Recent content by TheMattTrain

Thanks. I don't have anything even fermenting yet, so I'm not too concerned about drying it out. I'll just let it sit and drip dry for a week or three and turn it every once in a while to dislodge any pools of water. Thanks for the idea!

Same principle if I just run it through with a pump, right? I have a little bear line cleaning contraption I rigged up a few years ago that has a keg post on it, just submerge it in a bucket and let it run through the line, drain back into bucket. Seems reasonable. I can just just run it through...

Hey everyone. It's been a long time since I've been around here. I haven't brewed in well over a year and am finally ready to try to get back into the game. My first course of action is to clean out my kegerator and get it ready to serve again. I'm replacing all of my plastic and deep cleaning...

Nope. Definitely no fruit flies. What do you know about brewing water. A buddy of mine suggested that my water may be too soft, low ph. I'm not sure if that would cause these off flavors I'm getting... but here's my current hypothesis: PH is off in brew water which causes poor environment...

Thanks for the input here. I've got two bad batches kegged so I think I'm going to carb them up and try to get some opinions on off flavors from my buddy's home brew club. If they can provide some input on flavors I should be able to do some research and figure out where I might be going wrong...

That sucks man. Sorry to hear you're having issues too. The weird thing about my "infection" problem is that there has never once been a visible sign of infection. I have one beer kegged from almost a year ago now that continues to pressurize inside the keg. I'm not sure if the CO2 is just...

I do brew outside but I don't know of a vineyard or orchard that's too close by. We live near some farms but they mostly grow corn and soy beans. I'm at the point where I'm ready to quit making beer. I've got my second child due in January and I'm not willing to throw 5 gallons of beer down...

I'm going to revive my old thread here because I believe I'm still having the same problem. I brewed a week ago tomorrow. At about 4 days into a healthy fermentation, my beer went from hoppy and delicious smelling to cidery and gross smelling through the airlock. I replaced my ball valve...

I went out and got a new set of o-rings. I used the setup you had suggested and it seems to be holding. Let my kettle sit for about 3 hours with 6 gallons of water in it, not a drip. Thanks!

Thanks. I'll give this order a shot. I'm gonna need to go grab some new o-rings. My setup only has one in it currently, although, after reading this, I do remember the original valve coming with two. I'm hoping this solves the issue.

I've been unsuccessful in brewing drinkable beer pretty much all throughout 2015. I took a break for a while and am trying to get back into it, but I brewed in August and the batch went bad 3 days into fermentation. I did some more research and determined that the most likely culprit was my ball...

Outside of equipment, the only other common denominator would be the water and the location that the beers are fermenting. I don't have temp control so the beers are fermenting in my basement. The latest batch held around 68-70 *F using Wyeast 1056. Other infected batches were fermented in the...

So the plan at this point is to boil all of the hardware that connects to the ball valve for 30 minutes to be super safe, scrub it real good, then rinse clean. I have a friend who I gave a secondary ball valve to months ago and he says he hasn't used it and has no need for it, so I'm gonna get...

I exclusively ferment in glass carboys and normally it's just 3 weeks. I just didn't have the heart to dump 10 gallons of beer even if it was bad... so it's been sitting since I didn't need the carboys for a while.

Thanks guys. I hope it's ok too, but I've smelled this smell before. It's too similar to the other bad batches. Although at least one of the two I've still got in primary (gotta be 4 months at this point so it's probably terrible) doesn't show any signs of infection outside of a small amount of...