Anyone use salt in their wort chiller?

aycs · 2012-02-06T21:25:12.793641+00:00

There's a problem with corrosion using saltwater, so you may find out your copper/steel/nickel/whatever metal parts that come into contact with the saline water will wear out faster. Your pump is probably fine (I think the turbines and moving parts are usually plastic?).

Radwagon · 2012-02-06T21:22:48.059732+00:00

Rinse as they're emptied, using hot water; fill the bottle halfway, shake, repeat 1 or 2 times until water no head forms when shaking.

Dry bottles go into a dishwasher the night before bottling; run the washer on sani-rinse setting with no soap and no rinse aid.

skandalouslsu · 2012-02-06T19:21:42.135578+00:00

Sounds like a good way to damage your rigid container.

memoryfailure · 2012-02-06T19:09:14.406836+00:00

So, I don't understand why faster custom implants leads to shorter surgery time. Anyone know?

bo_knows · 2012-02-06T09:57:21.101834-07:00

As it thaws, de-pressurize and pour out the liquid while there are still ice crystals. Voila, freeze distillation :)

salnajjar · 2012-02-06T16:51:41.515219+00:00

Cover measurement and note taking. In reviewing my own notes from years ago, I'm shocked at how much I didn't write down - so happy accidents can't be repeated. Taking good measurements and keeping good notes are the keys to improving your process and making repeatable beer.

blueheeler · 1 day

With a dark carboy, you can never tell when you've gotten it clean. I suspect this is why ale pails are always white.

Uberg33k · 1 day

It works, but it takes a while to get to a boil. You can speed this up by bringing it to a boil with the lid on or by jacketing the pot.

Uberg33k · 1 day

I mash in a separate vessel - a rubbermaid water cooler, I think it's 20 gallons or more? So I don't use the burner for that. Just heat the strike water to the right temp, add the grains, then adjust with boiling water or cold water to hit the temp. The cooler holds a temperature for at least 60 minutes.

On the boil, I use a 36-quart bayou classic, and boil a full 5-gallon batch. This means starting with 6 or 6.5 gallons of wort. On a cold day the boil's a little weak. I get about half a gallon to a gallon of boil-off per hour.

Uberg33k · 2 days

You want this unit. I have brewed a dozen or so batches with it with no trouble. It's a weaker boil than propane, but far more efficient, and easy to control.

Don't bother with step mashing unless you're doing something special... too much work for too little result IMHO. But independent of what heat source you use.

I wouldn't bother with arduino on this thing, either ... just run it on high and have fun.

Terrorsaurus · 3 days

I'm still tinkering with this, but try Liberty Ale.

It's an American Amber ale made with a british ale yeast. I may want to play around with the yeast a bit more. Costs me between $15 and $20 per batch, depending on the price of grain and hops.

Terrorsaurus · 3 days

If you buy hops in bulk, the 1-pound bags (say, from hops direct) have been flushed with nitrogen and then vacuum sealed. They will store without oxidizing for a while unopened, but keep them in the fridge for best results.

Once you open a bag of hops, the remainder should stay in the mylar bag, and then put that inside a ziplock, and squeeze out all the air. Then put this in the freezer. They'll keep for a year this way, although there's some loss in alpha-acid and aroma.

For grain, go in with a bunch of guys and buy 55lb sacks wholesale. These have to be ordered a pallet at a time, which I think is 42 sacks. That's a lot of grain, but it doesn't all have to be the same variety, I think. There's a shipping charge usually, but split over 42 bags it's not much.

The grain will arrive unmilled.

I do the bulk order thing with a few friends, and I'm down to about 60 cents ($0.60) per pound on grain, after shipping. So a typical batch costs:

$9 for 15 pounds of grain
$3.70 for 4 ounces of hops
$1 for miscellaneous items like fermcap, irish moss, when split over lots of batches
$1 for yeast (I collect and re-use, so figure a $4 packet of dry yeast + shipping, split over 8-10 batches)
$2 for electricity (running an 1800 watt induction burner for 6 hours at about $0.12 per kWh, plus a little extra)

So a batch costs me about $16.70. If I bottle the entire batch, that's about 48 caps at $0.05 each, or another $2.40 - so, $19.10 per batch.

And every time, I think .... "best $20 I ever spent."

PostalPenguin · 4 days

Exaggerating? Or did you really have 30 gallons ruined? I might go into mourning over that.

nopeitsnotme · 4 days

I do this all the time. Don't worry about it. The mass of the beer overwhelms the mass of the bottle.

nopeitsnotme · 4 days

I use my sani-rinse setting all the time for this, immediately after cleaning dishes with the same dishwasher. No need for an empty run in between. Don't use soap, and turn off the rinse aid.

antelopepoop · 4 days

Make a starter with sample B, and you should be all set. You could probably just pitch sample A as-is, but it also probably has more trubby bits than you'd expect. Sample B looks like it probably has enough yeast to start fermentation, maybe even as-is.

