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Safe Brewing

Miriam Kresh
July 2005
Petach Tikvah, Israel

Like many other hobbies, home brewing has potential hazards. These guidelines are intended to bring important safety issues to the attention of the new brewer, and to remind the veteran brewer that basic safety never goes out of style. Areas discussed are heating liquids, sanitizing, handling carboys, making your brewing area safe, protecting yourself, safe bottling, home distillation, and using herbal ingredients wisely. It's my hope that these guidelines will serve you in your winemaking, and bring you to wine worthy of that cheerful traditional toast: "To your good health!"

 

  1. Heating Liquids

     

    One of the first things a recipe demands is hot water, or hot must. Make sure your pot is large enough to allow stirring without splashing. Its handles must be firmly attached and large enough to grip even while you're wearing oven mitts – a tippy pot full of hot must is dangerous. A stock pot with a spigot is convenient, if you have one, so as pour easily and safely. Hot, sticky must will continue burning whatever it comes into contact with for a good few minutes (hopefully not you), so stay focused and move carefully to avoid spills.

    • If hot liquid should spill on you, get cold water running and keep the injured area under the cold running water. This will stop the "cooking". Afterwards, apply wet, cool bandages to reduce pain.
    • If the burn is second degree – with blisters and severe pain, do the same but afterwards gently dry the area without rubbing any blisters open. Keep it dry. Consult a health practitioner.
    • Third degree burns present a charred, white look on the skin, less pain (because of nerve damage), and faintness. Do not apply anything to the skin: get help, keep it covered and dry, and go to the hospital immediately.

    Pure aloe vera gel, in compresses, is effective for healing burns, once a new layer of skin has formed and danger of infection has passed. Another excellent remedy for burn scars is emu oil (not for vegetarians however).

    If you plan to transfer the must to a carboy, allow it to cool to room temperature first in order not to shatter the carboy with a stream of hot liquid. (A sanitized, large-mouthed funnel whose short end fits into the neck of the carboy makes pouring the must into the carboy an easier job.)

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  1. You may want to use a little hot water to dissolve those last drops in your honey jar. To avoid a steam burn, use only a half-cupful; don't fill the jar halfway. Remove the lid slowly after shaking the jar, for it will release hot steam explosively in your face if opened suddenly. If your honey jar is plastic, you'd be wiser using warm, not hot water, for it might buckle under the heat, right in your hand. Warm water works too, you just need to do it a couple of times.

    Sometimes you need to keep your fermenting must warm, especially during winter. Especially as you'll be leaving the heating appliances on for long periods, keep basic safety in mind: make sure that any heating pads or electric heating belts, and their wires, are in good shape, and don't let them get wet.

     

  2. Sanitizing

     

    Brewing demands fanatical attention to sanitation. Any piece of equipment coming into contact with your must should be as free of germs and bacteria as you can humanly make them in a home setting. Plastic fermenters may harbor germs in cracks or folds on their insides. They should be thoroughly washed with a soft sponge – a soft sponge or cloth will not scratch the inside of a fermenter – and then sanitized.

    Fresh produce needs picking over and rinsing, with any rotten spots cut away. Obviously, you don't want your must to go to vinegar, or to acquire a yucky odor or taste. Few things hurt more than watching a batch on which you'd lavished your TLC go down the drain.

    Another consideration is keeping your drink safe for consumption. Rotten ingredients or neglecting sanitation may produce a fine germ soup that will send the drinker to "the little room" for a long time, or even to the Emergency Room. While honey has anti-bacterial properties and the must does contain alcohol, neither will stand up to a thriving colony of toxic bacteria, millions of which can be happily reproducing in liquid long before you can see or smell them. You need efficient cleaning agents and routine sanitation to be assured of a safe brew.

    I like to make up my own sanitizing solution because it's more economical than Campden tablets and yields a large quantity that's convenient to store and use. C. J. J. Berry's sanitizing formula is great:

     

    100 g. (3.5 oz.) potassium metabisulphite
    1 tsp. citric acid
    500 ml. (1 pint) hot water, then another 500 ml. later

     

    Dissolve the powders in 500 ml. (1 pint) hot water. When everything is dissolved and the solution is clear, add the remaining 500 ml. (pint). This makes a 10% solution. 1 tsp. of it equals one Campden tablet.

     

    Another way is to dissolve 6 crushed Campden tabs with 15 grams (1/2-oz.) citric acid in 500 ml. of water.

    This solution is strong enough to eventually corrode the lid of a mayonnaise jar, so cover your storage jar with plastic wrap or a plastic sandwich bag before screwing the lid on.

    Now imagine what a hot solution that strong can do to your eyes and lungs if inhaled. As the late, great C.J.J. Berry noted, "it's rather like a gas attack on the Somme!" Those harsh fumes will make eyes, nose, throat and chest sting and burn. Repeated exposure may cause damage to sensitive tissues, so why risk it? Make your solution up in a well-ventilated area, and protect yourself.

