Stinky Brewpot

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XCWill

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Joined
Jan 12, 2008
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Daphne, AL
I'm about to brew my second batch shortly, but I can't seem to get that hop smell out of the brewpot. I have boiled a few gallons of tap water, and they all come out with some kind of condensate on top of the water.(I'm thinking that it is hop break proteins) It looks rather similar to the little islands that you see in black coffee. I have cleaned it with Dawn dish soap. My question is will this affect subsequent batches?
 
My brewkettle always smells a little like hops, it shouldn't effect your future beers. The Dawn might though, get some cleaner that is odorless and doesn't leave a film like dishsoap does. I use Tri-sodium Phosphate because it's very cheap, but there are lots of cleaners designed specifically for brewing.
 
if you brew in plastic buckets like me, you'll notice it starts taking on a real hoppy smell too. that's normal.

as long as you don't try to brew a wine kit in your beer bucket, its all good.
 
If your pot is Aluminum then it will continue to smell like that and if it is Aluminum you wont want to scrub and take the oxide layer off just wash it out, it wont hurt your brew.
 
The smell is normal. There is no issue as long as you clean your brewpot everytime and rinse. As others have said - there is no need to worry.
 
Thanks for the help...brew is going beautifully. Btw, if you can find it, Windsor Brewing Company in Vermont makes an unfiltered hefeweizen called UFO...very good!
 
Never use dishsoap in any of your brewing processes. PBW is the best thing for cleaning the most things. If you can soak your pot (or just about ANYTHING) in a hot PBW solution overnight, it will come out like new. It works so good it will take the labels and even foil necks off of bottles with NO scrubbing at all.


Others recommend OxyClean, but I'd rather use PBW, which was developed for Coors as an environmentally safe brewery cleaner. You can pick it up at most homebrew stores.

:mug:
 
Yeah, B-Brite came with my kit, but I used a majority of it with my first brew and saved what little of it was left to sanitize the post-boil equipment. I have more of it on the way...I did boil several gallons of tap water after washing the pot with dish soap though, if that is any help...I just finished an Imperial Pale Ale, and my fiance decided she was allergic to hops :eek: I, however, love them(but wait, I know what you are thinking...Hophead) Anyway, thank you all for your help, and I'm sure I will have a bazillion more questions in the weeks to come.
 
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