours are in high stakes territory. They can take months, or even years, to develop the correct flavors and you really have to be on top of your sanitation game to prevent infections in future non-sour batches.  I did what I do best and started my research to decide how to approach the project. Luckily, Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine had just released an issue dedicated to sours. One of the articles mentioned a method called kettle souring, which can produce results in weeks rather months. It involved using plain yogurt to sour the beer, since it contains lactobacillus, a common bacteria used in sours (link here if you're curious). It sounded simple enough, so I got more details from this post on the Not So Profesional Beer Blog. I knew I wanted to do a small batch, just in case I ended up having to dump it. My regular homebrew store had some 1 gallon kits on super clearance, so I picked out a brown ale, got some extra supplies to replace the ones I was about to infect (plastic really likes bacteria), and picked out a yeast blend that contained even more lactobacillus.
One of the first steps in this yogurt method was to grow a culture. As per the instructions, I mixed a little dry malt extract with water and poured in the clear liquid from the top of the yogurt container. I had to find a way to keep this mixture warm and cozy for several hours so the culture could grow. After ruling out a few different methods, I settled on using my wax warmer as a hot plate (they're not just for keeping your house smelling good anymore, folks!). This mixture went into the wort, which had to sit for a few days at around 100 degrees. I have a gas stove, and didn't feel comfortable leaving it on the burner or in the oven, so in the slow cooker it went. After about 3 days, it started smelling a little sour (in a good way, not the "how old is this milk?" way). The taste wasn't quite there, but I figured that would come with time. I finished off the brewing process, set it in the garage and tried to forget about it. After an agonizing 3 months of waiting and peeking and taking gravity readings, I bottled it and let it condition for about another month.
Finally, tasting day had arrived. It was pretty bad, guys! The carbonation level was like pouring a beer over an Alka-Seltzer tablet, and the taste was odd, to say the least. In my husband's words, it tasted like "a sour Miller Lite." To me, it tasted like a cheap beer with a ton of salt in it. I'm not exactly sure where I went wrong, though I can think of a few things that could've contributed.

• Not being patient enough
• Using ingredients from a kit on clearance, probably not the best quality.
• Not being patient enough
• I had to move the carboy at one point and may have disturbed the pellicle (a layer that forms over the top, protects the wort from oxygen)
• Not being patient enough
• I dropped a straw in the carboy while trying to get a sample for measurements and couldn't get it back out (don't ask)
• Not being patient enough
• Could've used more yogurt or let the culture grow a little longer

This was a huge learning experience for me, and when the sting of making my first crappy beer wears off, I will definitely attempt a sour again. For now, I have a few bottles left of this . . .thing in the garage. I crack one open every once in a while to see if it improves or changes over time. So far, it doesn't look very promising.
If there are any other brewers reading this, I'd love to hear your suggestions, tips, dos and don'ts, stories regarding sours. Until next time, friends.