Cooling wort with lid on and DMS

[woozy]

Did an extract batch and I think it went smoothly. But I did add ice. But let it sit in kettle until 120 and then into fermenter until 85. No splashing, no panic.

Will try allgrain tomorrow or the next day.

 

[Bigelow92]

Did you boil the water that you froze into ice? Did you cover it with Saran Wrap in the freezer? I dot want to incite panic but tap waters got all sorts of microbes, and your freezer prolly has a good amount floating around too.

Also, you should let it cool to 80 in the kettle then splash all hell out of it when racking to he fermenter. Over 80 F there's a chance of HSA (I know it could be a myth but I like to play it safe) and you gotta aerate the wort well to ensure enough dissolved O2 for your yeasties to build strong cell walls to withstand the osmotic pressure of an alcoholic environment.

 

[woozy]

Did you boil the water that you froze into ice? Did you cover it with Saran Wrap in the freezer? I dot want to incite panic but tap waters got all sorts of microbes, and your freezer prolly has a good amount floating around too.

Yes, boiled tap water, boiling water sterilizing the container and boiled steam cleaning the saran wrap.

Um, I'm topping off with tap water so I'm assuming that tap water *doesn't* have microbes.

Also, you should let it cool to 80 in the kettle then splash all hell out of it when racking to he fermenter. Over 80 F there's a chance of HSA (I know it could be a myth but I like to play it safe) and you gotta aerate the wort well to ensure enough dissolved O2 for your yeasties to build strong cell walls to withstand the osmotic pressure of an alcoholic environment.

I might not have aerated to the best. At about 80 I lifted the entire fermenter and shook it for one minute. I think I may have had problems with not aerating enough and relative high final gravities (1.012 vs 1.007 say) so it's something I'm going to work on, but for now my priorities is getting a sanitized work area for cooling. I just didn't really have it. Did better today. Will help in future to maybe pour back and forth between kettles and fermenters but I need to perfect sanitation before I can afford to worry about that.

One issue I didn't expect to have was temp control. I put it in a dish tub (unfortunately an inch too small) and put two ice bottles and about a gallon and a half of cold water. I had an adhesive tape thermometer that didn't work worth ****. So I ended up putting in a floating thermometer and I kept futzing and looking at it and basically mucking about 20 times too much. Without being able to actually moniter the actual temperature somehow the fermentor dropped into the mid-*fifties* which was too cold so I took it out of its water but ...I'm going to have to figure out some way to monitor the fermenter without opening closing it and dropping in thermometers every two minutes. *sigh*

 

[Bigelow92]

Ah the joy and pain of brewing. One of the reasons I love brewing is to get comfortable with what's out of your control. Life's always out of our control but you do what you can and get better everyday... How does that serenity prayer go again?

Sounds like you did ok. I don't usually pour back and forth just because it adds that extra chance of infection and like you said that truly is step number 1, watching your yeasties backs and keepin the riff raff out of your fermenter.

They say 15 ppm dissolved O2 is optimal aeration, but you can only get 8 ppm from shaking so you do have to shake the snot out of that thing. I don't do anything but shake up the fermenter real good, and the beers always been tasty thus far.