LJ Idol - Week 18 - Rainwater: It's Not What You Think

[aggienaut]

   I thought it was rain water.

   I mean, I'd let a bunch of the gallon jugs that had formerly contained jug-wine (before I turned it into brandy) sit outside, and it had rained recently. Sure it had a cap on it, but I'd just moved all the jugs around and have a tendency to put caps back on the jugs (because thats the best way to keep the caps and jugs together).
   So I decided to take a swig of that nice fresh rainwater.

   Firstlyofall, I had neglected to take into account that it had been sitting in the sun, so it was bound to be rather warm. Secondlyofall, it turns out it wasn't rainwater.

   So I lift up this big gallon jug and tilt it back to give myself a nice gulp of rainwater. But instead, hello burning-hot heated brandy!!! O_O

   All distilled liquor comes out crystal clear you see. The colour comes from barrel aging.

   It burned like it was at least 180 proof!! Amid visions of having just consumed a dangerously high concentration of ethanol I desperately spit it out. A quick search provides nothing to support it but I thought I'd heard somewhere that drinking close to pure ethanol is dangerous and can cause that alleged blindness. Perhaps just another alcohol myth. On any account, at the time, in my shock at how much this rainwater burned, I imagined that being superheated the alcohol had somehow risen to the top and I'd consumed pure alcohol, and for a moment the thought of going blind flashed before my eyes. (I think it only tasted stronger than it was because it was hot)

   But then I didn't go blind, and was left just cursing myself for neglecting to label a jug. All brandy has since been contained in the barrel (where it is already beginning to have an amber colour!).

---

   Now, I was telling this story to the lads at work the following day, and barely had I started when they all looked at me with disgust.
   "You ... were going to drink rainwater?!" ventured one of them. It was clear this was a point of shock for all of them.
   "Um... yeah? Its distilled water?"
   "Around here? Acid rain!!"

   Seriously people. Yes I'm sure we have some pollutants in our rain. In fact, a quick search around the computer internets reveals Southern California rain can have a pH of 4.2 to 4.8 (as opposed to "natural" rain at 5.6), but I can't see any reference to bad health effects from drinking that.
   Now consider, lemonade has a pH of as low as 2, and fresh apples have a pH of 3.3 to 3.9 (source and more!). The fact is, the danger of acid rain isn't that its going to dissolve your face off or is poisonous to drink. The harmful effects of acid rain almost entirely consist of the fact that it alters the pH of entire ecosystems and in extreme cases corrodes things that are constantly out in the rain. Many organisms, from fish to plants, and especially micro-organisms, cannot live in the wrong pH. The loss of some of these causes a cascade failure down the food chain and ecological devastation.
   However, I'm pretty sure I've subjected the contents of my stomach to much more extreme doses of pH. Moreover, in my particular corner of the terra firma, we don't have smog and our rainstorms usually blow in from the sea.


   This discussion, however, brought to mind a montage of recent memories: of every person at work refusing to even so much as smell the honey-brandy liquor I had made, of Jeremy saying he simply would not try the coffee Dave was going to make from the beans on the tree in his yard. Times like this, I can't help but think, wow, you guys are so OC.

   I mean, its RAIN WATER people.

Drops of iodine seconds after being introduced into a bucket of water. Used to sterilize brewing equipment in preparation for bottling.

Ink blot test anyone?

Comments

[boxsofrain.livejournal.com]

The water seems a bit acidic, but then again, so is orange juice.

I do not think acidic precipitation affect human health directly although some may argue it is not good for your respiratory track. I don't think you will get sick though.

I don't know, just to be on the safe side I would give that shit a good boil.

[boxsofrain.livejournal.com]

Oh, and great entry! I love when people talk science!

[chite.livejournal.com]

Your co-workers are a piece of work.

I was thinking about you yesterday when we were bottling our stout. Have you bottled yours yet?

Bottling

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Just this afternoon! I hate bottling! Took pictures because I'm a docuholic! Also I just noted the fact that all the pictures on the front page of my flickr account are alcohol related. Lol.

Re: Bottling

[chite.livejournal.com]

I love the pictures!

We do a clean/rinse with oxy clean, cap with aluminum foil, and then an hour in the oven to sterilize. The bonus is that as long as you leave the foil on, you can do this days in advance. Then Adam does the filling while I do the cap crimping, and I usually get a serious backache and a sore hand :)

But it's totally worth it. :-D Happy beer drinking in about 2 weeks!

Re: Bottling

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Hmm tell me more about this bottling technique. Oxy clean? aluminum foil cap? O_o

Yeah I had this hastle of submersing them all in iodine water, draining them all out, rinsing them all in clean water, letting them all dry out. d= Multiply this by some had gunky stuff in them that was NOT coming out so I had to give them several soaks (and tried to attack with a bottle brush but my bottle brush became stuck in a bottle and half an hour later I gave up for the day because I was so pissed off). d=

Re: Bottling

[chite.livejournal.com]

I just asked Adam to answer since he knows the ratio of oxy clean to water and the oven temperature info.

Re: Bottling

[banzai2326.livejournal.com]

The oven-baking sterilization is described here (http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter2-2-3.html).

That chapter also discusses using OxyClean as a detergent. I generally just rinse out the bottles immediately after use, so I don't feel the need to do any additional cleaning prior to sterilization. But this time around the bottles had sat in the basement for several months and I noticed some "residue" in some of them, so I did the cleaning too.

