Brother-in-law gets headaches with Homebrew but not Commercial brews

My brother-in-law has come to the conclusion that he gets terrible headaches the next day after drinking my homebrew!

He's been getting them for a while, but only recently pieced together that he seems to get them after drinking my homebrew. For example on Saturday night he only had a small glass of my red wine and had a headache the next day, whilst my missus drank a bottle and was fine for example!

He'd had a few glasses of a commercial wine the night before and was fine next day.

He's not a big drinker so never has more than a couple of ales in a night so it's not quantity related, and I'm not one for high ABVs generally so I'm not brewing super-strength beers.

Strangely he reckons he gets it with my ales and wines but not with my force carbed lager.

Googling around for possible causes, seems unlikely to be high levels of fusel alcohols since several of us drink more of it than he does and have no headaches.

I thought maybe the fact he's ok with force carbed lager may point to him having an issue with yeast (I filter my wine, but only to about 1.5 micron) then again I don't filter my force carb lager at all, and I've heard of people having upset tummies from yeast but never headaches.

Can anyone think of an ingredient present in homebrew but not in commercial brews? Starsan maybe?

Psychosomatic?

I think your brother is a wuss..... Just kidding

Two things I can think of which you may have already come across are fermenting temp? and how long have they been aged for?

My dad made a pear cider which was a bit headachy for all of us who tried it, I think he bottles too soon as he normally does it after 10 days or so... but after a few months it stopped giving headaches apparently.

I'm amazed it's not the other way around. I would have thought home brew was less chemically and therefore less likely to give a problem the next day.

Concur with the yeast thought. What's he like with home made bread ?

I think it's likely to be yeast related. Commercial beers have yeast filtered out and are also pasteurized.

I get rotten headaches from a Wherry I made which I'm certain is down to ramping the temperature up to restart fermentation. From all my other brews I don't get any more or any less of a headache than commercial beers.

Yeah if it was fermentation temperature related I'd have thought it would affect us all who drink it - my sisters-in-law say my wine give them less headaches than commercial! I'd say for me it's about the same maybe a little less with homebrew.

Perhaps something in the yeast, yet he reckons he's ok when he has my kegged lager - which is unfiltered.

It may be one of those mysteries I never get to the bottom of!

I find the same, shop bought wine wold give me a did of a bad head, my own stuff doesn't even though the ABV is quite a bit higher.

If the temp it to high and you get fusil alcohols in your home brew beer, these can give pretty viscious headaches. There are pre-cursors to fusils that can be created by yeast too, that may give maybe give your BiL headaches - he could be particularly sensitive to fusils

MyQul said:

If the temp it to high and you get fusil alcohols in your home brew beer, these can give pretty viscious headaches. There are pre-cursors to fusils that can be created by yeast too, that may give maybe give your BiL headaches - he could be particularly sensitive to fusils

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MQ do you get fusil alchohols produced with the hot weather yeasts? I've just ordered some Mauribrew yeast for brewing over July - September.

LarryF said:

MQ do you get fusil alchohols produced with the hot weather yeasts? I've just ordered some Mauribrew yeast for brewing over July - September.

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My understanding is that they are produced when the yeast is fermenting above its max temp range. Mauribrew will be OK up to 32c. Hope so as I bought some for this reason too!

Hops_and_Dreams said:

My understanding is that they are produced when the yeast is fermenting above its max temp range. Mauribrew will be OK up to 32c. Hope so as I bought some for this reason too!

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Hops, Just found this Mangrove Jacks Workhorse yeast for £2.36 and £1.00 delivery, for that price I might try a couple.

http://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/mangrove-jacks-craft-series-yeast-workhorse-beer-m10/#ukdelivery

LarryF said:

Hops, Just found this Mangrove Jacks Workhorse yeast for £2.36 and £1.00 delivery, for that price I might try a couple.

http://www.lovebrewing.co.uk/mangrove-jacks-craft-series-yeast-workhorse-beer-m10/#ukdelivery

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I have a pack of that in the fridge too. I'm a bit wary of it though Larry, MyQul said he'd used it with not great results.

LarryF said:

MQ do you get fusil alchohols produced with the hot weather yeasts? I've just ordered some Mauribrew yeast for brewing over July - September.

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As HaD says they 're designed not to. You will problalby get more esters though using it during the summer.
I have also bought some 514 for summer but as my little brewing corner is now too warm to use conventional yeast I've started using it already. I used it in a mild about 3 weeks ago and have just cracked open a tester bottle (it's only had 6 days conditioning) and there's definately no fusils, mind you the max temp I brewed it at was only about 22C. I repitched some slurry into a London Pride clone on sunday. I pitched at 25C a)because I couldn't be arsed to cool the wort down lower b) as a bit of a test. The ambient temp in the brew corner seems to be about 25C too. I'll have a slurp of the initial trial jar over the weekend and report back

Hops_and_Dreams said:

I have a pack of that in the fridge too. I'm a bit wary of it though Larry, MyQul said he'd used it with not great results.

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I've now come to realise that the brew I pitched it into got infected with wild yeast. Tbh, after a good 6 weeks of conditioning it was actually not bad beer

Just tried ordering two and then one pack and they they quote :

Delivery
Small orders under 50g in weight: RM 1st Class Post (Untracked): £1.00

They then charge £3.50 for delivery at the checkout. I think I'll shop around.

Give them a call and organise the postage, I'm sure they'll sort the £1.00 rate for you.

LarryF said:

Just tried ordering two and then one pack and they they quote :

Delivery
Small orders under 50g in weight: RM 1st Class Post (Untracked): £1.00

They then charge £3.50 for delivery at the checkout. I think I'll shop around.

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I got battered by delivery when I ordered the 514 but as I intend to just repitch slurry from brew to brew right through till winter or unless it gets too flocculant, the eventual cost should work out negligable as I reused it so much

MyQul said:

I've now come to realise that the brew I pitched it into got infected with wild yeast. Tbh, after a good 6 weeks of conditioning it was actually not bad beer

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Ahh, good stuff. Will give it a try soon then.

MyQul said:

I got battered by delivery when I ordered the 514 but as I intend to just repitch slurry from brew to brew right through till winter or unless it gets too flocculant, the eventual cost should work out negligable as I reused it so much

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MQ, I'm thinking of having a crack at that with the Mauribrew. I've ordered three and will be looking to do about six brews over July - September so I'm thinking of using one, re-pitching it for the next brew, open a fresh one after that and repeating the process. The problem is that it doesn't give me much room for error. I think I'll take Clibits advice and give lovebrewing a call and see what I can wrangle out of them, I'd love a crack at the Workhorse and the Mauribrew over the summer.

Hops_and_Dreams said:

Ahh, good stuff. Will give it a try soon then.

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Having done a bit of reading on infections it was definately infected, fortunately enough it got infected by bacteria and/or wild yeast that didn't make the beer undrinkable