Noobie's first brew..

The girlfriend got me the Brewer's Best kit with the American Cream Ale for my birthday. Did my homework...brew day yesterday. Everything went relatively smooth. I sanitized everything beforehand in a bleach solution and rinsed with boiled water. I maintained sterility fairly well, but by placing the hydrometer and thermometer on a towel on the counter....100% sterility was lost. I also used my stirring spatula to stir the added water to the boiled wort. Oh well, its a heck of a lot more aseptic than how it was done way back when!

So I followed the instructions provided pretty well. I didn't have a strainer for transferring the chilled wort into the primary, so a little was left behind as I didn't want TOO much trub. I def. will be getting a strainer for my next batch. I wound up with about 4.5-4.75 gallons to maintain the OG within the acceptable range. So the final step...insert the airlock and fill with water.. oh whats this? AIRLOCK HAS STRESS CRACKS AROUND THE BOTTOM AND IS LEAKING!! ughh.. I managed to stop the leaking with this puddy type sealer stuff thats been in my boat bag for every bit of 15 years. Its def. not pretty, but seems to be holding up well. Gonna get a new airlock from the brew store monday morning. I just hope I didnt contaminate when fiddling and re-installing the airlock. The house is sitting at about 68-70deg. and the airlock is showing signs of fermentation.

Some pics.. Adding bittering hops...DME...pitching yeast...and the trub


So I have a bottling day question. What's the best way to sanitize the bottles and caps? Soaking in bleach solution sounds easy, but I'd have to boil a LOT of water to rinse 40 + bottles. The star-san I believe its called says its no rinse, but im skeptical of that. I don't wany any off taste nor contamination. Whats been the most successful method?

P.S. I smell a hobby quickly metastasizing into an addiction... :rockin:

For picture viewing...Just tilt your head 90 deg to the left...

Star san... get it... it's so money, you won't believe it, don't fear the foam and there is no after taste...and get a vinator... http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001D6FUDC/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

It'll make your life easy.

Star San works great. I haven't had any issues with it.

Do what I plan to do and a lot of people do: put star san in a spray bottle and spray down everything every time you use it obsessively. Just having the dirty paddle sitting like that opens up to infections on the outside of the primary. Sanitation is the one area that it is o.k. to be anal about. You could have placed an aluminum foil tent over the hole until you replace the air lock. The sealant may be unhealthy for this. The co2 will keep everything safe inside.

Star san is today where bleach was yesterday. Don't worry just get some and use it.

Cool, I like the spray bottle idea for a quick sani while brewing. So for the bottles and caps....soak em in a star san bath then simply remove and allow to air dry?

You worry too much. It's ok to try and be totally clean but face it, beer has been brewed for centuries and I doubt that everything was perfect all the time. Heck, for many years beer was fermented in open containers with no thought for an airlock.

You can form a whirlpool in the boiling kettle to make it easier to get most of the wort out without getting trub or you could strain/filter it as you move it to the fermenter or you could do what a lot of us do after we learned a bit more and just dump it all in the fermenter and let gravity and the yeast sort it out. If you don't hurry to get your beer out of the fermenter it will all settle out into a nice compact cake at the bottom and you can siphon from above when it is time to bottle or keg. I've been leaving my beer in the fermenter for 3 to 4 weeks and it is pretty clear by then and I can be fairly sure that the fermentation it done and the yeast have had time to clean up the off flavors too.

No... Use while it's wet. If it dries, it loses it sanitization properties...

+1 on the Star-San and the spray bottle. Pick yourself up a set of pH strips too so that you can keep your batch of Star-San for a longer period of time. There are plenty of threads on here how to do this. I have a 5 gallon bucket from Home Depot that I use for sanitizing solution and it lives on the floor of the pantry.

I soak my bottles overnight in a sink of PBW (special purpose cleaner for brewing equipment), scrub with a bottling brush, rinse with tap water, and then heat sterilize them by running them through the dish machine without any detergent. Once they are dry, I put them in boxes and cover with plastic wrap. On bottling day, I run them through the dish machine again and then bottle directly from the rack in the machine. Star-San for the bottle caps.

RM-MN... I hear what you're saying about the whole sanitation thing... People have been making beers before anyone knew what a germ was. Thing is...I hear a lot about sanitation and the importance of it.. I'd like to use best practices, but within reason.

gmcastil... I like the dishwasher idea. Is it safe to run the hydrometer and thermometer thru u think?