Hot answers tagged cleaning
10
Well as you asked for 'tips', I've used the following to both dislodge stubborn material from the inside of tubes, and to remove excess water which aids drying:
It's a stainless steel brake cable from a bicycle, with a peice of towelling skewered on the end. The one I used was just over 2 meters long. I sterilise the whole thing, and just 'drag' it ...
8
This method is sometimes referred to as a "swamp cooler", and is well known and used in homebrewing circles. Honestly, if the brew shop employee told you it wouldn't work then they are either (a) trying to sell you a brewing fridge, or (b) not that educated on homebrewing.
Change out some ice packs in the water twice a day and you get get down to the low ...
7
For cleaning, if you're able to get all the debris out with water and a cleanser then I wouldn't worry about it.
I usually give the stubborn stuff a good soak in warm PBW, then flush with hot water. Worst case scenario, I use a bottle brush or dip tube brush.
For drying, the two most common methods are hanging and blowing out with an air compressor. ...
7
1) Can I just place my fermentation tank in this tub of water to counter the heat? Yes. This will work to a degree (ha, ha.) The water is slowly but constantly evaporating. The energy need to make liquid water into gas comes out of the water's temperature. This "evaporative cooling" will help cool your wort by a few degrees.
2) Will this method work during ...
5
I'll try to present both sides of the story:
If the tree is fully cleaned, and your sanitizer is sufactant-based (such as StarSan) so that kills organisms on contact then maybe (and only maybe) you can get away without sanitizing. That's about as far as you can guess as to the consequences of not sanitizing the brew tree.
If it's not clean, then forget ...
4
Its probably from having too high of a humidity level in the fridge. I have this same problem in my fermentation fridge (develops darker spots of mold) and my keezer (no mold but moisture pools at the bottom of the freezer).
I just make it a point to wipe out the excess moisture from the walls of these two whenever I am messing with beer. I have considered ...
3
For cleaning, I rinse bottles with hot water immediately after pouring them out into my glass. They don't need any sort of washing with soap at that point. I keep them off to the side until I have a whole bunch ready for de-labeling, which is an overnight soak in a sink full of PBW. Most labels just slide right off the next day. A quick rinse and the bottles ...
3
It can be hard to see a thin ring of black mold in an amber bottle, even when holding it up against the light.
I'd strongly recommend you use a bottle washer on a faucet. Really hot water doesn't kill everything but it does tend to clean well. Here's one as an example:
http://morebeer.com/view_product/15964//Bottle_and_Carboy_Washer
I'd also recommend ...
3
There are a lot of government regulations governing what can be labeled as a "Sanitizer". The product may work fine as a sanitizer, but if the company has not gone through the proper government channels and had their product tested as such (and I assume, pay a massive licensing fee to the government), then they can not put that on the label. If it's a ...
2
Although you could use bleach as a effective "yes-rinse" sanitizer, the chances are the bugs are in your environment, not just the equipment, so you'd have to do this before each brew, which is a bit of a pain.
Last year I had some slight contamination issues, which I later tracked down to my forgetting the correct dosage of Star San. (That's what happens ...
2
Use PBW - it'll shift pretty much anything without requiring any scrubbing.
LD Carlson's Easy Clean is not the same as PBW. Easy Clean is an oxygen-based cleaner, while PBW is an alkali-based cleaner.
I've used both, and can say without doubt that PBW is much better for cleaning carboys. With PBW the hot water is not strictly necessary, but it does help ...
2
For the boil, keeping it clean is more relevant than keeping it sterile/sanitary.
I have 20 gallon kettles and sanitizing those would be a pain - and fortunately it's not necessary. I don't sanitize any equipment that can come into contact with boiling wort, neither the boil kettle, chiller, pumps or anything else that's downstream from the kettle. There's ...
2
There would be very little need to remove and clean that connection on a boil kettle. In general, none of the boil kettle needs to be sanitized. Even if you chill in the kettle, your kettle and everything connected to it has been sitting at about 212F for an hour, so any organisms are long since dead. Thats not to say that you shouldn't flush out your ball ...
2
My subjective answer:
Yes you should.
If nasties happen to land on the branches of the tree your bottles can pick them up after you pull them off.
To me letting my tree sit for 30 seconds in sanitizer isn't much of a hassle at all, and better safe than sorry right?
If you'd rather not you probably wont spoil anything to be honest. But why not play it ...
1
I always keep two 5 gallon buckets on hand when I'm brewing. One filled with PBW and one filled with Sanitizer.
Before the hoses come in contact with my cooled wort, they soak in PBW the entire time I'm brewing up the beer. I make these buckets at the very beginning of the brew day.
When the time comes to use them, I attach to my autosiphon and run a few ...
1
I get the odd spot of mould developing in my keg fridge from time to time, particularly when switching between serving and fermentation temperatures. I keep a bottle of diluted bleach or sanitising solution in a spray bottle and give the inside of the fridge a good spray when raising the temperature of if I spot some mould developing.
1
It's probably caramelized sugars. It will dissolve in water, given enough time. If your stove top is a shape that will allow this, put some warm water on top of the stains, and leave it there four an hour or two, or even overnight. Otherwise, saturate a dish cloth with warm water and place it on top of the stain. Again, leave it for a few hours before ...
1
well..... kegging would solve most of the concerns you brought up. I agree with you that bottling can take a big chunk of "brewing time". Kegging is considerably "faster". However if that is not an option to you, I would highly recommend a no-rinse sanitizer such as Iodaphor or star san. Switching to a no rinse sanitizer made a big difference in time for me. ...
1
So.... after reading brewchez's comments about giving PRB another chance, and after a long look at my carboy brush I had a realization: that bend in the carboy brush could be.... unbent. Easily. And so, after a 2 hour soaking and rinsing, I shoved the now straight carboy brush in, swirled about, hit it from the other end, and wouldn't you know: clean as the ...
1
Here's the product catalog for ld carlson chemicals : http://www.ldcarlson.com/public%20catalog/Chapter%2007.htm
Scroll down to 6019A, which is I believe what you have. No-rinse means it's a sanitizer, if it was just a cleaner they wouldn't call it no-rinse. I've used it many times, and it works great.
Just dilute as it suggests and soak all of your ...
1
--- edit update ---
Actually, I misspoke, I never use starsan (nothing against it) it is b-brite that I use as a soap.
--- original post follows ---
The next time you are cleaning, disconnect the line, and attach to to your auto siphon.
Use the siphon to push a bucket of soapy water through the line. Then push some clean water through the line, then ...
1
You'll have to thoroughly examine your sanitation process. Of course we all think that we're doing it perfectly, but most of us are not. Think about any equipment that might not get sanitized (for example, your ball valve coming out of the kettle -- do you sanitize it before running the wort out of it? Look for things like this)
My hunch is that it's ...
1
Clean, sanitize, keep it simple. Infections will happen because of other things in your environment. You could try wiping down all surfaces around which you will be working for a while. That may help. Also you could try replacing equipment which is inexpensive and more likely to be trouble, like stoppers and airlocks.
However, usually your key issue is ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
