Cleaning advice

[daphatgrant]

Hey HBT, I think I might need to reform my cleaning regiment. Today I was moving a stout from the primary to the secondary fermenter and I noticed a few odd things.

First when transferring the beer to the secondary inside the 2nd fermenter I noticed a kind of oil sheen on top of the beer as it was being transferred. I am using stainless steel fermenters. The second thing I noticed was when I went to wipe the top of the lid off to write the date and time the paper towel came away with a black smear. The lid had been scrubbed, rinsed and sprayed with starsan. Where did the black stuff come from? I couldn't see it on the lid, the lid looked wet?

Here's what I've been doing when cleaning. When I first got the fermenters I followed the directions, I scrubbed them all with TSP and passified them. Since then I've been using dawn dish soap to scrub them with a non scratch scrubber (the blue ones). I'll then rinse it off cold water, I'm using a garden hose. Next I'll usually put some saniclean in the fermenter with the ball valve in place to A. check for a leak of the valve and B. sanitize the airlock, lid seal, transfer hose, etc. I'll spray down the sides that aren't directly contacted by the saniclean with starsan.

When I am ready to transfer into the fermenter I'll pour out the saniclean, rinse with cold water, spray down the inside again with starsan, tip it to drain out anything that accumulated at the bottom and then transfer.

I'm afraid that when using the garden hose water (cold water) I am not fully removing the dawn soap. I'm not exactly sure what to do but I want to try an experiment about soap and starsan on stainless. The black "stuff" that I wiped off of the lid made no sense to me. I'm a little worried that that fermenter has now been contaminated.

So... any input or thoughts? Warm water is by far my preference but unfortunatley I don't have access to warm water in my garage. Maybe Dissolve PBW in a bucket with warm water, use that in the garage to clean the equipment, rinse with cold water? Use starsan and continue as normal?

Thanks for any input, I'm kinda worried that I killed that batch , I'll be ok with it if I can figure out what happened and learn from it.

Thanks for any help guys.

 

[ncbrewer]

I've never used dish soap on my brewing equipment because there are numerous articles stating that it is bad for head retention. I like your PBW idea - or Oxi Clean, or generic. But they still need to be rinsed well. It might be worth bringing in a bucket of hot water for rinsing.

 

[Upthewazzu]

dish soap = bad

Use PBW and don't over think it.

Unless you're aging that stout, no reason to use a secondary.

 

[Hopsimus]

Do you mill you own grains?
Perhaps the black stuff is actually grain dust/powder from the dark malts in the stout? That stuff floats everywhere.

 

[Gadfly]

I assume you have the Ss brewbuckets. The black oil is coated on all their metal, doesn't show without the "white glove test" and the TSP wash doesn't really seem to get rid of it. If you want to be really grossed out, swab a q-tip in the mini-valve. I basically had to re wash w pbw. I then used a white paper towel to dry and make sure they wiped away as clean as they went in. I had to completely disassemble the mini-valve to get that thing oil free.

Dish soap will leave residue, kill head retention and scented stuff will alter flavors. There's are home recipes for PBW one can search out if it's not locally available.

And like others have already said, secondary is largely wasted effort unless doing very long term aging--3 months to a yearish. Completely unnecessary for most brews.

 

[daphatgrant]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

Do you mill you own grains?
Perhaps the black stuff is actually grain dust/powder from the dark malts in the stout? That stuff floats everywhere.

I can mill my own but I was using an extract kit. I scrubbed the lid with a blue scotch pad, rinsed with water and sprayed down with Starsan right before transferring. I was surprised after the solid scrubbing with a blue scotch pad and soap that it came away black. And this is after an initial scrub with TSP, a rinse and another wash with dish soap and a rinse when I first got them.

I assume you have the Ss brewbuckets. The black oil is coated on all their metal, doesn't show without the "white glove test" and the TSP wash doesn't really seem to get rid of it. If you want to be really grossed out, swab a q-tip in the mini-valve. I basically had to re wash w pbw. I then used a white paper towel to dry and make sure they wiped away as clean as they went in. I had to completely disassemble the mini-valve to get that thing oil free.

Yeah, SS brewtech 7gal brew buckets. Well this sounds like fun. I'm not sure why the tsp didn't remove the manufacturing oils. I used a high concentration with hot water. I guess I'll rescrub them, rinse them and give them another full scrub with pbw. Then I'll regive them a paper towel wipedown. I had heard that the SS Brewtech stuff was hard to get the oil off of but I never imagined that it would be this difficult.

 

[daphatgrant]

I haven't done any cleaning yet of the SS gear but I did formulate a plan to put hot water in my unheated attached garage.

My bathroom shares a wall with the garage, I'm worried about making anything permanent and having a leak or freeze so I'll do the above. Adapter from bathroom sink to MGHT, garden hose wye, length of high temp garden hose, 3/4" wall flange to hold everything inside in place, 3/4" FGHT to 3/4" Mslip adapter, 3/4" x 8" copper pipe, 3/4" Mslip to 3/4" MPT adapter, 3/4" FPT Hose bib w/flange.

This will allow me to get hot water in the garage and disconnect everything easily without worry of freezing or 50'+ of hose to pick up.

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, you might consider installing a "frost-free" faucet that can be left in place all year 'round.
I used these on our house in the White Mountains where sub-zero temps are frequent and occasionally protracted...

Cheers!