Owly055
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- Joined
- Feb 28, 2014
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I almost never get infections in my brews........... But my most recent secondary from my continuous fermenter picked up a very light case of lacto somewhere. It actually made for an excellent beer, as the slight sour worked very well with the dry hops.... Mosaic and Nugget. I go from my continuous brew fermenter.........which is NOT infected, to secondary, in two gallon increments, using ordinary glass 2 gallon ice tea dispensers. These have no fermentation lock, and the brew is fermented out enough that there is little or no CO2 given off in secondary. I dry hop the secondary. My continuous fermenter uses Sigmunds Voss Kveik, and is a Fast Ferment conical. The yeast cake is collected in the ball, and the ball loosened before adding wort, which is added boiling hot, right out of the boil kettle....... 1/3 new wort, to 2/3 wort in the fermenter. Temps rise to about 130, and slowly fall back into the 80's at which time I pitch the yeast from the ball. This temp spike, I believe creates the sterile environment that allows me to continuous ferment.
Casting about for a way to definitely kill the lacto in my secondary fermenter, it dawned on me that I had the perfect tool....... my Annova Sous Vide. I simply filled it with water, and dropped in the Annova set at 200F for a couple of hours. I then poured it into my mash tun and topped it to my mash water level, and set the Annova for my strike temp, and left it all afternoon. When I got home, the water was ready to dough in, and the secondary fermenter was ready to receive a new batch........... all nice and sterile.
All I can say is "why didn't I think of this before???" I use two or three of these glass jars for fermenters....... what better way to sterilize them?
H.W.
Casting about for a way to definitely kill the lacto in my secondary fermenter, it dawned on me that I had the perfect tool....... my Annova Sous Vide. I simply filled it with water, and dropped in the Annova set at 200F for a couple of hours. I then poured it into my mash tun and topped it to my mash water level, and set the Annova for my strike temp, and left it all afternoon. When I got home, the water was ready to dough in, and the secondary fermenter was ready to receive a new batch........... all nice and sterile.
All I can say is "why didn't I think of this before???" I use two or three of these glass jars for fermenters....... what better way to sterilize them?
H.W.