Water Cooler Tub?? Help!

You know those things that they turn upside down on water coolers?? Could I used that instead of a glass carboy and would glass carboy fittings work with one of those??

I want to try to "blow off" thing that is suggested a lot of times but I don't have the $40 to shell out right now for the glass carboy, I am working with plastic buckets right now.

Help me out!!

I think the consensus is that the plastic those things are made from is too oxygen permeable to be used as a secondary, and they're too small for a primary.

Why are you eager to try a blowoff tube? It's a mess and has no real advantages. Maybe some disadvantages in terms of losing head retention and viable yeast.

Fermenting in a primary large enough that you don't need a blowoff is the best way to go. So plastic buckets are fine for a primary. Glass is a better secondary for the reason El Pistolero cited.

Cheers

also.... $40 for a carboy!? That's highway robbery!

Does the $40 include some shipping charges or something?

For reference, my LHBS sells 6.5 gallon carboys for about $23.


-walker

There seems to be a flavor that is consistent in all my beers and I thought using the blow off technique might help. Thanks for your advice.. I will follow it!

I just transferred my amber ale into one of those water cooler tanks. They are the same sort of plastic that the Better Bottle products are made from. Yes, it is oxygen permeable, but everyone reports that not enough oxygen passes through the container over the usual 2-3 weeks to make a differenece. Beer should be fine because it is so quick, but I wouldn't do a wine or a cider in them.

I'm using size 10 stoppers in mine; the opening is significantly larger than any of my carboys.

tim.jamison said:

There seems to be a flavor that is consistent in all my beers and I thought using the blow off technique might help. Thanks for your advice.. I will follow it!

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Nah. You don't need to blowoff to get clean tasting beer. It's something else.

Do you extract or AG brew? If extract, I bet that's where the flavor comes from. The more actual grain you use (with AG being the best scenario), the more like "real" beer your product will taste.

Do you use a good liquid yeast strain? Try the Chico Ale from White Labs or Wyeast. It's clean as a whistle and will eliminate yeast as a problem area.

What is the flavor that you are getting?

Janx said:

Do you extract or AG brew? If extract, I bet that's where the flavor comes from. The more actual grain you use (with AG being the best scenario), the more like "real" beer your product will taste.

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Are you suggesting that extract is made from something other than grain?

i am really not sure how to explain the taste i am getting. i brew extract.. i am college student who lives in the dorms.. so all grain is a little too much for me i am guessing.. if its cheaper and better i would love to try it but eh.. i don't know if i have the time for it right now

all my beers have tasted didn't but there is one flavor that stays consistent.

i have tried all white labs and then just cheap dry yeast... white labs seems to be much better.

my last batch is really great. i just got the cheapest pale ale for austin home brew supplies and threw in some pasturized grapefruit during sec. ferm. it turned out wonderful.

i guess maybe i was getting to much of a hoppy flavor in my honeywheat and fat tire clones but to be honest, i didn't realize that i wasn't suppose to put the entire bags of hops in the wort. i saw it was like .5 ounces instead of 1 whole ounce. everything i have done since then has been really hoppy like the pale ale so i might be fine.

Walker said:

Are you suggesting that extract is made from something other than grain?

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I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but, yes, ABSOLUTELY. Extract is made from all kinds of sugar. There are no laws regulating it, and ingredients aren't posted on the package. Analysis of various extracts has found that virtually none of them are free from non-malt sugars.

Extracts contribute all kinds of off flavors in my experience. If they have a lot of sucrose, they can be very cidery.

If extract brewing made beers of the same quality as grain brewing then commercial breweries would use it. You'll never get the complexity or good clean flavors out of extract that you can with grain.

Not to say that extract brewing is a bad thing. It enables almost all of us to get started in this thing. But if you really want to make the best beer you can, you need to eventually end up doing AG.

I was being sarcastic. (that's why I put the smiley on there.)

For what it's worth: The LME I get form the LHBS says right on the package "contents: malted barley and water", but I don't doubt for a second that there are brand out there that include all manner of other ingredients to reduce costs.

I view extract differently. Somebody mashed some grain, reduced it by boiling, and canned it. I bought the can, rehydrated it, and made beer with it.

-walker

Tim, if you always use the same kind of extract, I'd try a different one to see if it makes a difference in the flavor.

Always use the lightest extract you can get, regardless of what the recipe says. Make up color with adjunct grains.

Speaking of adjunct grains, the more real grain you use in an extract beer, the better it will be. Use light extract for the base, but then steep malts like crystal and chocolate to add color and flavor. The character of a beer made with just steeped (not mashed) grains plus extract as opposed to all-extract will be much better.

Honey can have some interesting flavors on its own. I'd try something really clean like a good ole American Pale Ale, Sierra Nevada style. That will allow you to figure out where the flavor comes from without honey, grapefruit, etc

Measuring hops correctly is important, but I doubt that's your problem. As you said, it will just make the beers more hoppy, which is usually a good thing

Cheers

Walker said:

For what it's worth: The LME I get form the LHBS says right on the package "contents: malted barley and water", but I don't doubt for a second that there are brand out there that include all manner of other ingredients to reduce costs.

