thanks, braufessor… a nice summary which i’ll print out and keep in my brewing folder for sure.
yeah… i guess it’s pretty dumb to think i haven’t been washing my carboy properly… though, i always assumed that if it looked clean… free from any visible buildup, then i should be OK… especially after a good star san bath.
i have a carboy scrub brush which does an OK job… but, yeah, carboys are a pain to clean out for sure. i do have one plastic bucket fermentor that i just store my bags of grain in. i’ll use that as the primary next time.
i’ll transfer the wort out of the spigot as well… instead of dumping into the bucket.
fermentation temps will be hard to control… even on this last batch i used a swamp cooler with wet tshirt and fan (no ice bottles)… we’re having a bit of a hot spell here on the east coast… i’ll wait til temps get back down to do another brew and in the meantime look for some sort of modified mini fridge that i could use for control.
+1 to the swamp cooler. It’s a super easy way to keep temps down. Just pick up a tub at Target or your grocery store and fill it with ice water and drop your carboy in. When your beer gets down in the low 60’s pitch your yeast (get a fermometer if you don’t have one and stick it around the 4.5 gallon mark on your carboy). I keep 4 or 5 1L water bottles in the freezer and swap them out a few times a day to keep the water cold. You can keep the beer in the low sixties for a week with little effort.
You also might want to try using spring water for a batch… the 2 gallon containers at the store are not prohibitivly expensive.
I just have one suggestion reading through your post. You are tossing beer before it’s bottled? Time in a bottle changes the beer quite a bit. Certain beers aren’t very good after a few weeks of fermenting. If you don’t want to spend the time bottling, then leave the beer in the carboy another week and try it again. Take notes on the flavors and see if they start to change. Don’t give up too early!
re: ice in swamp cooler: yeah, i’ve done that before and should make sure i just do it all the time in the summer months.
re: tossing early: i’ve bottled phenolic beers before and never had luck with them turning into anything drinkable. maybe i tossed it a bit early (3 weeks) out of the carboy, but it was on recommendation from my friend who either said “toss it, or sour it” after he tasted it. (he’s taken questionable beers and gone through a souring process over a year with good results. i don’t have the space or patience for that)
i have a ferometer on one of the carboys but always read those things weren’t terribly accurate.
[quote=“mvsawyer”]I just have one suggestion reading through your post. You are tossing beer before it’s bottled? Time in a bottle changes the beer quite a bit. Certain beers aren’t very good after a few weeks of fermenting. If you don’t want to spend the time bottling, then leave the beer in the carboy another week and try it again. Take notes on the flavors and see if they start to change. Don’t give up too early!
:cheers: [/quote]
+1! I’ve had beers that we’re good at 3-4 weeks only to get better a few weeks later.
You mentioned that you have a ball valve on your kettle. As a new brewer I got a kettle with a ball valve and thought that running hot water and wort through it would keep in sanitary. I didn’t even think the ball valve came apart, until I started having problems with infections. Upon further inspection I saw that it did indeed screw together, and I opened it up to a bunch of brown gunk. All of the other advice has been great, this is just one more thing to check.
i have a question about the below suggestion. the reason i pour between buckets is to get good aeration before i pitch the yeast. i’ve read this or seen this on videos/forums as a good thing to do before pitching.
you suggest below not do do this.
what is your suggestion then, for aeration?
thanks!
[quote=“Braufessor”]problem.
2.) I am a extremely leery of your procedure after you cool your wort - especially the strainer procedure. If you are cleaning out your strainer with your hands and running cold wort through it… that is a recipe for disaster for sure. Personally, I cool my wort and transfer it by opening my kettle spigot and letting the wort drop the 18-24 inches into the bottom of my bucket - and that is it. No pouring between buckets, no straining, no nothing. [/quote]
My testing has shown that they’re remarkably accurate.
One of the first things I learned in brewing was that you can’t sanitize something that isn’t clean. If you don’t clean your fermenters, sanitizing them with StarSan isn’t going to be effective.
In regard to oxygenating - the number one concern I was thinking of was the strainer issue you outlined.
Personally, the only “oxygenating” I do is letting the beer fall from my brew kettle into my bucket - probably a two foot drop. This creates about 8 inches of foam/head on top of my beer. I figure that is plenty of oxygenation. I could be wrong, but it has worked well for me, and that is a couple less vessels to worry about your beer coming in contact with and maybe picking up an infection from.
My testing has shown that they’re remarkably accurate.
One of the first things I learned in brewing was that you can’t sanitize something that isn’t clean. If you don’t clean your fermenters, sanitizing them with StarSan isn’t going to be effective.[/quote]
+1 to both of these!! You can only sanitize something that’s clean. If there are chucks of crap on your fermentor and you use starsan you still aren’t sanitizing because things will grow on, in, behind that chunk of crap.
And yes, my femometers are pretty accurate. At least to within 1-2 degrees. I poured wort into one of my fermentors a few weeks ago and notice the temp on the fermometer was 8 degrees above what my thermometer in the wort said. At first I thought the fermometer was wrong but soon realized it was the thermometer. It was off 8 degrees. The fermometer on the bucket was pretty much spot on.
i have a carboy scrub brush which does an OK job… but, yeah, carboys are a pain to clean out for sure. i do have one plastic bucket fermentor that i just store my bags of grain in. i’ll use that as the primary next time.[/quote]
That could be asking for more trouble,
Lots of bacteria in grain, possibly scratched/compromised bucket surfaces from using it as something other than a fermenter.
Get a new bucket and lid if you’re going that route.
Or a good hot PBW soaking, and a good brushing for your carboy.
i’ll be sticking with (cleaned) carboys… and for my next batch finally investing in a mini fridge w/ temp controller… so i can (hopefully) set and forget… and wave the fermenting temperature fight goodbye…
[quote=“taylor12k”]sanitizing with star san.
[/quote]
Are you saving & reusing your starsan? With alkalinity and/or minerals in your water–something I might anticipate with well water–your starsan will go bad fairly rapidly. You’ll know because the liquid will be cloudy (and its pH will be out of spec). This could be a possible cause of infection, assuming all other practices are sound.
Use DI water to mix up your starsan and it will last virtually forever.
if i use tap water i mix a new batch every session. if i use distilled water i tend to use it over a couple of sessions.
but, in either case i always test the pH with testing strips i got from northern brewer.
the recent batch went cloudy within an hour after i mixed it, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone bad. pH confirmed it was still highly acidic.
[quote=“Silentknyght”][quote=“taylor12k”]sanitizing with star san.
[/quote]
Are you saving & reusing your starsan? With alkalinity and/or minerals in your water–something I might anticipate with well water–your starsan will go bad fairly rapidly. You’ll know because the liquid will be cloudy (and its pH will be out of spec). This could be a possible cause of infection, assuming all other practices are sound.
Use DI water to mix up your starsan and it will last virtually forever.[/quote]
I could be wrong but it looks like much advice is about sanitizing this or that, and from your first post, it doesn’t look like you’ve had an infection. If you bottle and haven’t had bottle bombs, your sanitation is probably fine. You said you were anal about sanitation. I’m far from anal and have never had an infection. IMO the whole infection/sanitation issue is way overblown. I usually just rinse my equipment with water and then starsan it next session.
I would say that it’s either your water, temperature control, or yeast health. Your buddy brews good beer with well water, but have you tried using RO water to compare?