Keep sample A, though -- if you haven't seen active fermentation in 48 hours after pitching, repitch with a starter made from A.

PostalPenguin · 4 days

Any idea what the guidelines are on max storage time in the fridge? Longest I've let it sit is about 2 months.

PostalPenguin · 4 days

This is great, but also a whole lot of work. My own practice is to collect yeast from my fermentor at the end of fermentation, transfer it to a sanitized 1-L borosilicate erlenmeyer, and put it in the fridge. I can then make several starters from that single collection.

I've read that yeast collected in this way will eventually "drift" from the original parent strain, but that you can get nearly 8 generations (where a generation is 1 brew cycle) of collection, meaning that $8 smack pack (actually, I use Safale US-04, at $4 per packet) winds up costing about $1 per batch – nearly the cheapest ingredient.

The toughest part is getting the yeast from the conical into the flask, but this is easier if you have prepared some sterile water the night before and then allowed it to cool: put 500ml in a separate erlenmeyer and microwave it until it boils.

I've done a couple dozen batches this way, and the yeast characteristics (flavor, attenuation, flocculation, rate of fermentation) have all been about the same.

GhettoDickens · 5 days

11 days should be enough for most beers to carbonate. Things to try:

Move to a warmer location (at least 75F)
Shake the bottles (puts yeast back into suspension, oxygenates with air in the headspace
Wait at least another week.

If you're still not getting carbonation or the "paint coating" on the bottom of the bottles, you might try re-inoculating the bottles with yeast. Dilute a yeast sample so you have enough to put 2-3 drops in each bottle. Don't add sugar here, and don't make a real starter -- you don't want to risk bottle bombs if/when it finally does carbonate. If you have yeast to spare, you can test this out on a single bottle.

I've had this happen once or twice, and the 3-step process above worked, so I never had to re-inoculate and re-cap.

trendo · 5 days

Yeah, there's a slight chance I may have exaggerated for comic effect :)

trendo · 5 days

Star San is an acid sold in highly concentrated form, which is why a 1:500 mixing ratio is sufficient to sanitize a bottle.

1) Avoid contact with the concentrate. Once mixed, prolonged exposure will suck all the oils out of your skin and kill the top layer of live cells. It's not painful, but the itching and peeling can be uncomfortable, and I suspect repeated prolonged exposures can lead to Bad Things happening, like maybe your hands will explode.

2) I never scrub my bottles unless I see visible goop inside that I can't remove chemically. I also don't StarSan them - just throw them in the dishwasher, no soap, on the sani-rinse setting, which gets them to 168F and holds them there for at least 10 minutes. This kills the pathogen.

shinola · 6 days

It's really not that complicated if you use a calculator to convert the current refractometer reading to one corrected for the fact that alcohol has been introduced. BeerSmith, Beer Alchemy, and several web tools do this for you.

120PerL · 6 days

Well, that's good news, everyone! If the gravity is unchanged during a 3 month wait, there's no infection.

The film is probably excess lipids or soap/sanitizing agent from cleaning. Ignore it.

Your yeast might have been a bit stressed - optimum fermentation temp for WLP001 is 68-73F, and you fermented at 65. So it's possible that some of the weird odors and flavors were created in the first few days of fermentation.

Good luck for future brews :)

120PerL · 6 days

Cabbage smell is a symptom of DMS (dimethyl sulfide), a chemical present in pilsen malt (in fact, I'm told it's part of the flavor profile for true pilsners) and sometimes created as a result of bacterial infection or yeast fermentation if its precursor DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) is present during fermentation at lager temperatures. However, under ordinary conditions ale yeast drive it off as they release CO2 (the DMS bubbles away with the CO2). This could account for the concentrated DMS smell present in the CO2 vapors you huffed :)

Band-aid and solvent smells come from fusel alcohols and phenols, respectively. Both are produced when the yeast is stressed, usually when it's fermenting at above-normal temperatures. What has your fermentation temperature been, and what yeast are you using?

In any case, doesn't sound like a bacterial infection, but tasting it is a good idea. Take a gravity reading while you're at it, and report results! /r/Homebrewing wants to know :)

salnajjar · 6 days

I assume you've already directly contacted both the supply shops listed on the Wyeast site? Maybe they could special order?

I honestly don't know what's involved in sending a packet of yeast via FedEx or DHL ... do you think it would make the trip?

Four-Year Club	Secret Santa 2010
Rally Monkey Tent number = 2	Verified Email

bifftradwell

TROPHY CASE

bifftradwell

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login