Filling in the gaps
Reading over my series of entries about my first batch I realized that I may have glossed over or not mentioned some things that I will try and fill in with this entry.
First thing is cleanliness, keeping all your equipment and bottles clean is very important. Dirty equipment can cause foul flavors, wild fermentation, or poor function of equipment. The latter is not so much an issue at this point as it will be when I get in to all grain brewing.
When I purchased my brew equipment one of the things that came with it was a cleaning product call BLC (beer line cleaner)
and it works fairly well. However over time experimenting with different cleaners I find the BLC works great for beer tap systems and general cleaning, but I found something else that I will be using to clean my fermentors and other items that tend to get crusty. That item is a white powder substance called proxycarb. Poxycarb works great because I can put a couple tablespoons into the fermentor fill it up passed the fermentation line with hot water and let it sit while I do other things. When I get back to it I can just usually pick up the fermentor, put my hand over the top and give it a few good, vigorous shakes. This seems to clean it out really well with out the use of my scrub brush
. Another good thing about proxycarb is it rinses out really easily with no soapy residue, where as BLC seems like dish soap to me so I find myself rinsing repeatedly. Unfortunately I have only found proxycarb at one store, The Beverage People I guess that’s not a big deal to me though since that is where I do most of my shopping anyway. I’m sure with some experimenting around you could find other similar products.
Second issue I kind just skimmed over is sanitizing of equipment. Once the wort is done boiling and cooled off everything that comes into contact with it must be sanitized. This includes fermentors, tubes, racking cane, spoon, bottles, stoppers, airlock valves, bottling bucket, bottle filler and bottle caps.
With the exception of the bottle caps, which I boil in water before bottling, all my equipment gets sanitized with B.T.F. Idophor sanitizer
. B.T.F. is a dark brown iodine based chemical that leaves no odor or taste on the brewing equipment. B.T.F. is also a good chemical to use in all grain brewing to see if you achieved full starch conversion, but we’ll get to that another time.
On the bottle of sanitizer there is a parts per million (ppm) recommendation for sanitizing any food grad devices. What I do is put about 2 to 2.5 caps full into the fermentor and fill it all the way up which leaves the solution a transparent brown color and I was told by the local shop keep that is good enough. Let the solution sit for a few minutes and then you can begin to drain it out now the good thing about this solution is it can be used again to sterilize other devices. So what I do is using my racking can and tubing is siphon the solution to another fermentor or the bottling bucket to soak other smaller pieces. As long as you keep your equipment in a clean area the devices should remain sanitized for a good period of time. For example if you are going to rack your wort from the primary to the secondary fermentor you can also use the same solution to sanitize your bottles even though you will not be bottling for another week. After the solution is removed from the device being sanitized do not dry it with a towel let it air dry.
First thing is cleanliness, keeping all your equipment and bottles clean is very important. Dirty equipment can cause foul flavors, wild fermentation, or poor function of equipment. The latter is not so much an issue at this point as it will be when I get in to all grain brewing.
When I purchased my brew equipment one of the things that came with it was a cleaning product call BLC (beer line cleaner)
and it works fairly well. However over time experimenting with different cleaners I find the BLC works great for beer tap systems and general cleaning, but I found something else that I will be using to clean my fermentors and other items that tend to get crusty. That item is a white powder substance called proxycarb. Poxycarb works great because I can put a couple tablespoons into the fermentor fill it up passed the fermentation line with hot water and let it sit while I do other things. When I get back to it I can just usually pick up the fermentor, put my hand over the top and give it a few good, vigorous shakes. This seems to clean it out really well with out the use of my scrub brush
. Another good thing about proxycarb is it rinses out really easily with no soapy residue, where as BLC seems like dish soap to me so I find myself rinsing repeatedly. Unfortunately I have only found proxycarb at one store, The Beverage People I guess that’s not a big deal to me though since that is where I do most of my shopping anyway. I’m sure with some experimenting around you could find other similar products. Second issue I kind just skimmed over is sanitizing of equipment. Once the wort is done boiling and cooled off everything that comes into contact with it must be sanitized. This includes fermentors, tubes, racking cane, spoon, bottles, stoppers, airlock valves, bottling bucket, bottle filler and bottle caps.
With the exception of the bottle caps, which I boil in water before bottling, all my equipment gets sanitized with B.T.F. Idophor sanitizer
. B.T.F. is a dark brown iodine based chemical that leaves no odor or taste on the brewing equipment. B.T.F. is also a good chemical to use in all grain brewing to see if you achieved full starch conversion, but we’ll get to that another time. On the bottle of sanitizer there is a parts per million (ppm) recommendation for sanitizing any food grad devices. What I do is put about 2 to 2.5 caps full into the fermentor and fill it all the way up which leaves the solution a transparent brown color and I was told by the local shop keep that is good enough. Let the solution sit for a few minutes and then you can begin to drain it out now the good thing about this solution is it can be used again to sterilize other devices. So what I do is using my racking can and tubing is siphon the solution to another fermentor or the bottling bucket to soak other smaller pieces. As long as you keep your equipment in a clean area the devices should remain sanitized for a good period of time. For example if you are going to rack your wort from the primary to the secondary fermentor you can also use the same solution to sanitize your bottles even though you will not be bottling for another week. After the solution is removed from the device being sanitized do not dry it with a towel let it air dry.
posted by Boomer at 8:00 PM
1 Comments:
look this is the "diet" i told you about you should really enter the site :) bye enter the site
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