Least careful you've been sanitising without an infection

[QldKev]

I've never been a fan of looking at how people did things hundreds of years ago. We've come a long way since then and brewing practices have changed a lot. While the basic premise may be the same, the science behind it is now understood and the importance of temperature, cleanliness and sanitisation are not really debatable.

I'm not suggesting the monks were taking dumps in their fermenting barrels, far from it, however people often talk about the monks, or their grandfather's beer but how any people have actually tasted it? It might taste like ass by our modern standards.

The monks may have made great beer, I just don't think we should be referring to brewing practices we can't make a quality judgement on due to the passing of many decades to centuries if we haven't actually tasted it, or had the opportunity to compare to modern best practice e

JD.

It reminds me of a brew show I saw a couple of years back. I can't remember the name of it but they were using ancient recipes and recreating beers. Many were pre-hop styles. There was quite a few they could not finish the glass.

 

[TimT]

A lot of ales were drunk quite fresh, within a day or so of pitching the yeast. Many more may have omitted herbs and spices completely during the ferment, but got flavour in simply by hanging a bag in the wort a few minutes before serving. It would have been served not just as a water substitute but a bread substitute. And - though there were several ways to prime beers (with more sugar, 'barm', or shavings of something like ginger to make the drink especially lively) - many were simply drunk flat. And if they relied more on wild yeasts (that's a complicated question, innit, because they did know how to use old yeast as starters for new yeasts) then we can expect their ales to have had a much wider range of flavours than ales today. It's not just a question of them having different tastes to us. They made, used, served, and thought about ale in different ways to us.

 

[Pogierob]

My father has been brewing coopers tins for about 30 years and I don't think he knows what sanitizer is.
He washes everything before and after use
I don't like his beers but that comes down to the kit yeast mostly.

If you are going to be lazy, then you must be thorough in your laziness, so why not just use a but of sanitizer for just in case.

I have my BIAB down to 3.5 hours, I lost one batch due to my element blowing up, why lose a batch simply cause you couldn't be bothered with sanitizer?

 

[Chuckie]

Never bothered pulling my fermenter taps apart (40 brews & 3 fermenters).
Ended up with 3 infected brews in a row.
Went to Bunnings bought a handful of new taps straight away. (they are just $2 or so each). I will replace them every couple of batches.
When I pulled the old taps off I could see straight away gunk that would not be cleaned out simply by sanitiser and swishing for a few minutes.
Clean, clean, clean !
I won't get caught again.
Cheers,
Andrew

 

[manticle]

You can pull the taps apart. I do it every brew.
Maltyhops linked the relevant how-tos a page or so ago.

 

[Mardoo]

It reminds me of a brew show I saw a couple of years back. I can't remember the name of it but they were using ancient recipes and recreating beers. Many were pre-hop styles. There was quite a few they could not finish the glass.

I managed to choke down a Hahn Extra Dry once.

 

[manticle]

i think the general point being proposed by thisispants, which I tend to agree with is to consider whether there is overkill and does the cost expended in cleaning convert to proportionate benefits.

eg if the sloppy cleaner spends 5 minutes cleaning and gets one infected brew every hundred, and the fastidious cleaner spends 2 hours and gets none, who is better off?? Personally I'd be prepared to take the one in a hundred bad brew to save the additional 200 man hours. Someone brought up Y2K - having worked on a few of those projects I can assure you there was a huge amount of unecessary wastage and overkill. Its a bit like saying you cant compromise on safety and therefore wear a fire suit and helmet when driving a car. EVERYTHING has reasonable limits based on a cost benefit analysis.

As a counter to that though - some infections can be very difficult to remove once they take hold in the brewhouse.

Combine several 3-4+ hour AG brewdays with chemical bombardment of equipment (and or cost of replacements) combined with disappoinment and stress and cost of ingredients as you tip multiple batches of nasty tasting beer down the drain and add that to the cost:benefit analysis.

It happens and it has happened to me and brewers I know, some of whom have seriously considered chucking it all in in frustration.