But yeah, I totally swear by baking the bottles. SO much easier than having to deal with sanitizing solution, boiled rinsing water, etc.

Re: Bottling

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! The logistics of washing and rinsing all the bottles was really obnoxious - I'm definitely interested in trying something else.

[tick-wonderdog.livejournal.com]

it's the foreshots, methanol, which in a rig like your would be the first 150 ml or so that attack the optic nerve. but i know, a shot of full strength neutral spirits will set you back on your heels.

when i was a kid, i knew an old man, and i mean born in the 1890s old, who lived in a shack in the swamp. all he ever drank (other than canadian club) was rainwater from a wooden cistern. we kids drank it too, and never got sick. it always had a bit of a green tinge to it. there are some of our brother distillers, i forget which forum, who only use rainwater in their mashes.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

The way it was explained to me the foreshots contain a lot of the stuff in the orginal fermentate that would cause you the headache and hangover, and hence are shit you want to get out, BUT since distilling doesn't create anything new and there's no methanol in the original wash, there's no methanol coming out of the still. Makes sense to me. I know I've heard distillers equate the foreshots with methanol before, but I think that might be just a common misunderstanding?


But also, this idea just struck me while writing the above -- if its true the foreshots are the headache causing stuff from what you fermented -- what if y ou made a batch of beer and then ONLY distilled out the foreshots? hmm.

[jnel.livejournal.com]

love the photo

Rorschach

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

but if it were an ink blot test, what would you say you see? :D

Re: Rorschach

[jnel.livejournal.com]

oh man not one of these..im not crazy i SWEAR!

i just see some pissed off face being poured into a toilet bowl (aka brewing equipment)

[baxaphobia.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you didn't go blind. I'm glad I didn't have to fly out there to give you the crash course in Braille and introduce you to the joys of using a Seeing eye dog! hahaha

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

hahahah (=

[bewize.livejournal.com]

Hehehe. you make your own brandy. that is awesome!

[blueashke.livejournal.com]

OMG you have no idea. It's so totally delicious.

Speaking of, can I has more honey brandy for my birthday before I'm off alcohol for a year plus? :bats lashes: Please? gratefuladdict will tell you when it is!

[heethen-crone.livejournal.com]

Very interesting read. You got my vote. BTW, when I was taking organic chemistry (yeah, ok so it was back in the dark ages but somethings don't change) they said the problem with straight ethanol was that it absorbs water. When you drink it, you dehydrate very quickly and it can make you pass out. Of course someone had to drink some, made him woozy and ill for a bit but no lasting ill effects. Hell of a hangover though.

[brightflashes.livejournal.com]

Wonderful entry.

I see a caterpillar bursting from a cocoon with premature wings that will one day fly. And I'm serious that just the other day (upon reflection of Flowers for Algernon) I wondered why I had never had an ink blot test done before.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of people around here who have elaborate rainwater capture systems set up. I think I would be more worried about accidentally swallowing a bug than acid rain, but I am afraid of most bugs and their stinging evil. ;)

[imafarmgirl.livejournal.com]

Nice entry, but don't you know that blindness is contageous? You catch it from touching us blind people. lol.

[spydielives.livejournal.com]

And I thought drinking from the hose was bad...

I enjoyed this.

[darkprism.livejournal.com]

Hrm...considering the Smoky Mountains are supposed to be some of the most polluted mountains in North America (the park is, for sure), I suppose I should stop tilting my head back to drink rain or catch snowflakes...

...

Naaaah...mutations are cool.

Nice entry!
~*~

[alycewilson.livejournal.com]

My grandfather was young during the Prohibition and has lots of stories about people making homemade alcohol and going blind. I also know that my great-grandfather owned a bar, and I'm not sure if it was a speakeasy during those days. What I do know is that my grandfather never drank and looked at it as if was a poison.

[hexkitten.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of how my dad didn't want to eat any of the tangerines growing in our backyard because the dog might peed on the trees. My mom pointed a finger at him and snapped, "At least you know that's the worst thing going into its roots! You don't know what the trees encounter on the farms."

By the bye, I had a co-worker whose brother worked as a chemist or biologist - something like that. He found himself handling something that was nearly 100% alcohol and thought, "Huh. I wonder what will happen if I do a shot of this?"

He woke up on the floor awhile later. It knocked his ass right out. He had no other side effects, though.

(I'm not saying that you should try this! I'm just relating a story.)

[superhappytime.livejournal.com]

you should have to send booze to everyone every time you write about it. i mean, it's like a woman writing an entry about her being hot and then not posting picture of her naked body. it's sort of a gyp.

speaking of women, how many men are left now? me and you and thenodrin, mayhaps?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Lifeinamarble too right? Not many of us though thats for sure.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Whats the opposite of a sausage fest?

[superhappytime.livejournal.com]

clam?

[lilmissmagic71.livejournal.com]

Love this

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Lol. That would not have occured to me, as I have had fortune of never having gazed into a toilot bowl in such conditions.

[walkertxkitty.livejournal.com]

I love your talk about brewing. It's something I'm not set up to do yet, along with rainwater collection, but we're getting there.

I just found a fresh spring on my property. I'd known we had springs here because the well is artesian but it sure was nice to confirm it. I sure would drink either the spring or the rainwater.