Is my beer ok

Freak said:

After 23 years of home brewing I have come to realize that most home brewers are WAY TOO FIXATED on sanitation. I have never once in all my years of brewing ever used a single drop of sanitizer in my brewing process.

Click to expand...

This is just bad advise.  Sanitation is one of the few key mistakes homebrewes make when they are just starting out.    When the beer is  nasty, they never do it again and wings restaurants make unfavorable commercials about them and they lose all their friends.  Freak may be lucky or immune to the affects of bacteria and wild yeast infections but don't be a Freak.  Sanitize like you plan to serve royalty off it.

Freak said:

Nor will I. I have won a ton of awards without putting a ton of effort into sanitation and I don't intend to change my methods. I use boiling water and don't even worry about little mistakes like the one that we are talking about here. Dirty as sh*t is bad. Really clean is just fine and won't likely cause a problem. Absolutely germ free is totally anal. Clean it when you are done using it. Boil it before you use it again (or just rinse it in really hot water). Don't worry if your nasty filthy disgusting germ infested fingers (or the filthy air) touch it. It's just not a big deal.

Click to expand...

This is exactly the mentality that caused hundreds of microbreweries and brewpuibs to fail right about the time Freak was in his heyday of brewing.  In the 80's and 90's I traveled all over the country and visited a couple hundred brewpubs.  It was clearly evident that the brewers were following this exact advice.  Infections were rampant and the quality was not worth the price and nearly all of them failed.  Don't be a Freak and read this advise an entertainment and instruction on what not to do.

Freak said:

For thousands of years people have been brewing beer outside in the dirt without Star San and all we do is try to emulate what they have done for centuries.

Click to expand...

We are not trying to make the same swill that our ancestors did.  We are trying to make something unique and specific to our desires.  Crap beer is about 1/3 the cost of  making homebrew.  We all know we can pick up a 12 pack of crap at every gas station store.  We choose to spend the better part of a day then some weeks to make the best beer we can.  We take the steps we can to mitigate the risks of wasting our work on some crap we have to pour out.  Freak is welcome to toss out bad advice and contrary opinion but I encourage homebrewers reading these comments to consider Freaks comments more as a parody of our obsession than brewing advice.

Cheers!

Freak said:

After 23 years of home brewing I have come to realize that most home brewers are WAY TOO FIXATED on sanitation. I have never once in all my years of brewing ever used a single drop of sanitizer in my brewing process. Nor will I. I have won a ton of awards without putting a ton of effort into sanitation and I don't intend to change my methods. I use boiling water and don't even worry about little mistakes like the one that we are talking about here. Dirty as sh*t is bad. Really clean is just fine and won't likely cause a problem. Absolutely germ free is totally anal. Clean it when you are done using it. Boil it before you use it again (or just rinse it in really hot water). Don't worry if your nasty filthy disgusting germ infested fingers (or the filthy air) touch it. It's just not a big deal. For thousands of years people have been brewing beer outside in the dirt without Star San and all we do is try to emulate what they have done for centuries. The beer will be just fine. Don't Worry. Relax. Have A Homebrew.

Click to expand...

you ARE sanitizing just with different methods. add to that it being really tricky to boil a 7 gallon bucket.

I agree that homebrewers get the idea in their head that if they are just sanitary enough the beer will turn out good and that's just not true. I have been lax in my sanitation at times but I still pay attention to it. It's not the key to great beer but it's an easy step to take and can save a fair amount of heartache.

let's remember that most of the beer/mead/wine our ancestors made in the dirt was what we would call a mixed fermentation and it was consumed fresh, often while still actively fermenting, in order to avoid the more unpleasant flavors that develop later on.

Your beer formula almost looked okay but you need to more modify it for better result.

Not a thing you can do about it now so, why worry about it? Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew. You will find out soon enough but, I would be shocked if that actually screwed your beer up. Not that big of a deal.

BTW. I did the same thing Scott did with the stir bar. Not a problem.