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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
  Homebrew taste (Thomas Rohner)


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Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:37:58 +0100
From: Thomas Rohner <t.rohner at bluewin.ch>
Subject: Homebrew taste

Hello all

I think Scott is right, abandon plastics, if you can.

When i started brewing, i was pretty happy with the results.
My first brews were with english ale yeasts.
Then we switched to all grain and gradually it dawned on me, that this 
distinctive taste/aroma wasn't the yeast signature.
We switched to bottom fermenting yeasts and some "clean" top fermenters 
like Wyeast 1007.

For us, it wasn't economical to use glass or stainless as our 
fermenters, so we use HDPE. (We brew 15gal and intend to double this year)

One night, i met this guy in a bar and he told me, he has a brewmaster 
degree.
We talked for a while and i told him my troubles. He asked me about the 
sanitizer we used and told me, that this is most likely the culprit.

Since he was working for a company, that sells sanitizer for the food 
industry, he offered me a sample of his suggested sanitizer. (What a 
coincidence ;-)

We started using it and woosh, our lagers started to have that clean, 
crisp aroma. (only more hop aroma, than most storebought stuff)

The problem was our HDPE fermenters in combination with a aromatic 
sanitizer. We also sniff into our fermenters, before we use them. When 
the start smelling too much, we give them a good long bleach soak, then 
rinse them with hot water and don't use them for some time.(We put them 
in the back of out fermenter storage...)
When we finally use them, the smell like... nothing.

This works for us, but if you can ditch plastic, do it.

Cheers

Thomas


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