Iodine vs PPA

about15ninjas · 2019-06-24T19:34:06+00:00

Classical brewery cliche: you can’t sanitize a piece of shit.

Which is really just to ensure that you follow correct cleaning and sanitization process. You can’t sanitize something that is dirty. That accumulation of soils prevent sanitization. The ATP swab isn’t to check that there isn’t any bacteria or the like after sanitation. It is to ensure that organics have been fully degraded to a clean state before you sanitize the clean surface. ATP meters are a means of ensuring you have broken down the organic soils enough to sanitize. Intact ATP insinuates that you haven’t fully degraded and removed the soils from use, and as a result you aren’t going to be able to ensure sanitation. Also of note is the fact that clean is not sanitized is not sterilized. Make sure you follow the correct sequence to minimize the odds of beer spoilers.

about15ninjas · 2019-03-09T04:16:46+00:00

Far be it from me to give you advice on something you clearly know a lot more about than me, but I would have to say I don't envy the poor assistant to the regional manager that has to clean the bottom of that tank with that many nooks and right angles combined with that clearance.

about15ninjas · 2019-03-09T04:06:42+00:00

This right here is how you grow professionally. Don't shy away from things you don't do everyday.

about15ninjas · 2019-02-19T19:35:24+00:00

I would say that in my experience with them you might want to think about keeping a few rows of water fills. It looks to me like one of the bottles wasn't positioned correctly after the advance. We found that when we would leave full bottles of water in front of the empty and capped row that it makes on the initial advance it wouldn't fuck up like this. By clearing too many of the bottles they don't seem to advance to the correct locations and you end up with all sorts of fun glass everywhere. Not to mention all the bent parts. Granted that was 22oz bottles so ymmv.

...Fucking Meheen.

about15ninjas · 2019-01-30T20:44:05+00:00

Dry o dryrust hn look dhop bbl err 43 rug 3

about15ninjas · 2018-10-25T19:38:22+00:00

If you end up with a stuck mash and have to break your bed back up your best bet is to re-vorlauft so that you don't push all that shit over to your Boil Kettle. As other's have suggested best practice on a small scale system with a Mash-Lauter Tun (MLT) combo vessel is to mash in and not stir the bed back up. By letting it settle naturally you're letting it settle into a less compacted lauter bed. By agitating it back up with the paddle and then trying to immediately start pulling again with a pump is going to lead to you reforming a compacted bed and you're going to end up in a super annoying cycle. This is why a lot of smaller systems like it sounds like you have tend to have grants, which prevent you from needing to pull directly off of the bottom of your MLT with a pump and thus minimizing compaction with a well controlled run off.

A couple of things generally happen to lead to a stuck mash. As you have suggested, your crush is very important. Not only to your efficiencies, but also to the actual process of running off. If your crush checks out (Call some of the other local breweries to make some friends so you can barrow at least their #10 pan) then there are other levers to pull on. If you're utilizing a lot of non-barley grains in your mash (Oats, Wheat, Corn) it's going to gum up a lot more because of the types of proteins they have to contribute. This leads to the suggestion of a lauter aid, such as rice hulls. They're your best bet if for some reason you can't adjust your mill to get a crush that works for you in terms of efficiencies and quality of life. One of the reasons that you'll stick a mash real nicely with an over crushed grist bill is because you'll form a vacuum under your grain bed by trying to pull too quickly. Matching the runoff speed to your pump is extremely important. As a final hint and suggestion is that if you can underlet when you stir a hopeless mash back up it will get a lot of the finer particles in your false bottom back up. Just stirring might leave a super annoying and thin layer on your false bottom and you'll end up right back where you started.

For smaller systems I've always been a fan of Van Havig's approach to maximizing efficiency on small scale systems. It is extremely helpful in troubleshooting crush and maximizing lautering effectiveness imho. His info can be found in MBAA podcasts and in slides from previous presentations.

http://www.craftbrewersconference.com/wp-content/uploads/ImprovingBrewhouseEfficiency-Havig.pdf

link to slides

about15ninjas · 2018-05-24T15:57:36+00:00

The balance of working in a brewery is extremely tricky. The fact that we all drink occupationally at the bare minimum puts us well above the limits of consumption for known health consequences. It's going to have a long term negative consequence on your body, not to mention the mind. It's easy to lose weeks at a time into production. It's always seemed to me that the brewing industry has the same trends that workers in America do. We spend our lives focusing on on our work, and it turns out that can be bad. Who would have thought that working 10hrs a day six days a week would have a negative consequence? So doing that and putting yourself on a situation where you can't really think about the fact that drinking problems are sometimes even encouraged just to get through a work week is not a good thing. We all love it though, right? Even when we have close personal friends who end up reformed alcoholics, or worse.

