My Cheap and Ghetto Fabulous Carboy dryer

I got this Christmas tree holder today at the local King Soopers for 90% off retail. So I have a ghetto fab carboy dryer and Christmas Tree stand for the low low price of 1.84. It hold both 5 and 6 gallon carboys.

 

Good thinking! Don't forget to decorate your carboy next year!

BoB

 

holy $hite... that is a great idea!!! i have the exact same tree base...

ah the beauty of this site.

 

Sweet, Tis the season!

 

Nice.
Mine is an inverted stool.

 

I am totally going to decorate it next year. One word of caution. I had a 6 gal in there drying today and it slipped and fell out and onto the floor. A loud bang but no breakage and no cracks

 

I use a small length of 4" diameter PVC. Already came cut so I got three at Lowe's for like $0.88 each.

 

That looks a lot like my cheap and ghetto fabulous anti-tip co2 stand!

 

do you really need to hold your carboy upside down till it is bone dry?

 

Couldn't clean the bird sh!t off?

 

I just open the diswasher, pull out the bottom rack (after it's had a load washed & is clean), and balance the carboy there until it's dry.

 

Why do you guys feel it is necessary or even desirable to dry the carboys? I clean mine, sanitize with Star San and cap with foil while still wet. I rinse them and sanitize again immediately prior to use.

 

If you dry them you dont have to sanitize them after each use, you can just clean them. It saves you time, belive me. You only need to sanitize before each use, not before and after.

I use a milk crate.

 

Actually, you are correct. It is not at all necessary to sanitize more than once. Drying them has no bearing on this and storing an un-sanitized carboy is unwise IMO. I feel my beer is worth the very small extra effort involved. In the big picture any potential time saving is negligible. I may spend an additional thirty seconds sanitizing the second time.

 

Check out the carboy dryer I built in my wood shop out of some scrap wood. The feet fold in so it is more compact to store. It has been very stable so far.

 

I belive that drying does make a huge difference, when was the last time something bone dry molded on you?

Ive sotred a carboy wet once, and It got hella nasty. Ive stored a carboy dry without sanitizing 50+ times and never has one gotten nasty on me.

 

The reason that carboy got nasty was because you didn't sanitize it. I did NOT suggest simply storing a wet carboy. Don't know where you came up with that. Here it is again: Clean thoroughly with a suitable agent. Rinse thoroughly then sanitize with Star San, Iodophor or something similar. Empty the carboy and cap with plastic wrap or otherwise seal it. I prefer to hit is again with sanitizer immediately prior to use as added protection. Sometimes I don't do this if the carboy has only been stored for a short time.
There's nothing wrong with drying them, of course, if that's the way you want to do it. Drying would also be a very good idea if bleach was used in the carboy. I no longer use bleach, so that's not an issue for me.

 

I was bottling and spilled beer on my bird sh!tty CO2 tank. I went ahead and bottled it anyway.

Is my beer ruined?

 

Storing things clean (not sanitized) and dry is how Charlie does it and I've done things his way for a while, so I think I'll stick to that.

There is no reason to sanitize something you have cleaned if you are going to put it into storage. Storing it clean and dry provides no real opportunity for anything to grow (if it's clean-- there's nothing to grow on). Then sanitizing before use takes care of any airborne deposits that have ended up in your vessel.

That being said, I have 3 kegs currently stored empty, sanitized and under a couple pounds of pressure. Mostly because I'm planning to use them shortly and a pressurized, sanitized vessel is pretty much immune to infection.

 

I have dried mine in the oven a few times. I just lay it in there on its side, and set the oven to its lowest temperature (170). Once the oven beeps that it has reached 170, I turn it off and wait until the next day. By that time, it has cooled off and is bone dry. I do the same thing if I have a huge amount of bottles to dry. I figure that the relatively low temperature and slow heat/cool cycle won't cause any harm tot he carboy. I do not recommend this method for better bottles, I use glass.

 

What has worked best for me is to clean and then put a couple cups of star-san in the carboy, shake it around a bit and put the cap/stopper on. Right before I pump into it from the boil kettle I will shake the sanitizer around again to cover all surfaces and dump it out. This way it always stays as sanitary as possible, and I don't have to dry it.

 

That's essentially the same procedure I use. It's probably unlikely that any microbes would get a foot hold inside a clean and dry carboy, but even less likely they would find swimming in sanitizer more appealing. OTOH, I haven't had any infection problems. I can't help it if I'm lucky!

 

I like to rinse my carboy with a warm water jet from the faucet and then let the carboy drip dry and cool to room temp. Then I add cold water and a half a cup of bleach. I add the bung and then more water so that even the bung is halfway covered. Then I let it sit in the basement till I need it. There is nothing thats going to cause any trouble in that bleached-filled carboy during the month or so it might sit around.

Once ready I drain it, hit it with hot tap water to kill the bleach residue then use some star san and its ready to go. Works for me. N_G

 

My carboys seem to dry standing upright. I just soak with Oxi-clean, rinse and set on the floor in my basement. Next day it's dry. Am I doing something wrong?

This has been my practice for 2 years. No issues to date.

Linc

 

Water will of course eventually dry, but only the water is going to evaporate. Whatever minerals are in your water (or droplets of oxyclean) will remain, and you get the white residue or water spots, which you would need to clean off anyway. My process is:

1. Clean after use.
2. Store dry, with some tinfoil over the opening. I dry upside down overnight. I have a piece of plywood I cut a circle in and added some legs so the carboy can sit upside down.
3. Sanitize before use.

As far as drying in the oven, from what I have read, glass can fatigue and eventually crack with repeated heating / cooling cycles. The glass naturally expands / shrinks with changes in temperature, just something to keep an eye on.

I suspect it doesn't really matter how you do it, as long as it's clean and sanitized before you use them.

 

Just to add yet another method:
I soak the carboy with ~2 gal PBW, first right side up then upside down with a solid stopper, until everything just floats off (at least 12 hours each way, mainly because I'm lazy).
Rinse well.
Add a couple gal of Starsan and slosh around...empty.
Store upside down on a flower pot.

The difference is that before I actually use it again I always give it a quick PBW soak again (like...during the boil) and then rinse well and then sanitize again with Starsan (during the chill).

I always have Starsan already made up and almost always have PBW already made up so it's really not that much work. But I'll admit it's prob overkill.

Why do I clean it again with PBW? Because Starsan can't sanitize something that's not clean and I want to be extra certain it's clean first...since I can't really scrub inside there very effectively.