Any sloppy brewers out there?

[bottlebomber]

I've been known to clean my kettle on brew day... The next brew day that is

 

[bottlebomber]

I'd like to personally thank the "I don't care about cleanliness" d-bag who showed up at my club's Big Brew day in March at one of our local breweries. Dipping the fill tube into his filthy carboy ended up spreading an infection to a couple of dozen other members (including me) and completely effing up their brew systems.

By the time I discovered and eliminated it, a brewing friend and I lost at least 50 gallons of beer. In the whole club, hundreds of gallons lost.

CLEAN YOUR EQUIPMENT

That's what you guys get for dipping your fill tubes in any carboy that comes along.

 

[pjj2ba]

What needs to be clean and sanitized is done well, the rest can be a bit messy. I do have totally separate systems for mashing versus cooling. The mashing side pretty much just gets a very thorough rinse with water after use. The post boil equipment always get rinsed after use followed by soak in oxyclean and then rinsed. About once every season, I'll run nearly boiling PBW through the post boil rig. Then I'll transfer it over to the mash portion and run it through that for a while. My tubing is translucent so it help in monitoring for any build up

The whole area is quite messy though with various tools, parts, etc. lying around.

 

[barnbrew]

I've never had any problems with infection what so ever and I always clean everything up after I brew, that way I'm ready to go the next time I brew. The temp controlled conical I just bought is a little different getting used to, taking it all apart and cleaning and sanitizing all the sanitary fittings and various pieces and parts, but I'm getting used to it now, I think it's brought my beer to another level, but I won't quit my day job just yet.

 

[supermoth]

Meh, if you love your beer, who cares about the condition of the equipment?

I have a ton of beerstone on my boil kettle. It used to come off easily with a CIP alkaline wash followed by a good rinse followed by an acid wash followed by a rinse. It stayed shiny for at least a month, then I'd do it again. Now, it's like "oh, f*** it".

Yooper, may I ask what you use for your alkaline and acid rinses? I've been noticing a buildup on my kettle that won't come off with regular scrubbing. This is the first I've heard of beerstone, so I'm really glad you mentioned it.

 

[pjj2ba]

Yooper, may I ask what you use for your alkaline and acid rinses? I've been noticing a buildup on my kettle that won't come off with regular scrubbing. This is the first I've heard of beerstone, so I'm really glad you mentioned it.

I've used oxyclean or pbw followed by starsan. I was trying to clean my SS mesh hop filter, and alkaline cleaners alone weren't enough. I finally tried following up with an "acid rinse" and that worked. The alkaline step breaks down any organic matter on the surfaces to be clean. However, it is still stuck to the surface. The acid step helps the now degraded material to release from the surface. The reverse order will not work. Hotter alkali works much better, but you have to be more careful. The acid step does not need to be heated.

 

[wncbrewer]

I too, have tons of beerstone in my boil kettle, and can sometimes be slack with hotside cleanliness. But once my beer passes through the chiller, I would say that I am very anal

 

[RainyDay]

I really dont like cleaning my stuff, but I dont like dirty anything sitting around, so I clean as I go. I find if I clean as I go, i'm really not spending much more time in my brew day, as I clean while other things are going on (clean my mash tun during the boil, etc). Speaking of mash tun, it gets a little hairy trying to get rid of my spent grains since I live in an apartment; I wish I lived in a house so I could dump em.

 

[Kmcogar]

I've never cleaned my wort chiller. I just expect my boiling wort to get the job done........a little hop residue left over from the back before....oh well

 

[mb82]

I have always thought of myself as a clean brewer. Till yesterday I was cleaning bottles and looked at the outside of my fermenting bucket, wow that thing was nasty. Well not anymore.

 

[hoptualBrew]

I find it rather easy to just clean up as the boil is going on. Normally I will dump and clean the MT after hot break occurs and in between hop additions and scrub down the boil kettle right after I get the carboy into the fermentation cooler. All the other equipment & ingredients I use on brewday I just wash and toss back after final use (refractometer, starter flask, thermometers, irish moss, yeast nutrient, iodophor, etc..).

It just seems like good habit to get into, especially if you have dreams to open your own brewpub or brewery one day. Hope you all stay infection free, cheers!

 

[onthekeg]

Yooper, may I ask what you use for your alkaline and acid rinses? I've been noticing a buildup on my kettle that won't come off with regular scrubbing. This is the first I've heard of beerstone, so I'm really glad you mentioned it.

I'm not Yooper, but for my HLT and kettle, I use a dilute HCL acid to soak it for awhile then rinse it out good. It cleans the element and the stone out of the kettle very nicely, and I don't even have to scrub.

 

[biggestmuff]

I seem to make a big mess on brew day and end up with wort everywhere. I BIAB in a Gatorade cooler, and pouring wort back to the brew kettle isn't always a smooth transfer. I also get a fair mess with starsan draining out of bottles on bottling day. I typically need 2-3 old towels on hand to clean up spills and what not.

Is this real life? I think you're missing the point of BIAB.

 

[neosapien]

My equipment certainly isn't pristine, but I like using the water from my IC to clean my equipment during the 15-20 minutes it takes to cool things down. Keeps me busy at the end of a hot texas summer brew day. I have been known to forget spent grains and such on the brew days where I have taken RDWHAHB to excess though... (which is part of the reason why I no longer do such things!)

 

[Retrofit]

One of the many experiments I've done was, make beer without a sanitizer. I made eight different batches of beer, cleaning everything with hot water- no sanitizer. On the eight beer, 2 of 50 bottles of beer were infected. This means my process was fine, my beer bottles were not. So if I can make 50 bottles of beer per batch, that means in 2/400 went bad just using hot water.

