Fur!?!?!?!?

[bschot]

Okay, so I pulled a dumb move, I took my home brew equipment to a buddies house, brewed there and packed up and went back home and unpacked the equipment in the garage. What I didn't realize is that I didn't rinse stuff as well I thought I did. and I was growing a fur farm in my cooler mash tun with a cpvc manifold.

My question is what do I do to clean up this mess? I was thinking hot soapy water and sanitizing with bleach water. There also was tubing in there and I'm thinking just pitching it, it's not worth giving my beer a fur coat.

Thanks in advance

 

[HexKrak]

Rinse as much "fur" out as possible, then fill with oxyclean and soak for 48 hours. Dump, rinse again, and fill with sani-solution for however long the product recommended. I avoid bleach whenever possible.

 

[avidhomebrewer]

If you are going to use bleach (I do for my carboys w/o issue), I would suggest rinsing about 7-8 times before storing. When I got bottles from the liquor store, you never know what is in them. A lot did have fur and a soaking in bleach took it right out.

 

[bschot]

I like the Oxyclean for 48 hours and then I'll sanitize with StarSan. I agree about avoiding bleach, I guess it was my red alert solution. I don't even know if using bleach on plastic is a good idea.

 

[wilceaser]

Recently "I de-furred" my mash tun with a 2 day soak in PBW and then rinsed the begebez out of it. Last night I found that I left some standing water in my brew pot and I will have to de-fur that as well.
Uncented Oxyclean and PBW are the Homebrewers friend.

 

[lordbeermestrength]

Maybe this is due to my lack of experience with mold in my equpiment, but if it's in the MLT cooler does it really matter all that much? Unless the flavor gets into your wort, I guess. Can't you just give it a good rinse? The mold would get killed in the boil anyway, right?

 

[emjay]

Recently "I de-furred" my mash tun with a 2 day soak in PBW and then rinsed the begebez out of it. Last night I found that I left some standing water in my brew pot and I will have to de-fur that as well.
Uncented Oxyclean and PBW are the Homebrewers friend.

Yeah, I had to do the same thing with my kettle and mlt on Sunday, from a lambic brew I had done the previous Saturday (8 days prior). My mlt smelled awful but looked but the kettle had an unbelievable amount of white fur... looked like a bunch of large rabbit tails sticking to the inside walls of my 15gal kettle.

The fur on stainless steel technically can just be easily rinsed off without any worry of imparting flavors in the future, and infection is not an issue especially since it's going to be boiled. I actually boiled water in mine afterwards anyways to pump through my hoses, plate chiller, and, of course, the pump itself, in order to clean and disinfect them as well.

But before doing that, not so much because of the fur (which comes off easily) as because of the other crap (caked on hot break, hop sludge, etc), I still used some cleaner and a soft sponge to get all the usual crud off.

And while I use oxiclean for a lot of my equipment... for most of my stainless steel and ESPECIALLY my kettle, instead of oxiclean or PBW, MY "Homebrewers friend" is Barkeeper's Friend, an oxalic acid-based cleaner that works absolute miracles on stainless.