Andy Chase

I began homebrewing about six weeks ago, something I'd been wanting to do for just about as long as I've been legally able to drink beer. I've been lurking in rec.crafts.brewing for the better part of a year, but it wasn't until I had the experience of my first batch under my belt that I began to be able to read certain posts to the group with a grain of salt.

In homebrewing (and most other hobbies,) you can get as complicated and expensive as you want (all-grain brewing, complex formulas and calculations, temperature regulation, lagering, kegging, tap systems, etc.) or just buy a kit and follow the instructions (Boil water and malt extract, add hops, boil some more, put in a bucket for a couple of weeks).

It is interesting to see the different responses to newbie questions like "I pitched my yeast at 90 degrees - is that too hot?"

The typical, friendly, Type B response is something like, "You might want to wait until the wort is a bit cooler next time; you might get some fruity esters and/or diacetyl that will contribute a buttery flavor to the beer, but depending on your tastes and the style you're brewing, that may be OK. Your beer will be fine. RDWHAHB (Relax, Don't worry, Have a Home Brew)"

The Type A response goes something like, "90 degrees is much too hot to pitch your yeast. Your beer will wind up tasting like pineapple, and it there will be large amounts of diacetyl, and it will probably give you splitting headaches because of the fusels that form when fermenting at that temperature. You might as well wait until you rack to secondary to see if you've ruined your beer, but it probably won't be very good. Personally, I always make a yeast starter 3 days ahead of time, and after brewing I measure the temperature of the room where I'll be fermenting, and then use my immersion chiller to get it to that exact temperature before pitching.

Talk about discouraging! I am glad that I have a type B personality, and the benefit of my own research leading up to actually making my own beer. My own take on it is that people have been doing this for literally thousands of years, well before you could get thermemometers, hydrometers, and lab-cultured yeast. If I pitch the yeast with the wort a little too warm (which I knowingly did when brewing my second batch - I was partially worried about contamination the longer it took the wort to cool down, and partly in a hurry to get out the door to run some errands), the sky won't fall, the world won't end, and chances are my beer will be just fine. And if it doesn't, then I can use it for cooking and I'll have the benefit of personal familiarity with the characteristics of the results of pitching yeast that warm.

RDWHAHB.