Butters My Airlock Isn't Working? What Can I Do?

[pint of lager]

"My Airlock Isn't Working" must come up once a week. It is usually by a brand new brewer who has just found this forum. They jump on, don't know how to search, don't read any of the older posts on the forum, see the easy nature of the forum and the members and make their very first post. At this stage, rather than gruffly telling them to do a search (the comment "3rd worst thread" springs to mind,) they need some good basic information on their brewing. Once they have been a member for a while, they work out how to access the enormous amount of information.

Everyone, think back to your very first post. How would you feel if your first post was ignored, or told to do a search? A good response would be to say welcome to the forum, explain how to do a search and also provide a link to a thread that answers the OP's question. Butters has done a great job, but it is something that every member of this forum could do standing on their head. So next time a newbie question pops up, look at the count number and join date, before mentioning kittens or chooks.

Well done Butters. I hope your belly has recovered from laughing yesterday.

 

[zebba]

Zebba: Heard of Oztops?

LOL - No, and that looks awesome!

Although I still think my over-engineered design is better

 

[Ronin]

Everyone, think back to your very first post. How would you feel if your first post was ignored, or told to do a search? A good response would be to say welcome to the forum, explain how to do a search and also provide a link to a thread that answers the OP's question.

I was thinking the same thing just recently...people forget all too easily how naive (and much more polite) they were when they first came to the forum. I'm sure after years of seeing the same questions pop up it's easy to get rather terse with your replies. It never hurts to remember what you were like when you first started something.

When I first started years ago, I was guilty of thinking amber ales had to have amber malt, brown ale had to have brown malt etc. Luckily I never actually asked those questions and just read a lot of past posts and learnt how much I didn't know.

Same with everything in life, I just saw some footage of myself doing a martial art I've been doing for 8 years. This was a year in, and it was a bit of an eye opener. I now have a lot more tolerance for new people.

Good concept...

 

[chappo1970]

Everyone, think back to your very first post. How would you feel if your first post was ignored, or told to do a search? A good response would be to say welcome to the forum, explain how to do a search and also provide a link to a thread that answers the OP's question. Butters has done a great job, but it is something that every member of this forum could do standing on their head. So next time a newbie question pops up, look at the count number and join date, before mentioning kittens or chooks.

Well done Butters. I hope your belly has recovered from laughing yesterday.

Can't agree with you more. I try to get to 'em when I can if the other boys/ladies don't beat me that is. I have to admit I was having a hard time stopping myself from laughing out loud in the office. I reckon everyone had a bit of innocent fun.

Although I still think my over-engineered design is better

Zebba I dare you nah... Double dare you PM it to Butters ROFL :lol: .

On second thoughts post a New Topic: Butters? Will my over engineered kitten powered airlock work?

 

[Darren]

actually the best one i heard (and it wasnt asked of butters) was a guy who froze chickens and put them into a sealed bag then dropped them into his fermentor to cool it down! sorry dude if your still on here and i offend you, but seriously thats gross and a bit silly.

Maybe he was making cock-ale

http://brewery.org/cm3/recs/13_23.html

Procedure:
"Take 10 gallons of ale and a large cock, the older the better; parboil the cock, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar until his bones are broken (you must gut him when you flaw him). Then, put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put to it five pounds of raisins of the sun - stoned; some blades of mace, and a few cloves. Put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has been working, put the bag and ale together in vessel.
In a week or nine days bottle it up, fill the bottle just above the neck and give it the same time to ripen as other ale."

Alternate recipe:
Brutal, eh? I was also given a modern recipe written by some guy named C.J.J. Berry.... Here goes this one...
"Take a few pieces of _cooked_ chicken and a few chicken bones (approx one tenth of the edible portion of the bird) well crushed or minced.

Also take half of pound of raisins, a very little mace, and one or maybe two cloves. Add all these ingrediants to half a bottle of string country white wine. Soak for 24 hrs. Then make on gallon of beer as follows:

1 lb Malt extract
1 Oz Hops
1/2 lb demerarra sugar
1 gallon water
Yeast and nutrient


Add the whole of the chicken mixture to the beer at the end of the second day. Fermentation will last six or seven days longer than usual and the ale should be matured at least one month in the bottle. This cock ale is of the barley wine type.


cheers

Darren

 

[chappo1970]

You have got to be kidding Darren? Has anyone actually made that stuff, drunk it and survived to tell the tale?

