Hop Vomit!! Reasons to clean out your carboys in a timely manner...

I have found that some times relaxing and having a home brew is not always the best solution. Perhaps we have had too many beers in the fridge.

Anyhow, we dry hopped the hell out of our IPA with 2 ounces each of centennial and cascade. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the leaf hops out at first. We filled up the carboys with hot water and oxyclean and let them sit for a week. After trying to get the hops out, we kept draining and refilling with the oxyclean solution until the hops softened up enough to get them out. This took about 2 months. Too many fermenters and procrastinating led us to this hop vomit... It was by far the worst smell I have encountered during brewing.





Sorry for the image quality. I didnt bring my camera that night, so the cell phone had to suffice.

That's disgusting, thanks for sharing!

I want a scratch and sniff screen!

Thanks for the warning.

I don't think you could bottle this kind of stank... My buddy works in the ER in Boston, and deals with a lot of homeless people and said that this ranks at least top 3...

Next time, get a wire coat hanger and unfold it. Keep a little hook on the end, as it makes a great tool for pulling the whole hops out. I too, did the soaking method, but just for a day. I think next time I may dry hop in my bottling bucket...whole hops are just no fun to get out of a carboy.

I'm just going to start using pellet hops for my dry hopping...

I think I'll start dry hopping YOUR MOM!!!!11!1

Sounds like a hell of name for a beer......

EvilTOJ said:

I think I'll start dry hopping YOUR MOM!!!!11!1

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?? Thats pretty outta line IMO...

don't mind him, he's always dry hopping someone's mom....

i've got some pretty rank carboys that i inherited from a cousin. luckily i left the nastiest one outside with water in it and it froze, so i didn't feel bad about not cleaning it up. the huge solid ice carboy with funk frozen was pretty sweet though!

If you have organic matter in a vessel you're having trouble removing, buy some lye crystals in the drain cleaner section and put some in the vessel with hot water. It will dissolve anything organic (works on pesky corpses, as well).

Galius_Persnickety said:

If you have organic matter in a vessel you're having trouble removing, buy some lye crystals in the drain cleaner section and put some in the vessel with hot water. It will dissolve anything organic (works on pesky corpses, as well).

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But it can also eat the flesh off you bones....

Drain cleaner-like caustic is really dangerous, and really does not have a place in homebrewing. Hot PBW will work just as well and does not have the pesky side effect of sending you to the hospital if you use it wrong, IMHO.

Pfft...if you're so sober whilst brewing that melting flesh is a worry, you need a new hobby!

Galius_Persnickety said:

If you have organic matter in a vessel you're having trouble removing, buy some lye crystals in the drain cleaner section and put some in the vessel with hot water. It will dissolve anything organic (works on pesky corpses, as well).

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yeah i clean my really nasty glas with liquid oven cleaner , it is lye too
and would have taken care of that mess in am hr soak

Beerrific said:

But it can also eat the flesh off you bones....

Drain cleaner-like caustic is really dangerous, and really does not have a place in homebrewing. Hot PBW will work just as well and does not have the pesky side effect of sending you to the hospital if you use it wrong, IMHO.

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yeah just like 5 gallons of boiling suger water napalm , propane burners and all teh other danger of doing anythng

Clayton said:

yeah just like 5 gallons of boiling suger water napalm , propane burners and all teh other danger of doing anythng

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Thats a great point