It aint all beer and roses

Making beer at home using household equipment is fraught with danger. Bacteria that wants to destroy your batch of sparkling beer lurks around every corner. The only way to fight it: douse it in shit loads of chlorine.

Normally I am militant about the way I sterilize my brewing equipment, leaving it to soak with chlorine solution as well as giving it a bit of a wash down with a rag. This time, when I was making a Thomas Coopers Special Edition Pilsner kit, which I picked up in Malmo, I didn't take a good look at the brewing spoon I was using.

Normally I use a metal spoon, but I've been conscious that I could scratch the inside of the barrel and therefore start a bacteria trap. So, I used my friend Brandon's spoon to mix the wort because it had a rubber head.

However, it was my caution that proved to be my downfall: the spoon had a metal handle and where the rubber met the metal, it was coming apart and obviously some nasties were living in there. The result of this was that the whole batch was contaminated and ended up being completely ruined.

See the video for the end result after bottle conditioning (about six weeks).