My second-ever batch (Bavarian Hefe) is still in the primary, bubbling away happily, so figured I'd take some time to ask a few questions that have crossed my mind:
1) If using a ale pail as primary fermenter, how do you take multiple hydrometer readings without worrying about allowing oxygen into the pail? Or is it so minimal once you're checking for FG that you don't need to worry about it much?
2) Once you're through racking/bottling/etc, how do you clean - and more importantly, dry - your tubing? This time, during the boil I had my bottling bucket handy with a couple gallons of sanitizer in it, in case anything needed 'checked' before use. Once I was done, I siphoned about a gallon or so of the sanitizer through my autosiphon into the boil pot to 'clean it' and then hung it above my sink so it could drip dry. The previous batch, the tubing (on my other racking cane) sat with some water in it, and now has a film inside. I'm sure it's probably just mineral deposits from the water, but I don't think I want to re-use that tubing for beer...
I'm sure I'll have more questions, but these are the two off the top of my head right now...
1) If using a ale pail as primary fermenter, how do you take multiple hydrometer readings without worrying about allowing oxygen into the pail? Or is it so minimal once you're checking for FG that you don't need to worry about it much?
2) Once you're through racking/bottling/etc, how do you clean - and more importantly, dry - your tubing? This time, during the boil I had my bottling bucket handy with a couple gallons of sanitizer in it, in case anything needed 'checked' before use. Once I was done, I siphoned about a gallon or so of the sanitizer through my autosiphon into the boil pot to 'clean it' and then hung it above my sink so it could drip dry. The previous batch, the tubing (on my other racking cane) sat with some water in it, and now has a film inside. I'm sure it's probably just mineral deposits from the water, but I don't think I want to re-use that tubing for beer...
I'm sure I'll have more questions, but these are the two off the top of my head right now...