 

[Rod]

I wash and sanitize after each brew , take the tap apart , hydrometer , two part airlock everything

when I make the brew , usually stovetops , wash and sanitize as above

I sanitize with PSR and rinse with Sydney Tap water , why not the water to bring the batch to 25 litres is from the tap

wash and sanitize before racking

wash and sanitize before bulk priming and bottling

I use grolsh bottles , which have labels removed ( essential if you are soaking bottles as the paper labels reduce the sanitizing effect ) and sanitize by soaking the bottles , 12 at a time is a square bucket

then fill bottles

while i fill the bottles the next 12 are soaking

rinse bottles 3 times with tap water using a special rinse apparatus and bottle draining rack

when finished

wash and sanitize all again


takes 2 hours to bottles a batch of 50 bottles

my habits come from my days in a milk factory and having worked in the bacteriological laboratory

would like to have sanitized water , but not possible , not much contamination from Sydney water

 

[MaltyHops]

I sanitize with PSR and rinse with Sydney Tap water , why not the water to bring the batch to 25 litres is from the tap
...
would like to have sanitized water , but not possible , not much contamination from Sydney water

You could nochill some water beforehand? Didn't Sydney have that bacterial outbreak a few years ago?

 

[Bribie G]

Giardia, I remember that, about the year 1998. I think Giardia was actually a hipster thing or maybe a rumour put around by the pharmaceutical companies, because everyone was suddenly getting it in Brisbane as well. Probably in the same category as Hot Side Aeration. Haven't heard about it for ages ... the new one is gluten intolerance of course.

Back on topic, in the heady old days when Chappo was brewing we went to a brew day at his place and when he was ready to plate chill into the fermenter, he went outside to grab the FV that was a filthy looking thing that had been sitting under a tree next to one of his car bodies. "No worries, it's had Starsan in it". He tipped out the Starsan and carried the FV into the brewery not by the handles but with one hand stuck in it to grasp the rim.

Chappo had some marital and employment problems and the brew got left in the fridge in primary for a couple of months. Eventually some guys were round there (Bob from Cleveland and others I remember) and they reported that the brew turned out just fine

 

[Rod]

You could nochill some water beforehand? Didn't Sydney have that bacterial outbreak a few years ago?

would like to run a survey to see who does not add tap water to their brew

particularly those does who do kit and kilo , or extracts like me

 

[TimT]

I just mash in tapwater. I used to be worried about chlorine affecting the viability of the yeast actually, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. Prior to that I used tankwater. The mash and boil would kill off bacteria anyway.

 

[Beer Ninja]

I brew with kits and just use cold tap water. Only on brew #13 but no problems yet. I did used to brew some years ago for a period of about two years using kits and tap water, never any problems back then either.

I did try letting the water rest for 24 hours once to 'evaporate' the chlorine but couldn't taste any difference. Maybe the dark roasted malt flavour hid the chlorine taste. :chug:

 

[Aaron1.0]

I've never been a fan of looking at how people did things hundreds of years ago. We've come a long way since then and brewing practices have changed a lot. While the basic premise may be the same, the science behind it is now understood and the importance of temperature, cleanliness and sanitisation are not really debatable.

I'm not suggesting the monks were taking dumps in their fermenting barrels, far from it, however people often talk about the monks, or their grandfather's beer but how any people have actually tasted it? It might taste like ass by our modern standards.

The monks may have made great beer, I just don't think we should be referring to brewing practices we can't make a quality judgement on due to the passing of many decades to centuries if we haven't actually tasted it, or had the opportunity to compare to modern best practice e

JD.

I don't disagree at all and I'm certainly not suggesting that beer brewed like that would be better. But for all the effort put in, it must have been drinkable at least. The original post was regarding the least careful you can be without an infection which is what made it come to mind...
If the beer was any good, it would have been due to trial and error and a bit of luck (e.g. caves at the right temperature for lagering) rather than the science that we have at our disposal these days. But I definitely agree that there is not anything to be gained by cutting corners with temperature, cleanliness and sanitisation like you say JD.

