Someone one told me that the great thing about making your own food at home is that you can keep all those unpronounceable chemicals out of your food. Yes, that's true -- but I think the other great thing is that once you learn how to pronounce those big words, they can be easily added to your food.

Let's try this for size:

  dimethylpolysiloxane  ...  (H₃C)₃[Si(CH₃)₂O]_nSi(CH₃)₃

MMMmmm ... That sounds tasty doesn't it? It's a hydrocarbon with a few silicon atoms added. If this tasty little molecule sounds familiar, it should. It's one of the key components in Silly Putty and Chicken McNuggets.

Three weeks ago I made a five gallon batch of an amazing Hefeweizen using WLP380 from White Labs. Not only did reviews of WLP380 suggest that this is an extremely active yeast that requires a blow off tube, but I'm told that wheat beers by their nature produce a lot of foam.

On the third day of fermentation of that batch, the foam decided to leave the confines of the carboy and blow through the airlock, gushing foam goo all over the sides of the carboy and into my containment vessel. The next day I was pleasantly surprised by the not so welcoming stink of rotting biomass. The beer itself was doing good, but the foam that escaped stunk. It took me two hours to clean up the mess. This process was started at 11:30pm which meant that after cleaning and an obligatory shower, I was in bed by 3am -- not something to look forward to with work the next day.

While shopping for more supplies at More Beer in Los Altos, I made mention of recent closet activity and Robert suggested that I try one of their new products "Foam Control" or what I eventually tracked down as dimethylpolysiloxane. He was very honest in saying that he had never tried it himself and that sales of the new product was rather lacking, but I wanted to try it anyway. Yes, I'm a sucker for the quick up-sell.

I made a new batch using the exact same ingredients in the exact same quantities with the exact same environmental conditions and 14 drops of Foam Control. This is more than the recommended 10 drops, or two drops per gallon. As you can see from the picture above, Foam Control does do exactly what it says it on the label. It controls foam. Where once I had an manageable mess, I now have a nice and healthy 1 3/4" layer of foam.

For about $0.40, this product has saved three hours of my time. Is it worth it? YES!

Speaking of chemicals and little critters that multiply, did you know that dimethylpolysiloxane can also be used to control head lice?

- Jm