I view extract differently. Somebody mashed some grain, reduced it by boiling, and canned it. I bought the can, rehydrated it, and made beer with it.

-walker

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Well, I kind of doubt that your extract is all malt either. A study I read could find zero zip zilch none extracts that were 100% malted barley.

And you should consider using dry extract, not syrup. Syrup darkens continually in the can. Controlling color in extract brews is hard enough, but liquid extract makes it harder.

As far as your view of extract...it's just not that simple. If it were, breweries would use extract. The fact is that a lot of complex chemical changes occur when you try to make extract and preserve it for use later. You'll just never get results as good as you will by mashing yourself.

The more real grain in your brewing process, the better. Simple as that.

I've used those blue water cooler carboys and have had no problems with oxygen permentation. Though the longest I've had beer in on was 6 weeks. Though many years ago I had a beer in one for 6 months and it worked out fine.

They are a o2 resistant plastic. The think white carboys sold for wine etc do let a lot of o2 in.

BTW I can get a 23L Glass carboy in Canada for $23. So $40 usd is a rip.

Janx said:

Well, I kind of doubt that your extract is all malt either. A study I read could find zero zip zilch none extracts that were 100% malted barley.

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All I can go by is what the manufacturer says, and Briess says it's 100% barley and water. So... who should I believe.

Janx said:

And you should consider using dry extract, not syrup. Syrup darkens continually in the can. Controlling color in extract brews is hard enough, but liquid extract makes it harder.

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That's what I just started doing recently. I am able to buy bulk DME from the LHBS (extra light briess "pilsen" DME) and that's all I plan to use from this point on. I bought the syrup in bulk once and MAN was it a messy hastle. I still h ave about 9 lbs of the liquid extract left, and I'm probably going to toss it in the garbage.

-walker

Walker said:

That's what I just started doing recently. I am able to buy bulk DME from the LHBS (extra light briess "pilsen" DME) and that's all I plan to use from this point on. I bought the syrup in bulk once and MAN was it a messy hastle. I still h ave about 9 lbs of the liquid extract left, and I'm probably going to toss it in the garbage.

-walker

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Screw that!!! Make up a batch of the 06.06.06 with it!!!!!!

Dude said:

Screw that!!! Make up a batch of the 06.06.06 with it!!!!!!

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I'm actually starting to have the opinion that my LME brews go stale faster than my DME batches. AT least, that's what my brew notes seem to be telling me.

At first I thought that I just preferred the flavor of the DME batches over the LME batches, but I actually think it's a longevity thing. My scottish ale was very VERY good, and it was an LME recipe. But, I cracked one open over the weekend and thought it was terrible.

I might keep it for making yeast starters, but I won't use it for an actual brew anymore.

-walker

Janx, You say to use some grains and a light extract, if I just buy kits how do I go about doing that?? I usually buy through Austin Home Brew and they come with extract, grains you boil then take out after the 1st 20 minutes or so and then you start adding hopps. so where can I make the change.

Is there a place online where I can pick indgredients individually?

Oh, and the extract that I use is always a syrup.. does that make a difference?

I would use dry extract, not syrup. The dry extract is more stable, and its color is more predictable. Liquid (syrup) extract is constantly darkening in the can. It seems to have more unfermentable sweetness too.

You can pick ingredients individually at Austin Homebrew I'm pretty sure. Or at morebeer.com. Or lots of places. You can get recipes on the Internet or in tons of recipe books or by making up your own using software like ProMash.

It sounds like Austin Homebrew's kits are cool, with some adjunct grains for steeping. Adding some adjunct grains to an extract brew makes all the difference in the world. You may not want to actually boil the grains that come with it because you'll get husky tannic flavors out of them. (Do the instructions say to boil them??) But steeping some grains in hot water (say up to 170-180) in an extract beer is a fantastic way to get closer to all-grain flavor.

Cheers

Sorry, I meant steep. The instructions say to boil then stop the boil and soak the grains.. my bad.

Ok, So you can pick individual ingredients even if you aren't doing all grain right?

And, dry is better than the syrups.. right?

Yep, you can definitely pick ingredients without doing all grain. You buy light extract and then a bunch of various adjunct grains according to your recipe.

And, yes, in my opinion, dry extract is better than syrups.

Janx said:

Why are you eager to try a blowoff tube? It's a mess and has no real advantages. Maybe some disadvantages in terms of losing head retention and viable yeast.

Fermenting in a primary large enough that you don't need a blowoff is the best way to go. So plastic buckets are fine for a primary. Glass is a better secondary for the reason El Pistolero cited.

Cheers

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I always use a blow-off, mostly becuase my 6.5's would blow my airlocks off. Maybe its becuase most my recent beers have contained wheat, but I would rather use a blow-off tube than expose my beer to the bacterial jungle of open air.

digdan said:

I always use a blow-off, mostly becuase my 6.5's would blow my airlocks off. Maybe its becuase most my recent beers have contained wheat, but I would rather use a blow-off tube than expose my beer to the bacterial jungle of open air.

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Sure, out of necessity, you use a blowoff. But it's not something to go out of your way to do. If you have a large enough primary to ferment the beer without a blowoff, there's no advantage to it.

I agree a blowoff is more appealing than an open-top fermenter. Way more appealing

Cheers