Contamination

If I had a batch get contaminated and it made contact with one of the plastic conical fermenters, is there a way to kill any possible bacteria so that I can still use it. I was thinking Id fill it with boiling water, but thought Id see if anyone thinks thats a bad idea.

Thanks for any advice.

So you brewed a batch and it went sour in one of the plastic conicals? I;m not sure what the heat tolerance is on those plastic deals. IMO once its been in contact with the sour beer its most likely embedded with the bugs now…

I would check the specs on the material before I used boiling water, it might not be rated for that.

I’ve cleaned many buckets after brewing sour beers, just soak it with Oxy, rinse then soak with Starsan or iodophor. I’m of the opinion that plastic doesn’t have pores of a size that a bacterium could get in far enough to get away from the sanitizer.

bleach kills all bacteria.
if you want wash with oxyclean free then rince repeatedly with bleach water until it is clean .the bleach needs 45 sec contact. then if you want to rince again with water then with starsan or iodaphor.

Problem is you dont know how far below the surface any contaminates could be…You let bleach sit too long in the conical it will pick up the bleach flavors

Hmm…ok. Thanks for the advice. I think Ill try oxy or bleach. Then maybe Ill put a small test batch in it to see what happens.

I would do an Oxiclean soak and then follow with a 2x strength StarSan soak (at 2x, StarSan is a sterilizer). Rinse the StarSan, then sanitize.

What sort of pore size does LDPE have? I did a cursory search and it looked like it is very small.

Im afraid I dont know what LDPE is…

Low Density Polyethylene.

start using it for Belgian sours. 8)

Oh ok. Well all I know is that the material is really hard. Almost not plastic like at all. Its the opaque white one with the yellow lid. Like I said, I’ll probably just brew a small batch and see what happens.

I thought about doing it for sours but Ive never even had a sour so I wouldnt know what I was doing. Got any recomendation for what you think is a good sour Edward Tech? Ill try anything.

Flanders Red. or you could start your taste with a cherry or raspberry Lambic. taste a few commercial examples first. soured beers have a way surprising people, but are something to appreciate.

I had a batch sour in a bucket fermenter, I cleaned it out with pbw and did an over night soak with bleach, the next batch I put in it went sour too… that bucket is no longer a fermenter!

did you get the bucket from The Sinister Grin? :lol:

did you get the bucket from The Sinister Grin? :lol: [/quote]

LOL! no that was a different bucket!