More Homebrewing Safety Tips
A while ago I wrote about some useful homebrewing safety tips. Those mostly focused on equipment rather than action, so today I wish to give a few more safety tips on how to homebrew. There is one simple rule I like to promote, don’t ever push yourself if it creates a safety concern.
One of the most important safety concerns with homebrewing is the gallons hot liquid, I touched on this last time as I thought it was so important but wish to go deeper here. With our kits only 1 gallon of water is required at a time, many choose to use much more but even our kits are a substantial amount of water. For placing the water in your pot it can easily be done in smaller separate jugs, but after boil when you are moving the homebrew to cool this isn’t advisable as it means sticking your hand near boiling sticky liquid. This means at some point you will need to move approximately 1 gallon of hot water. If you can then simply take it slowly and remove any pets, small children or anything you are likely to trip over. However if you are struggling simply don’t, instead you can
Ask for help, homebrewing is more fun when done with people anyway and having an extra pair of hands around will help at all stages. In general having someone to help is advisable no matter how able you are.
Let it cool where it stands, this may harm the flavour but it is better than harming yourself. If an accident occurs after this then only a mess is created not real harm.
This is probably the only part of homebrewing you could consider to have some danger, which is why it is so important you don’t mess up.
The second most important tip I have is don’t leave your homebrew once it has started. From boiling over to miss timing you do want to have some level of attention on the pot at all times. This is again why it is so helpful to have someone helping you while homebrewing, you don’t want a knock at the door to ruin your kitchen but more importantly your homebrew. If you can’t get any help then when any distraction comes up, remove the pot from the hob. This may not give the best results but it is much better than the alternative.
My last piece of advice today is familiarise yourself with everything before starting. Those of you who cook at lot should have little trouble jumping into homebrewing but even then, it is good to really figure out the process before starting. Always get out all your equipment at the start, make sure it is properly cleaned and that no one picks it up half way through because they wanted to use that water you boiled for a cup of tea. Our kit helps with this as we not only set out everything you need but all the ingredients are carefully prepared, weighed and labelled for you. The best way to learn is always in the doing but it is still good to prepare and familiarise yourself no matter how many times you have homebrewed before.
Telling people not to do something can seem counter intuitive for a business, but we don’t want customers seriously harming themselves. If you don’t feel able to do something right now get help or wait until you can, there is a lot you can do to prepare in the meantime.
