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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
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Contents:
  Re: Serial brewing: is recleaning the fermenter necessary? (Christopher Burian)
  Cleaning Fermenter ("A.J deLange")
  Re: Serial brewing: is recleaning the fermenter necessary? (Bill Tobler)
  re: To clean or not to clean the fermentor?? ("Doug Lasanen")
  re:sour bottled beer ("Ubi")
  Re: water ("Kevin Kowalczyk")
  Adding water after brewing (Calvin Perilloux)
  CO2 Quantity ("H. Dowda")
  sour bottled beer II ("Alexandre Carminati")


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Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 23:47:56 -0500
From: Christopher Burian <cburian at burian.net>
Subject: Re: Serial brewing: is recleaning the fermenter necessary?

"Shayne Wissler" <wissler at gmail.com>

> I'm planning a serial brew (Belgian single, dubbel, trippel--reusing
> yeast at each step). I have a conical fermenter. Is it
> necessary/desirable to clean the fermenter between
> batches? What are the advantages to cleaning when you're just going to reuse
> the yeast?

I'd just be guessing regarding the sanitation question.

However, repitching a trippel onto an exhausted dubbel yeast
could have a less optimal outcome.  I would do a single each
time as a starter for the dubbel and also the trippel.

It's helpful to have fresh, healthy yeast to ferment a high
gravity, highly attenuated beer like a trippel, and the only
way to get fresh yeast is through reproduction.

Chris


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Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:38:29 -0500
From: "A.J deLange" <ajdel at cox.net>
Subject: Cleaning Fermenter

 > Is it necessary/desirable to clean the fermenter between batches? <

Necessary? Probably not. Desireable? Yes. If you check the inside of the 
fermenter you will  find a ring which extends from where the surface of 
the wort was to a couple of inches above that indicating the height to 
which the foam rose during the vigorous part of the fermentation. This 
ring has dried wort and hop resins on it with a rough surface well 
designed for harbouring bacteria. You might argue that no bacteria could 
have gotten in there and you might be right and you might be wrong. Or 
supposing that the first batch was somehow infected. A cleaning is your 
insurance policy against that eventuality too. Finally, each brew 
deposits a little beer stone which you want to get off before it has a 
chance to build t the point where vigorous scrubbing is required to 
remove it. Do AB and SABMiller clean between brews? I think they 
proabably do.

A.J.


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Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 04:55:40 -0600
From: Bill Tobler <brewbetter1 at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: Serial brewing: is recleaning the fermenter necessary?

Shayne asked about pitching into an uncleaned fermenter after racking  
off the beer.  I pitch on top of the yeast cake pretty regular,  
sometimes two or more times.  The fermenter is pretty nasty looking,  
but there should not be any bugs in there.  I use a 15 gallon SS pot  
with lid.  (Or very few)  But, I think if I had a conical and could  
get the yeast out just by turning a valve and dumping, I would remove  
the yeast and clean the fermenter, just because I could do it so easy.

Bill Tobler
Lake Jackson, TX
(1129.2, 219.9) Apparent Rennerian
Brewing Great Beer in South Texas



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Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 07:16:13 -0500
From: "Doug Lasanen" <Dlasanen at fuse.net>
Subject: re: To clean or not to clean the fermentor??

Shayne Wissler asks.....

I'm planning a serial brew (Belgian single, dubbel, trippel--reusing
yeast at each step). I have a conical fermenter. Is it
necessary/desirable to clean the fermenter between
batches? What are the advantages to cleaning when you're just going to reuse
the yeast?


Shayne......

If you were pitching your new beer on top of a yeast cake in a glass carboy 
you would be fine with not cleaning the carboy, assuming the carboy was just 
freshly drained.  With the conical fermentor, however, the yeast cake gets 
very compacted in the cone.  I always drain the yeast to a sanitary 
containor, clean and sanitize the fermentor, and then dump the yeast into 
the new wort where it will then be in suspension.

BTW, isn't the conical fermentor GREAT??

Cheers!

Doug Lasanen
Bloatarian Brewing League
Cincinnati, Ohio






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Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 07:37:10 -0500
From: "Ubi" <oobyjooby at cs.com>
Subject: re:sour bottled beer

Do you remove and clean/sanitize the spigot from
your bottling bucket?