:icon_vomit:

 

[reviled]

Hey at least they say to cook the chicken first, I was reading that thinking, selmonella ale :lol:

 

[muckey]

might see if I can catch an emu and then brew a big batch

 

[chappo1970]

might see if I can catch an emu and then brew a big batch

What the hell! Let's keep this alive!

Muckey you have to ask butters mate! Like this....

BUTTERS? Can I substitute a road kill emu for a chicken in a cock-ale?

 

[Luka]

LOL, love it guys. Nothing wrong with a good bit of friendly ribbing and I can't believe some of the responses to this thread! Seriously there are certain individuals on AHB that just need to lighten up and take threads like this how they're intended, although I laugh harder at the posts that complain about "disrespect" and such in a thread that is purely meant for a bit of fun.

Cock-Ale.... i won't go there

 

[muckey]

What the hell! Let's keep this alive!

Muckey you have to ask butters mate! Like this....

BUTTERS? Can I substitute a road kill emu for a chicken in a cock-ale?

I was also wondering if bush turkey would work and if butters could recommend some cooking tips, for example could I roast the emu in the same oven I'm toasting some base malt

 

[chappo1970]

I was also wondering if bush turkey would work and if butters could recommend some cooking tips, for example could I roast the emu in the same oven I'm toasting some base malt

Do I have to remove the road debris and rubber tyre marks or will that add to total IBU and ECB?

 

[lczaban]

Dont fret GG. Coming from Yorkshire this pisstaking is nowt. Water off a ducks back.
Cheers
Steve

I am reminded of a tea mug (about pint size) that my step-dad got from his brother back home in West Yorkshire. It had a Dickensian picture on the side entitled "A Yorkshireman's advice to his son" which went something along the lines of "See all, hear all, say nowt. Don't do owt for nowt, and if you do alwus do it for the father". Wise words...

GG I agree whole heartedly with your sentiments mate and good on you for saying something but I can assure you my intention was very far removed from running Mr Butters down.

I am just very wary that on written forums like this sarcasm can be taken completely the wrong way. Harassment is never about how words are meant to be interpreted, it's how they are interpreted when received. I also could tell that Butters has been a tad iritable of late and so I thought that this might tip him over the edge. I'm glad that isn't the case!

Butters and like Elk (you know who you are) make this forum and I reckon there are very very few here that have 2500 plus posts to their credit. Just think for a minute every post takes what, say 5 mins to respond to?, Butters not only imparts a big hunk of his time but also his knowledge to this forum. My point for this post was for those, especially the likes of Butters was to take the p#ss and air their frustration in a comical manner. We have all got to admit we see some crazy stuff get posted here, LOL the frozen chickens for example, but we also see a mind numbing amount of the same thing. "Why is my airlock not burping?"

The fact that Butters was the object of this post was simply because I read the "Kitten" rant (found Butters response hugely funny) and could feel the pain of yet another dumb question but to Butters and others absolute credit went on to answer the question, as he always does. The fact is Butters and a hand full of others regularly respond to the dumbest of the dumb to the best of the rest subject matters on this forum with the same encouragement and enthusiasim day in day out, I am very appreciative of that. But I have got to admit I also like the every so often big loose and rant.

So mate if your ever in Brisbane or if I get to Adelaide, I want to kiss (I will take my teeth out) and make up and buy you your fill of beer!

+1 to that! I'm sure there are quite a lot of members here who would agree to that sentiment and a cold frosty one to Butters from anyone he has ever responded to would be just reward for all his AHB efforts!

Now Butters for the final time! My bloody airlock has stopped bubbling should I now bottle my beer?

It's a free country the last time I checked, but it may not be the best course of action... link

"My Airlock Isn't Working" must come up once a week. It is usually by a brand new brewer who has just found this forum. They jump on, don't know how to search, don't read any of the older posts on the forum, see the easy nature of the forum and the members and make their very first post. At this stage, rather than gruffly telling them to do a search (the comment "3rd worst thread" springs to mind,) they need some good basic information on their brewing. Once they have been a member for a while, they work out how to access the enormous amount of information.

Everyone, think back to your very first post. How would you feel if your first post was ignored, or told to do a search? A good response would be to say welcome to the forum, explain how to do a search and also provide a link to a thread that answers the OP's question. Butters has done a great job, but it is something that every member of this forum could do standing on their head. So next time a newbie question pops up, look at the count number and join date, before mentioning kittens or chooks.

Well done Butters. I hope your belly has recovered from laughing yesterday.

