Ditch my fermenter

[malt junkie]

My 3 fermenters are over 10yrs old. For the first year trying on and off with the older style coopers fermenter I never had a good beer.
Got a new coopers fermenter a year or two later, still bad beer. Bought a 25L pail for a third fermenter a year after that, still bad beer. Half my brews were infected and foul so I gave up on brewing.

This year I started brewing again and the first few were also not very good brews on all three fermenters that are now 10+ yrs old. I bought new taps, grommets and lid O rings.
Still had a 50% chance of a bad brew.
Then using the same fermenters, beers started to become better, but I stopped brewing again due to high temps. While waiting for cooler temps one even got that pink mould on it. But that one and the two other 10+ year fermenters that have made some very bad and infected beer are now making good beer.
Change taps, o rings, grommets, air locks and sanatize well is all I needed to do. Scratches and stains haven't had any effect.

More chance of a beer going bad due to the bottles/bottling IMHO. The bad beers I made early this year were all in equally old plastic bottles. Once I switched back to glass bottles, most of my problems have gone away. In fact 10 years ago, most of my bad beers were in those PET bottles that gave me trouble this year. Those things are almost impossible to clean.
E: I have a habit of saving the trub for yeast, and even in the brews that ended up bad the sample saved for yeast was still good, so it didn't go bad for me in the fermenter most of the time, but rather the bottles/bottling. That is, these days that is the case. Back in the old dark days, things went bad in the fermenters, but the point is I'm still using those old fermenters now just fine and getting decent beer out of them.

Find a cheap fridge, even a throw out on hard rubbish day, Then get a temp controller (STC1000 or similar). The biggest improvement you will make to your beer is temp controlled fermentation.

 

[pablo_h]

Getting another fridge not possible, but I know it's important. But I have no where to put one or to transport one.
I just brew over winter and spring as they are mild seasons in Perth, temps in the house 16-22C.
I've retired from brewing for this year, shaved my beard off and everything
I was up late last night doing my last brew (saison), so now my three fermenters are full (toucan experiment IPA and another APA), with three previous brews in bottles to see me through summer when I run out of G&Ts.
Been drinking stouts, porters, pale ales and some MJ54 yeast experimental beers all winter and spring.
See you all next May

 

[Rod]

I am still using the fermenter I got , free , from Grumpies back in 2005 with a purchase of $100 worth of ingredients

remove the tap , dismantle and clean every batch

sanitise the fermenter and bits with PSR

never lost a batch