    I strongly suggest getting a package of filter masks (they are made by 3M) that cover the nose and mouth; wear one while making up the sanitizing solution. It only takes a few minutes to make the stuff, so you won't need to wear the mask for very long. And if you don't buy a mask, at least keep the area ventilated and hold your breath till your solution is safely lidded.

    Wear gloves to protect your skin. A bucketful of water with sanitizer looks so innocuous and clear – you don't think twice about dipping your hand in to retrieve a hydrometer or spoon put there to soak. But think twice. Sulfites strip the skin of its natural moisture and protective oils, so that after a while your hands will be discolored, itchy, and perhaps raw and irritated.

    Asthma patients and those allergic to sulfites should avoid them of course, choosing to sanitize by boiling equipment or by using another cleaner. If using bleach, it's necessary to repeatedly rinse the equipment with plain hot water, till the bleach smell goes away, before going on to use it. Naturally it's particularly wise for people with those challenges to use a filter mask and gloves.

    Label your jar of sanitizing solution. Draw skull and crossbones on a sticky label, and stick it on the jar. Or write POISON on it. Place the jar, and all your powders and chemicals, locked away from the hands (and mouths) of curious interlopers.

    If you use Campden during fermentation or to stabilize the wine, add sulfite information to the labels on your bottles. Among the rest of the information about the wine, the label should have "Contains Sulfites" on it somewhere. This is a courtesy to those who need to avoid sulfites or who simply choose not to ingest them.

     

  3. Handling Carboys

     

    A full glass carboy that slips through the hands will explode upon impacting the floor forcefully, shooting jagged pieces of glass upwards. Nobody can step away fast enough to avoid those lethal shards if that should happen. Injuries can include cut arteries, tendons, and nerves, with massive blood loss. Where tendons and nerves are severed, there may be permanent damage. So what can you do to prevent a carboy accident?

    • Wear rubber gloves for a good firm grip. At least, make sure your hands are dry when moving a carboy.
    • Wear those gloves while washing and sanitizing as well, for the same reason.
    • Put a kitchen towel down in your sink to minimize slippage, and if your carboys tend to bump against the sides of the sink as well, drape more towels over the edges. Apart from reducing the chance of breaking, this also minimizes scratching the surface of the glass, which weakens it.
    • Don't work with heavy carboys if you're particularly tired, or live with a physical challenge like a weak back or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Rather, divide your large batches into two or more smaller, manageable, carboys. Or shamelessly recruit someone else to do the heavy work (in exchange for some of the goods).
    • Some people prefer to eliminate glass altogether and work with unbreakable plastic fermenters that are made especially for brewing. Go to www.better-bottle.com to view these.
    • Plan ahead to minimize moving your heavy carboys: keep a particular table, bench, or other strong raised platform for your carboys to sit on. Once racking time comes, place the receiving carboy on the floor and gravity will do the work for you. Then you or your assistant need to lift the newly-filled carboy onto the platform only once.
    • If you must move heavy carboys from room to room, make, borrow, or improvise a wheeled trolley that will carry them. Even an old baby carriage might work, if the front bar is strong and the carboy will remain stable in it. One lady on the GotMead forum uses an office chair. At the very least, carry your carboys in a strong basket with sturdy handles built into it. Some people use milk crates.
    • Don't shlep your carboys around by the neck; that kind of stress can cause the neck to break off in your hand.

    And for people strong and confident enough to move full, heavy carboys around in their arms, here are some safety hints:

    • Don't bend over and pick up the carboy; lift it with bent knees and a straight back. This is a stronger stance.
    • Keep the full carboy close to the center of your body.
    • Stay focused and walk slowly in order to avoid sloshing the must in the carboy. This is for your safety, not for the welfare of the must; a heavy carboy filled with sloshing must is hard to manage and is more likely to cause back injuries.

     

  4. A Safe Brewing Area

     

    • Brew in a well-ventilated room.
    • Make sure that there's adequate lighting at all times.
    • Organize your materials, especially hazardous ones, so that their labels are in plain view. You don't want to reach for what you thought was acid blend, only to discover that you poured something else into your must.
    • Keep your chemicals, sharp knives and scissors, and anything else you consider potentially dangerous locked up between sessions.
    • Keep basic safe cooking rules in mind when dealing with fire: don't wear trailing sleeves or a billowy skirt or nightgown when you're going to be working around an open flame. Keep any work with straight alcohol far from the stove (putting vodka in the airlocks, fortifying a wine with brandy, and the like). Fumes from those liquids can ignite.
    • Keep pets out of the brewing area. A pet might creep up unnoticed so that you step on it or trip over it, always when your hands are full. A pet might knock something over. And pets tend to shed hairs and molt; hairs and feathers are not things you want to find in your must or equipment. Most annoyingly, a cat might decide to take a nap on top of your recipe, going limp and refusing to move off (argh). Close the door, or screen the area off.
    • Deny entrance to small children as well, or plan to brew when they're not around. Not only do you want to keep their little fingers out of hazardous materials, you want to avoid the kind of impasse where you're clutching a full carboy (or pot full of hot must) while a toddler clings to your legs, demanding a hug.

