washed new primary. still smells like beer. Ruined?

I just racked my first batch of beer out of my new (1st) primary. Its a 10 gallon plastic one. I rinsed it out. Washed in bleach water solution and rinsed again. It still smells a bit like there was beer in it. Is the plastic now forever tainted? How to you clean your plastic fermentors?

Nah you're good. The smell will fade as long as you were diligent in getting it very clean. You can give it a nice overnight warm water and bleach soak to speed it up.

if you are worried about leeching into your next batch, relax. the smell lessens but will never go away. it is kind of nice to start a new batch and take a big wiff of where you have been previously. i love it personally.

no worries

So glad to hear it! Thanks!

i think there was a thread on this earlier today. nah. no need to worry. mine do this too. just make sure you clean it reall well and don't worry about how it smells

sorry.. i usually try to do a good search before i post, but I thought, "how many posts could there be about the smell of the primary?" and just went for it.

haha. no, im not one of those who says "oh theres already a post on that" (maybe because i haven't been here as long as some of the other ones). i thought it was funny, like you said, how many posts could there be about the smell of primary. then there is two in one day. it seems like that happens a lot thought. my mother in law was jokingly asking me this week about brewing with marijuana. then i've seen two posts this week talking about it.

canuckmug said:

I just racked my first batch of beer out of my new (1st) primary. Its a 10 gallon plastic one. I rinsed it out. Washed in bleach water solution and rinsed again. It still smells a bit like there was beer in it. Is the plastic now forever tainted? How to you clean your plastic fermentors?

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Hmmm. I didn't know that a container that you make beer in and surprisingly, still smells like beer after its washed, but will be used again to make beer in, is a bad thing? Somebody needs to RDWHAH or whatever that acronym is. Or maybe I should have one.