 

[Rod]

Remember beer was made using wild yeast yeast and open clay pots :blink:

also we use a lot of ingredients that are not pasteurized

yeast
gelatine made from horses hooves
sugar and dextrose for bulk priming
dry hopping
bottle caps

to name a few , all possible sources , and most safe

 

[TimT]

If the beer was any good, it would have been due to trial and error and a bit of luck

Disagree. Even by medieval times people had been brewing for millenia.

Not to get too philosophical but.... it's more or less habitual these days to think that history is progressive, that we're going from a worse world to a better world, one change at a time. But historical change isn't like that; sometimes the good gets checked out with the bad. So it is with brewing: we now know about how bacteria can adversely affect brews and we know how we can stop that, most of the time anyway (good). But we've lost a whole culture of brewing: people no longer brew table beers, house beers, have specialised house recipes for ales, or old family recipes (bad).

 

[Rod]

If the beer was any good, it would have been due to trial and error and a bit of luck

Disagree. Even by medieval times people had been brewing for millenia.

Not to get too philosophical but.... it's more or less habitual these days to think that history is progressive, that we're going from a worse world to a better world, one change at a time. But historical change isn't like that; sometimes the good gets checked out with the bad. So it is with brewing: we now know about how bacteria can adversely affect brews and we know how we can stop that, most of the time anyway (good). But we've lost a whole culture of brewing: people no longer brew table beers, house beers, have specialised house recipes for ales, or old family recipes (bad).

It did not come out the way I meant it too ,

what I meant to say was that many years ago beer was made under primitive conditions , but it worked for them

 

[carpedaym]

I started brewing a year ago and have been exercising middle-of-the-road sanitizing practices for reasons which (I assume) are in alignment with the original spirit of the thread. But each brew I worry more and more about what might be slowly taking hold on my equipment.

As a counter to that though - some infections can be very difficult to remove once they take hold in the brewhouse.

... as you tip multiple batches of nasty tasting beer down the drain

If / when I get an infection I think I'll hit up a k&k after trying to address the issue, so at least if I fail and that one goes south too, I haven't poured too much of my soul into what I'm tipping out.

 

[marksy]

From JP

"The definition and objective of sanitization is to reduce bacteria and contaminants to insignificant or manageable levels. The terms clean, sanitize and sterilize are often used interchangeably, but should not be. Items may be clean but not sanitized or vice versa. Here are the definitions:

• Clean - To be free from dirt, stain, or foreign matter.
• Sanitize - To kill/reduce spoiling microorganisms to negligible levels.
• Sterilize - To eliminate all forms of life, especially microorganisms, either by chemical or physical means."

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter2-2.html

First time using equipment - I will give it a good clean with suds and then sanitize.

After I have finished with a keg or fermenter - I will wash it with suds and then come time to use it I will just sanitize.

After drinking from bottles - I will rinse out with water to remove trace of sediment, come time to use I will just give the bottle a rinse in water and then sanitize.

I pull apart all my taps before using them to clean them, it takes 10secs and its a likely place for nasties to hide and rinse out your airlocks (sometimes wort makes it way into there)

You dont have to be too anal about it, its just another step in the process of making beer.


But to answer your question - 1 cap of no rinse with pint of water and chuck everything fermenter and shake for a few minutes. That is my regime.

 

[stakka82]

As a counter to that though - some infections can be very difficult to remove once they take hold in the brewhouse.

Combine several 3-4+ hour AG brewdays with chemical bombardment of equipment (and or cost of replacements) combined with disappoinment and stress and cost of ingredients as you tip multiple batches of nasty tasting beer down the drain and add that to the cost:benefit analysis.

It happens and it has happened to me and brewers I know, some of whom have seriously considered chucking it all in in frustration.

As someone who lost probably 10 batches last year, amen to that.

From personal experience though I think a large part of it is environmental.

I brewed for years with dirty fermenter taps and a mediocre sanitisation regime without an issue. Then I moved and got a problem, and was buying new fermenters, disassembling everything and boiling, cleaning everything, sanitising, like mad, and still not able to shake the problem.

Then I moved where I brew, and the problem went away, even with equipment that had had infected wort in it, and going back to 'a quick spray with a hose and some starsan'.

It's unfortunately not as simple as severity/paranoia level of cleanliness = chance of infection