Recent content by crawlspacestudios

Well that sums it up I think. Thanks guys! I really appreciate your input on this:mug:

Ok gotcha! Thanks! It is not the bristles on the brush doing it, it seems that after a few uses, the bristles get pushed down to one side of the brush, and I try to get them back up, but it never seems to work and the metal will always scratch the inside slightly(now I know) :/ I have never...

So I just noticed this last time that two of my carboys have some small scratches on the inside of them, from the bristle brush that I clean them with. After every brew, I PBW them and store them away after that. Before I put wort in there, I will soak in Star San. However, I am slightly worried...

I had two batches go bad because of dirty ball valves :/ I now take them(and thermostat wells and return valves) apart after every boil and pbw. Kind of annoying, but definitely worth it! The back side of the ball valves were slowly accumulating crud and I never noticed until I took the whole...

Just my two cents....I don't think you would be getting serious off flavors from hop debris/cold break material in your fermentor. Might be more along the lines of sanitation and ferm temps/sparge and mash temps? What are your sanitation methods for carboy and tubing etc....? What temp do you...

A secondary fermentation should really clear things up, not just sediment, but also cloudiness. Roughly 1-2 weeks in primary and a week in secondary and you should have a clear beer. Don't get greedy and suck up all the sludge on the bottom either. I am a big fan of sacrificing a beer or two for...

So i am relatively new to brewing in general and have never used a fruit puree before. I have a wheat beer base, that with the grain alone is sitting at 1.051OG/5%ABV. However, I do want to add 2lbs of a White Peach Puree into primary after fermentation has settled down some; that has a brix...

Forgot to ask, how often should I clean all of my hoses? I always pump star san through the auto siphon afterwards and thought that would be good enough. Do you use PBW on all your hoses? Kevin

Gotcha. I will disassemble everything today and soak in hot PBW solution. Should I do this will the boil kettle as well, (along with the disassembled valve?) I have never had any problems until recently. I used to just rinse my boil kettle out with water after every use and then would be good to...

So I just stumbled across this thread. I had brewed quite a few decent batches. The last 4 though however, I have had to dump because of contamination. I am ocd about my cleaning, but just took apart my valve on the boil kettle. It looked like your first picture. I cleaned it the best I could...

Thanks for the input. I will definitely ditch the 5.2. I think also maybe investing in a plate chiller, or larger (50ft) immersion chiller. Our tap water here is notoriously awful which is why I have tried the bottled water. I am going to start from scratch with all the advice and hope things...

Thanks so much for all of that! I will definitely brew this batch again and leave out the 5.2. I will also let this sit for another week and test again. I will post here when I test another sample to help clear some of this up and that can hopefully point to the problem, or clear it up. Cheers!

You know I think I got maybe one good batch using the Mash5.2 and I really never thought about it. Do you think this would be giving these beers a bad flavor? I just used the Artesian water on the last batch, before that, was using tap water and a camden tablet. Both types of water produced the...

I keep it down in the basement and the strip I put on the side of the carboy, stays in between 64-66. Pitching the yeast is a little trickier, even with the immersion chiller I can only get it down to about 80 within an hour. Unless I chill it, then rack it, then let it sit for a few hours...

I clean everything with StarSan and PBW. I will clean with PBW after I rinse an old carboy. Then before I put new beer into it, I will let it sit with the StarSan in there while I mash and boil.