Your sentiments are pretty spot on POL. Generally I would say that this happens 99% of the time, and the general vibe on AHB is brilliant. I have been on different forums where newbie etiquete is tightly controlled and the Top 20 basic questions tend to get thrown back peoples faces. While I'm not here to condone this course of action, newbies knowing how forums operate and going through the "Read-me" type posts certainly help solve a lot of obvious problems and save the countless "Airlock" type threads appearing quite so frequently.

What the hell! Let's keep this alive!

Muckey you have to ask butters mate! Like this....

BUTTERS? Can I substitute a road kill emu for a chicken in a cock-ale?

Ewwww. A mechanic friend of mine visited a house run by some rough bikie types (who I also happened to know) chasing up payment for some work he had done on their bikes. There was a stew bubbling away in the kitchen who's smell was wafting through the house. The mechanic asked what was cooking, and the reply was that it was a goanna stew made up of some vegies and a fresh piece of roadkill one of them had found earlier in the day. The bikies proceded to tell the mechanic about how they have eaten all maner of roadkill in the past (birds, rabbits, snakes etc.) and that any roadkill was fine to cook up unless it smelled "off". They even mentoned to him that they would gladly accept any fresh roadkill he happened to come across if he felt obliged to pick up and drop off to them. Needless to say that this never happened, and the mechanic's intrigue and appetite for what was in the pot quickly evaporated. :icon_vomit:

I'm sure if someone ended up brewing a roadkill emu ale I could probably find someone willing to partake in such a brew :icon_cheers:

 

[chappo1970]

Hey Butters!

GG wants to know if you have a recipe for roadkill stew ale?

 

[lczaban]

Hey Butters!

GG wants to know if you have a recipe for roadkill stew ale?

Don't forget to let me know what sort of yeast I need to use too. Oh, and btw - how do I tell when fermentation has stopped again?? Thanks Butters!! B)

 

[oldbugman]

Butters, ive dropped my airlock into my brew and i know about cleanleness so i grabbed a plastic bag out of the cupboard put it over my arm and had a swish around in the fermentor to try and get it out. do you think my beer will be ok.

I once had a schooner glass full of yeast taken from a fermenter, so i could clean the fermenter and repitch it. problem is when tipping it in the whole glass went in too. I let it ferment out and when I drained the fermenter the glass was standing upright full of beer. I had a swig, tasted pretty good.

 

[rclemmett]

Maybe he was making cock-ale

http://brewery.org/cm3/recs/13_23.html

Procedure:
"Take 10 gallons of ale and a large cock, the older the better; parboil the cock, flay him, and stamp him in a stone mortar until his bones are broken (you must gut him when you flaw him). Then, put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put to it five pounds of raisins of the sun - stoned; some blades of mace, and a few cloves. Put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find the ale has been working, put the bag and ale together in vessel.
In a week or nine days bottle it up, fill the bottle just above the neck and give it the same time to ripen as other ale."

Alternate recipe:
Brutal, eh? I was also given a modern recipe written by some guy named C.J.J. Berry.... Here goes this one...
"Take a few pieces of _cooked_ chicken and a few chicken bones (approx one tenth of the edible portion of the bird) well crushed or minced.

Also take half of pound of raisins, a very little mace, and one or maybe two cloves. Add all these ingrediants to half a bottle of string country white wine. Soak for 24 hrs. Then make on gallon of beer as follows:

1 lb Malt extract
1 Oz Hops
1/2 lb demerarra sugar
1 gallon water
Yeast and nutrient


Add the whole of the chicken mixture to the beer at the end of the second day. Fermentation will last six or seven days longer than usual and the ale should be matured at least one month in the bottle. This cock ale is of the barley wine type.


cheers

Darren

h34r: What did you type into google to turn that up?

Good onya butters :lol:

 

[InCider]

I'm working from home today, and my keg of cider just blew. Fortunately I had force carbed another just before...

Thanks heavens for small mercies.... :lol:

 

[chappo1970]

I'm working from home today, and my keg of cider just blew. Fortunately I had force carbed another just before...

Thanks heavens for small mercies.... :lol:

Didn't you fit the airlock properly?

 

[buttersd70]

I'm working from home today, and my keg of cider just blew. Fortunately I had force carbed another just before...

Thanks heavens for small mercies.... :lol:

Playing the Wurzels at low volume on a continual loop, next to the coiderrrh kegs will prevent this from happening in future...

Edit: and why was it in a keg? it should be in an earthenware jug. Didn't you watch the video I linked to in my previous post? It explains everything, relating to cider.