Sanitation matters

It matters a lot.

Botulism isn't really a bug.  It's a toxin produced by a bug...specifically, Clostridium botulinum.

Wikipedia says "Although the botulinum toxin is destroyed by thorough cooking over the course of a few minutes, the spore itself is not killed by the temperatures reached with normal sea-level-pressure boiling, leaving it free to grow and again produce the toxin when conditions are right"

So sanitization....it matters a lot.

To make the point, in recent news, a prisoner making pruno in a Utah prison poisoned his fellow inmates.  The CDC reports that this isn't an isolated incident...it's occurred other times in other prisons.

My friends: be careful out there!

Bitter Betty - Kyle's first beer

Bitter Betty, an American Thanksgiving IPA

Kyle wanted to try his hand at brewing over the Thanksgiving day weekend.

• 5# Maris Otter
• 5# Golden Promise
• 1# 40L Munich
• 1 oz Warrior, first wort
• 1 oz Galaxy, 20m
• 1 sachet SafAle S05

Initial mash temp was, I believe, 154F

We had a round of stomach flu over the weekend and so it was an 18 hour mash...and boy, was it sour.  You can, much to Rox's chagrin, still smell it in the garage where we need to do some scrubbing on the floor...

My recipe calculator brings it in at 83 ibu, which is a tinch high for the style  but still well within my own personal guidelines.

OG was 1.050, a bit lower than we expected, particularly considering the long mash time...but the primary is going like crazy and, considering it's S05, I'm still betting we come in at 6% abv.

Initial taste into the primary was good:  I have high hopes.  It'll be interesting to see how the sour mash works with the Galaxy.  Stay tuned.