     

  5. Protect Yourself

     

    It's mostly a matter of protective clothing. As mentioned, a filter mask; heavy rubber gloves for washing and sanitizing; thin, flexible latex gloves for other brewing chores; a large, waterproof apron in case of spills; closed shoes to protect your feet from spills or drops of hot liquid. It also makes sense to take your watch off (bleach and sulfites do a number on a leather strap and the battery). If you're in for a long session, you might want to change into old clothes, as well.

     

  6. Safe Bottling

     

    Bottle bombs – a biggie. Imagine waking up in the night to the sound of a cork popping, then your precious wine spewing violently all over the place. That's a good scenario – worse is hearing glass shattering explosively too. Worst of all is standing where a bottle full of CO2 gives way and bursts. People have reported glass shards being driven into drywall by the force of these explosions! Sort of like an exploding carboy, only smaller in size, but just as lethal. These horrors can be avoided by:

    • Not bottling prematurely. Give your wine time to finish its fermentation, which you can judge by using your hydrometer to determine the end of activity. Then you may stabilize with sorbate and Campden if you wish. It's a temptation to hurry bottling sometimes, especially when you need an empty carboy, but you might pay dearly for your impatience.
    • Not over-carbonating. Follow the instructions on your recipe if you want a sparkling wine and don't try to improve on it by adding more sugar, honey, or other fermentable sugar than the recipe calls for.
    • Not using regular wine bottles for a Champagne-like wine. Regular bottles are too thin to withstand the pressure from pent-up CO2 inside, which is comparable to the amount of pressure inside a car tire.

     

  7. Home Distillation

     

    Don't try it. It's illegal, for starters. And then it's dangerous. Many a home-made still has blown up. If you feel the urge to distill, compensate. Take out your harmonica and play a couple of Prohibition songs. ("Mountain Dew" is a good one.) Then uncork some of the stuff you have bottled already, and let the moment pass.

     

  8. Herbal Ingredients

     

    Myself, I love to make wine and mead perfumed with all kinds of herbs and flowers. But don't assume that everything green and natural is safe. Potent poison lurks in many beautiful, sweet-smelling herbs, and even in parts of safe ones.

    Traditional culinary spices and herbs are fine; you will see many mead recipes calling for them. For example: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, mint, citrus rinds. Fresh fruit and vegetables, commercial teas, food-grade extracts and the like are obviously OK too, and are commonly used by brewers.

    It's when you pass by a bush of flowering oleander with its heady, magical perfume, and get the idea of putting some in your next batch, that you might get into serious trouble. (Oleander is poisonous in its every part, from the roots to the flower: any extract made from it will stop a heart beating.) Honeysuckle flowers are safe, but the berries are toxic. Before brewing with an herb you've never seen in a recipe, look it up. Find out if there are any toxicity issues, or warnings for pregnant or nursing women. Rosemary, for instance, has been in use for flavoring mead since ancient times, but it's not advisable for a pregnant woman to drink it. Rosemary is a blood mover and may, if ingested in more than tiny quantities, cause premature menses or miscarriage. Same for ginger. On the other hand, fresh orange and hawthorn flowers are a beautiful, unusual, and harmless addition to a mead or wine.

    Rather than provide a list of commonly acceptable herbal ingredients and another of toxic ones, I urge you to do your research yourself. There are excellent online sources for herbal knowledge: two are the Plants for a Future database, and Henriette Kress's Herbal Archives, respectively:

     

    http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/D_search.html

     

    and

     

    http://www.ibiblio.org/herbmed/

     

    Or look in respected modern herbals (valuable as the ancient ones continue to be, they also contain more myth and mis-information than most of the moderns.)

    Notes: Essential oils are not safe additives for your drink. And aphrodisiac herbs reportedly work well in meads and wines too. Chocolate is one of the best!

…and thanks… Many thanks to the members of the GotMead forum, who planted the idea of this article in my mind, and contributed many useful suggestions.

Dan McFeeley kindly edited the work and contributed his wisdom where my experience is lacking. A shoenem dank, Dan, may the wine dybbuks ever shun your carboys.

C.J.J. Berry's First Steps in Winemaking, and Ken Schramm's The Compleat Meadmaker yielded valuable tips and comments on safety. To the authors, both present and gone, my thanks.

And to all good brewers and lovers of fine homebrew: many happy brewing hours, and many happy occasions on which to drink.

Vicky Rowe
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