daphatgrant
Well-Known Member
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.
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.