I brew and bottle on a small scale, 1, 2 and sometimes 5 gallon brews, usually not more than 1 or 2 brews a month, we live in a very small space 15'x15', so not a lot of room to storehouse extras and equipment.
BTW, I'll never again depend on True Brews plastic valves - I've lost two of them in the last couple of months (along with about 3 gallons of beer all over the floor, to which the sugar ants and fruit flies are drawn in huge numbers) - now I've got two storage/equipment buckets instead of bottling buckets. Those valves are junk! If you have True Brews brew buckets, don't trust the valves! I'm going to eventually buy me some stainless valves, but going to have to save up for that. That's my rant for the day!!
Back to the main reason for this post.... "What do you do with your dregs ?" You know, that extra 6 to 12 ounces that won't separate from the trub in either the primary or the secondary. Me, I hate to waste anything, and hated pouring it out with the yeast and trub on to the wife's planter gardens for fertilizer (works great for tomatoes and cukes, so far), so I started collecting it in a gallon jug with an airlock and when I get to about a gallon of dregs collected, I auto-siphon it off the qt or so of trub, prime into a clean and sanitized gallon jug, and bottle it for carbing. You'd never believe the different flavors of beer you can get from mixing all of the last brews you've done in the past few months with them aging and blending all of that time. Some have come out a bit tasty, and any bottles of dregs which aren't ready for prime time, I just dump on the wife's planters for fertilizer - all I've wasted is a 5 or 6 crown caps. Try it, you might like it! :rockin:
So what do you do with your dregs?
BTW, I'll never again depend on True Brews plastic valves - I've lost two of them in the last couple of months (along with about 3 gallons of beer all over the floor, to which the sugar ants and fruit flies are drawn in huge numbers) - now I've got two storage/equipment buckets instead of bottling buckets. Those valves are junk! If you have True Brews brew buckets, don't trust the valves! I'm going to eventually buy me some stainless valves, but going to have to save up for that. That's my rant for the day!!
Back to the main reason for this post.... "What do you do with your dregs ?" You know, that extra 6 to 12 ounces that won't separate from the trub in either the primary or the secondary. Me, I hate to waste anything, and hated pouring it out with the yeast and trub on to the wife's planter gardens for fertilizer (works great for tomatoes and cukes, so far), so I started collecting it in a gallon jug with an airlock and when I get to about a gallon of dregs collected, I auto-siphon it off the qt or so of trub, prime into a clean and sanitized gallon jug, and bottle it for carbing. You'd never believe the different flavors of beer you can get from mixing all of the last brews you've done in the past few months with them aging and blending all of that time. Some have come out a bit tasty, and any bottles of dregs which aren't ready for prime time, I just dump on the wife's planters for fertilizer - all I've wasted is a 5 or 6 crown caps. Try it, you might like it! :rockin:
So what do you do with your dregs?