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Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 08:00:18 -0600
From: "Kevin Kowalczyk" <kevinkowalczyk at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: water

Scott didn't use enough water in his beer, and asked what effect it
would have.  You're going to end up with a more flavorful beer with a
higher alcohol content than you planned.  Unless you are brewing to
match a specific style, this is a good thing, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, you just will have less of it.

Yes, you can add more water when you rack it to your secondary
fermenter.  Just boil the water, cool it down before adding it, and be
careful not to splash or aerate the wort in any way.  It's probably
best to do this while your yeast is still a little active, so if you
do accidentally aerate, the yeasties will consume the free oxygen,
keeping it from oxidizing your brew.


Return to table of contents


Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 09:37:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Calvin Perilloux <calvinperilloux at yahoo.com>
Subject: Adding water after brewing

Scott Pierce in the previous HBD asks:
 "...I started with only five gallons of water. I should 
  of started with six gallons. What affect will this have 
  on the batch? Could I do a second fermentation plus add  
  some new water?"

You probably don't even need to do a specific second 
fermentation for it.  You beer is, of course, higher OG
and thus more body and alcohol than you planned, but it
shouldn't be a problem diluting it later.  As an example, 
if your OG is 1048 instead of 1040, that's not going to 
drastically affect yeast metabolism.  

In fact, many of the industrial brewers brew high OG beer
that is diluted later (adding 30% of water later IIRC);
that's a technique to get the most capacity possible out
of their expensive fermentation tanks.

You could add water now during primary, or later in secondary,
or at bottling (make sure it's mixed in well).  The caveat 
here is to make sure the water you use is near-sterile, 
deoxygenated, and dechlorinated!  This is important.  If you 
introduce nicely-aerated tap water into your finished beer, 
you'll have flavor problems.  Likewise if your water has
chlorine/chloramines.  If you don't have biologically clean 
water, it's obviously a problem.

I'd consider boiling a gallon of bottled water for a good 
few minutes, chilling it to near fermentation temperature,
and then adding that to the fermenter.  Alternatively, you 
could just do this with the priming sugar step if you are 
bottling; instead of a cup or two of water to dissolve the 
priming sugar, boil and use a gallon.

Calvin Perilloux
Middletown, Maryland, USA



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Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 11:11:05 -0800 (PST)
From: "H. Dowda" <hdowda at yahoo.com>
Subject: CO2 Quantity

OK, for the physics mavens, if a liter of a fluid (say
beer) contains 2 vol of CO2 how many grams of CO2 are
dissolved given a temp of 20C and a head space of less
than 5% of container volume (closed 1050ml container)?
 When we say vol of CO2 greater than 1.0 does that
greater volume contain the assumed 1.0 vol at standard conditions.


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Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 19:47:54 -0200
From: "Alexandre Carminati" <afcarminati at gmail.com>
Subject: sour bottled beer II

Matt,

thanks for helping. Here are some answers about my process:

>  Does EVERY bottle develop this taste, and at
>roughly the same rate?  If so then you can be confident that the batch
>of beer itself is infected (rather than individual bottles).

As I could identify, every bottle develops sourness but the rate vary
a bit among them.

I dont use any sanitization by heat because most of my stuff is made
of some kind of plastic

I do fermentation in 60 l (15 gal) hermetic food grade polyethilene
cilindroconical fermenters (it has a special rubber o-ring in the lid
 - this o-ring acts as a airlock)
Fermentation is done under controlled temperature (I have a room
equipped with a HVAC) and temperature is set to 18 C (65 F)
I use a 11 m ( 33 feet) copper counterflow chiller and aeration is
done by the beer splashing into fermenter

All equipment is celaned/ sanitized trough these operations (in sequence)

rinse/ scrub in clean water,
wash with a hot (75 C) solution of  2% Caustic Soda (NaOH)
rinse in clean water
rinse with a 0.15% Peracetic Acid Solution

New bottles are rinsed with clean water and sprayed with a 12.5 ppm
Iodophor solution. Used bottles are brushed (water/ detergent) before
rinsing.

When done, beer is cooled at 0 C ( 32 F) racked to a bottling bucket
(actually the same kind of tank used to ferment beer) and primming is
added. Priming (4.5 g / l) is made of cane sugar dissolved in 0.5 l of
boiling water)

Well, this is what I can say for a while... I am already wondering
about a beer microbiological analysis in order to help this
investigation.

Thanks again

Alexandre


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