I'm not advocating sloppyness, but I've read at this sight about guys sanitizing bags of pellet hops before they open them, or guys recommending you boil leaf hop before you put them in the boil. There has to be a reasonable line between the slob and clean freak. I suspect that beer is more tolerant of the slob than clean freaks will admit.

 

[Gregwarro]

I'd like to personally thank the "I don't care about cleanliness" d-bag who showed up at my club's Big Brew day in March at one of our local breweries. Dipping the fill tube into his filthy carboy ended up spreading an infection to a couple of dozen other members (including me) and completely effing up their brew systems.

By the time I discovered and eliminated it, a brewing friend and I lost at least 50 gallons of beer. In the whole club, hundreds of gallons lost.

CLEAN YOUR EQUIPMENT

Didn't your mom tell you to use protection...

 

[jonmohno]

Drinking too much and brewing and being sloppy is just a bad habbit.I wouldnt take much pride in that.To each is own.
To osagedr- Be carefull with those brew orgies. I use abstinace,guess im just a brewing virgin masturbater.

 

[jigidyjim]

By the time I discovered and eliminated it, a brewing friend and I lost at least 50 gallons of beer. In the whole club, hundreds of gallons lost.

I've never had an infection so I'm curious - what does "discover" and "eliminate" mean? I would have thought that if I had an infected batch, it would be isolated because when I boiled/sanitized the next batch the infection would be gone.

 

[drkaeppel]

I'm OCD about cleaning and sanitizing everything that touches the beer post-boil, but when the brew day is over I pretty much just give everything a quick rinse and put it away.

 

[MississippiSlim]

My name is MississippiSlim and I...am a sloppy brewer! Last sloppy thing I did was leave my Wort chiller outside while I weedeated then brewed later that day without thinking, picked up the wort chiller and through her in the kettle. Took me a second to figure out what all the little flecks of grass were. Beer turned out fine. Before making a wort chiller had my fermenter sitting in the fermentation chamber cooling and forgot it for 3 days. Pitched, beer turned out fine. I have dropped stuff in the wort, fished it out with my hand....the list is probably really long and have yet to have an infection. Basically everything but filter through a dirty sock! I have become OCD about my keg dispensing cleanliness though. I work offshore for 2 weeks and faucets can grow some interesting stuff (but not tasty) in that time. I clean my taps releigously and keep them plugged now when I go to work. Also my halfassed forgetfulnesss and lack of attention to detail does not transfer well to All grain. When I do all grain I make a conscious effort to follow the rules and pay closer attention to everything.

 

[MisterTipsy]

I like to wash my sweaty summer brew face in the cooled wort. Some say this is a bad technique, but my pores have never been tighter.

 

[beerloaf]

I try to use the toilet brush too but the problem is sneaking it back to the bathroom before getting caught by SWMBO.

 

[jonmohno]

Why not just brew after using hand as toilet paper and not washing.Hmm? Whats there to be afraid of? No balls no glory? Whats up? We in? Oh,its so going there.

 

[Yooper]

Why not just brew after using hand as toilet paper and not washing.Hmm? Whats there to be afraid of? No balls no glory? Whats up? We in? Oh,its so going there.

That's kind of harsh. I think having beerstone in my boil kettle isn't going to cause me any real problems- it's just not as shiny as it used to be.

There is a difference between being unsanitary and not being anal about shiny things. To denigrate people who admit that preboil things aren't as important as post-boil sanitation is unfair.

 

[MississippiSlim]

Mind you I don't advocate any of my slothfulness just answering the ops question. Its not like I say "I'm gonna see how unclean I can brew this beer" Its just that I am the polar opposite of OCD. I am a slob. Not unhygeinic mind you...just sloppy. I do laugh at the "I can't believe someone could brew like that" posts. Yeh and I can't see how some folks can worry so much about so little. Its beer. If it turns out bad then step up the game. If it is good to you to heck with what others think. I sometime think it is the curse of modern man to think that the amount they fret and worry about things to be proportionate to the results. but thats just me...

 

[MisterTipsy]

Yooper, I'm pretty sure he was kidding. I wasn't though.

 

[jonmohno]

That's kind of harsh. I think having beerstone in my boil kettle isn't going to cause me any real problems- it's just not as shiny as it used to be.

There is a difference between being unsanitary and not being anal about shiny things. To denigrate people who admit that preboil things aren't as important as post-boil sanitation is unfair.

Yeah just exagerating. Preboil is nothing to worry about. I still would wash my hands. But drunk brewing and careless or forgetfull may lead to unfortuante mistakes. Sorry for the crude humor.

 

[MississippiSlim]

I guess my thing is--so drunk and careless may lead to mistakes---ok! thats cool with me. Honestly if I had to worry as much as I see some folks doing I would not brew. Its my hobby. If it turns into work then I would not be having fun. 3 years or so of (sloppy)brewing and I have yet to have to dump a batch. The worst thing I have found from sloppy drunken brewing is failure to repeat some great beers due to the fact I couldnt remember how I brewed them. But hell, some things are only meant to happen once!

 

[Skelator]

my racking tube has a little discoloration to it.. nothing wrong so far. Funny... it'd cost about 3 bucks to remedy that... but i havent.... for about 8 months. Ha!

 

[grasshopperfirestarter]

my 10 gallon cooler mash tun stinks. Left a hand full of grains in it. Need to brew this weekend. Must clean.