OnTap Magazine

I have complained about this before, but even now we have brewers (home or commercial) who tell their clients and friends that their infected/badly designed/badly stored beers should taste like that. One commercial brewer even explained to me that his beer is “too complex for the South African market” when I contacted him about his unpleasant and undrinkable beers. If your beer is off, learn from your experience, fix your recipe/process, and/ or rethink your sanitisation process. Put the ego away; don’t make the drinker suffer and don’t make others scared of homebrew, or craft beer, or beer in general because of your failings. And calling your beer Belgian because you did not sanitise properly is likewise unacceptable. You are insulting your drinkers and you are insulting one of the world’s greatest beer cultures. Beer lovers get very hung up on IBUs. The initials stand for International Bitterness Units, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s a guaranteed way to tell the bitterness of a beer. But there is a difference between calculated bitterness – worked out on the alpha acids of the hops used – and perceived bitterness. Think of it like this: a Oh, those darned chemicals! They’re added to make beer ferment out in 24 hours, or to make you drunk faster, or to preserve the beer for longer. No, nein, nope. There is no chemical that can make yeast ferment out a standard beer in 24 hours. If you pitched a very large amount of active yeast into a very warm (30°C+) environment, and the beer was 1 2 M Y T H S 05 ALL GRAIN IS BETTER THAN EXTRACT 1 2 M Y T H S 06 BIG BEER WILL STEAL MY RECIPES 1 2 M Y T H S 07 BREWERS AND THEIR CHEMICALS 1 2 M Y T H S 08 HIGH IBUs EQUALS BITTER BEER 1 2 M Y T H S 04 IT SHOULD TASTE LIKE THAT, IT’S BELGIAN/CRAFT/ HOMEBREW Explosions and blindness are usually associated with bootleg distilling, where quality and safety is not always the highest priority and harmful adjuncts often make it into the brew. Luckily, the chances of passing on at your local homebrew club meeting are thankfully very small indeed. This is not a common utterance, but I have heard it a few times from home and craft brewers who refuse to share their recipes for fear that Big Beer is going to very light (3% or less),you might get it to ferment out in 24 hours. Whether the product would be enjoyable is a different story. In truth chemical ‘reactions’ do take place in beer production and they do use Dihydrogen Monoxide. Yes, they use ‘water’. Shock and horror! But never call it water – it’s ‘liquor!’ Brewers adjust the hardness/ softness of the water by using tiny quantities of natural minerals already present in the water (such as sodium chloride - salt, sodium bicarbonate - baking soda, calciumcarbonate - chalk) to give them the perfect profile of liquor to brew with. steal them to use for their nefarious purposes. Do you really think that large breweries do not have the brewers/scientists to make the same beer? Or better beer? Your recipe is, most probably, similar to hundreds of other recipes available in books and on the internet. It’s really a rather arrogant thing to think that the world’s largest brewery would be interested in stealing your recipe. But if you’re still worried, just add another kilo or two of hops – the scale-up would be way to pricey for them to be tempted by! This oft-repeated homebrew “fact” is largely based in snobbery. Considering that extract is simply concentrated wort, you can make the same quality beer no matter which ingredient you use. The limitation of extract is that you are now bound to the malts that the producer used, but this can be addressed with malt steeping. Of course there is a but: you have to use a quality extract. Make sure the extract is fresh and has been stored properly. Old extract will have the “extract twang” flavour that is very unpleasant – a combination of metallic, stale liquorice and slightly burnt sugar. ontapmag.co.za | Autumn 2019 | 53