Sweet craigslist steal today

[CU_tony]

I saw an ad for free bottles, of which I know I will need. I dropped a line for the bottles, and went out on a limb "any chance you have a kettle for sale"
He shot back 8 gal SS kettle for $40

I ran to the other side of town today and brought a wad of cash assuming there might be more goodies that he was trying to unload.

The only other big ticket item was a new, never used bayou classic burner for $65

I offered $120 for the kettle, the burner and:
2x 6 gal fermentor buckets (and lids)
bottle drying rack
4 grain sacks (for BIAB)
2 containers b-brite
1 pckg "brew clean"
bottle/carboy scrubbers
hydro (yay, I have 3 now...)
10 whirfloc tablets
priming sugar
2 pckg belle saison yeast (9/15..)
3 1oz pckg BSG hops
1 pckg oak chips
5 3' lightly toasted wooden staves from makers mark
1x diabolo LME kit (9/15)
1x german weizenbier DME kit with steep grains, hops, safale 05 (9/15)

Oh, also the "40" bottles as advertised is actually 90 12oz and 2 22oz!!

So, given that I was OK paying $105 for a kettle and burner, how sweet is the rest of the lot for $15

My only questions are about the expendables.
Do cleaning products have any expiration?

The LME and DME kits are 9 months past their best by date, is that mostly pertaining to the yeast? My current plans would be to make a starter with the packaged yeast to see if its still alive and kicking, and pitch if so.

Are the hops in vacuum sealed packages alright to use if they havent been frozen for many months?

 

[EcuPirate07]

Nice steal! The cleaning products should be fine.

 

[day_trippr]

[...]
My only questions are about the expendables.
Do cleaning products have any expiration?

Dry agents tend to have really long shelf lives, so I'd bet they're fine.

The LME and DME kits are 9 months past their best by date, is that mostly pertaining to the yeast? My current plans would be to make a starter with the packaged yeast to see if its still alive and kicking, and pitch if so.

The yeast are likely toast regardless, I'd not bother using it/them.
The LME might be darker than original spec, but as long as you're not brewing something with an SRM under say 6 or so you'll likely not notice.

Are the hops in vacuum sealed packages alright to use if they havent been frozen for many months?

Their goodness will be significantly attenuated. You might try testing them in a bit of hop tea before counting on them to deliver...

Cheers!

 

[JimRausch]

Kind of sad to see a fellow brewer bite the dust. Unless he upgraded to a sweet system.
But, your gain.

 

[CU_tony]

Of the 4 types of hops that I got today, NONE are any that I already have, or can specifically recall a beer featuring. Rakau, Sonnet, Wakatu (1oz of each), and German Hersbrucker (both pellet and leaf for the DME kit)
So those will definitely be worthy of some experiments, I havent read up on hop tea, but Ill have to do a quick search next time I want to learn something.

Regarding the yeast, you dont recon it would be worth the time to make a starter and see if the yeast is active? With age and not being refrigerated the yeast would either be dead, or alive and ready to revive, right?

The guy I got this from said he quit drinking so he quit brewing, he seemed happy enough to get rid of it all and even helped me pack my truck beverly hillbilly style since I also bought mats for a new fermentation chamber on the same run today (more on that in a different thread at a future time)

 

[day_trippr]

[...]Regarding the yeast, you dont recon it would be worth the time to make a starter and see if the yeast is active? With age and not being refrigerated the yeast would either be dead, or alive and ready to revive, right?[...]

For Science! Sure.

But here's the issue: assuming these are dry yeast (I mean, you can totally forget even a prayer of hope for any liquid yeast you might find in this stash given the age and likely less-than-ideal storage conditions) the viability may be attenuated to the point that you'd have no idea what the cell counts were, even if you managed to wake some number of cells up in a starter.

You'd be risking the all-up batch cost - ingredients, energy, water, etc - against saving the price of a packet of dry yeast...

Cheers!

 

[Tactical-Brewer]

Awesome! Very nice!