need some help with first brew..

[Beernewb]

things were going great until tried to drain the wort--cooled it with a chiller, used fuggles as my hops, boiling in a Blichmann 10gallon kettle (will be brewing outside from now on, but waiting on burner (no stores had locally, end of season).

ball valve and line got clogged with fuggle residue. I could not create a whirlpool, my chiller was in there being sanitized for the last 15 minutes--I wound up having to dump the remaining wort into my carboy in the sink, some fuggle residue of course.

Now instead of having 5 gallons in the carboy and using a blow off tube, I'm luck to have 4 with an airlock that wasn't sanatized (since i was planning to use a blow off tube first.

what wort is in there is fermenting wonderfully, lots of activity, maybe because I pre started the yeast.

but how bad is this going to taste??

My other question is how toprevent this in the future?

should i invest in the optional boil screen for the kettle? does anyone have experience on whether this is effective, i heard various negative things about it. Or should i just place the hops in bags?

thanks.

oh and what's the best way to siphon out the beer from the carboy into a bottleing bucket? i'm obviously not near the top of the carboy with the fermenting wort.

thanks again

 

[jay4e]

if you use a hop bag you shouldnt get enough in the boil to clog the lines. also always have a bucket of no rinse sanitizer around. i fill my carboy with sanitizer and let it sit then dump the whole 6 gallons into a 20 gallon barrel and dump everything i may need in there to sanitize. i even use the barrel with the sanitizer still in it to store the carboy for fermentation. makes for good temp control.

 

[McKBrew]

OK.

First of all do not worry about the hop residue, trub etc... It's not going to hurt your beer and it will settle out in the primary.

Second. A screen is useful. I use a bazooka screen on the inside of my kettle. Note: I also use leaf hops. For pellet hops, you might consider something like this. (In the first post, the pictures have been deleted, but you can read through the thread to see them all.)

For siphoning, you should invest in an autosiphon. A regular siphon will work too. Just make sure the carboy is higher than the bottling bucket.

I think I hit all of your questions.

Good Luck.

 

[Rick500]

Just wanted to add: Keep a spray bottle of no-rinse sanitizer around. It's handy for things like sanitizing the airlock you didn't know you'd need.

 

[ChshreCat]

I'm going to stop and pick up some OxiClean on the way home today and when I'm there I'll be getting an empty spray bottle. I keep hearing about the spray bottle of starsan and that sounds like the simplest yet most brilliant idea ever.

 

[fratermus]

I keep hearing about the spray bottle of starsan and that sounds like the simplest yet most brilliant idea ever.

Right.

On brew/bottling days I make up a gallon or two of no-rinse sanitizer and use some of that to fill about half a spray bottle.

BTW, although I currently have a gallon of starsan made up on the porch for gear sanitization purposes, be aware that starsan is slippery. Using on airlocks and stoppers can lead to airlocks that won't stay in place without doing some kind of self-defeating rinsing/wiping. Last night not only did my stopper climb out of an ehrlenmeyer flask, but after reseating the stopper the airlock climbed out of the stopper! Grrr!

For this reason, I use iodophor for airlocks/stoppers and most sanitizing in general. But it seems this is a minority position; either most people on HBT use starsan or they are more verbal about it.

 

[Pi Kapp Beer Guy]

+1 for idophor

I used iodine on injured animals growing up on a farm. If you can keep a cut, puncture, or gash wound clean with it on a farm then it has some true bacteria stopping power. SO i always use idophor plus it is a no rinse. YOu have gotta love that.