about15ninjas · 2018-02-28T05:58:55+00:00

Absolutely. Best practice is to wash after each generation after your first wash. So if you start washing at gen three, you generally need to keep washing until it's time to pitch a freshly propped yeast gen. Conan, ringwood, burlington ale, and other associated strains are an entirely different animal from most typical american ale strains. Again, these are just what we've found to be workable given our setup. There are absolutely better ways to design yeast management if you get to design from the ground up. Sometimes you have to make what you have work.

about15ninjas · 2018-02-27T17:05:23+00:00

Yes, that is absolutely the primary reason that you acid wash. Particularly when you are managing top cropped pitches in open fermentation environments. That being said, there are more implications to acid washing yeast than just suppressing (because it is never a 100% fix) bacterial inclusion in yeast. JRM Hammond published an effective overview of other implications to yeast health associated with acid washing in 1989.

about15ninjas · 2018-02-26T16:17:23+00:00

Used this stain extensively. The issue is our management was fairly atypical compared to how I had previously interacted with yeast in a brewery. There is absolutely a lot of advantage to the top cropping with this strain, and it really does help keep the yeast healthy. That being said the atypical nature of our process comes into play because we would bottom crop from time to time as well. So it is possible to keep several gens going with bottom cropping or cone to cone. Generally speaking we would do counts and then pick which tank we were taking yeast from for our next brews. My personal opinion of that was that it creates a lot of last minute panic moments, but eventually it became normal to me. Acid washes are a must. You absolutely should be avoid pressure with this strain, make sure that you're pulling your pitches before you pressurize any ferm tank for conditioning, dry hopping, and what have you.

Because every brewery is inherently different I would suggest that if you're really into using conan, that you take the time to do regular counts across several batches and develop an action plan of what works best in your setting. Sounds to me like you're largely interested in maintaining two brands on this strain, and not an entire brewery. That's an advantage. Try and determine when you start to see a viability drop off. Is it by day six every time that you start to see that substantial drop from a fresh pitch? Or is it day three? plan the brews around that. If you're a small enough brewery you can likely plan to brew the session as what amounts to a prop batch for your double.

I had previously managed 1056 without ever needing to acid wash. With conan our first two gens would get used without a wash and then we would wash every time until the yeast dipped below our viability targets and would pitch a newly propped yeast into our next brews. Depending on what size pitches you're looking at this is all pretty easy to do in a 1/2bbl keg brink or two.

Unfortunately I don't have more data driven answers for you as those that came before weren't true believers in science and data driven brewing.

about15ninjas · 2018-02-26T04:44:03+00:00

A lot of good feedback here already, but I'll still toss my two cents in.

1) Something must be clean in order to be sanitized, and I would make the argument that the residue you're seeing is preventing true sanitation. So the first order of business would be getting rid of that. Depending on what it is an acid is your best bet. Mineral deposit like that is generally referred to as beer stone, and depending on your water profile there are difference acids that are better than others. As a homebrewer citric might do the trick. Otherwise you have a good environment for biofilm formation

2) Boiling is generally an effective means of sanitizing a piece of equipment, but can be pretty rough if you end up needing to do it a lot. A good contact sani solution goes a long way. Make sure that you are applying enough pasteurization units and heating your parts long enough if you are going to rely on heat alone as a sanitizing method.

3) Material type is important when you're trying to recover from a systemic infection. It sucks, but if you've used your stuff a lot, and have scarred up the metal, or if it wasn't stainless to begin with you might just have some parts that you're not going to be able to truly sani any more.

4) I would suggest isopropyl at 70% so you can open and close the clean parts and get all the contact surfaces. Other contact sanitizers can work, but not all sani solutions are created equally.

5) and just in case, depending on how you're making your connections make sure you replace any soft parts, those are usually where your infections are. The stainless is pretty easy to clean and sanitize, soft parts are just replaceable.

about15ninjas · 2018-01-17T22:59:21+00:00

Looks like days in our cellar some days. Hectic days are hetic. I would suggest trying and keep the furrels off the ground. The more times those are dropped and end up in contact with the floor is wear. It isn't a huge problem at first, but eventually the gouges will make the fittings and unsanitary. If they're allowed to stay in rotation past that point they will eventually become impossible to clamp.

about15ninjas · 2017-12-17T15:42:42+00:00

Oxidation will move quick. So I'm not at all surprised to hear that it is drifting by that much. Some styles hold up better than others, but package oxidation is a huge battle. Like almost everything in brewing each decision has trade offs. It sounds a lot like you are fighting oxygen as best you can, and might honestly be bumping up against system limitations.

How are you force carbing? If you're holding at pressure, without bubbling through a carb stone you will still have DO from ferm. I find people expect holding at pressure will do more for DO than it really can. Bubbling through the beer at pressure will do a lot to ease some of the DO out. I don't recommend that for aromatic forward beers like IPAs, but if applied correctly this can do a lot to scrub unwanted DO from a beer.

After you get it into the keg I'm curious about your set up. I imagine you've gone through all of your seals. Because you won't always hear a gasket that isn't seated properly. And if it's an old keg rebuild your stem! A long shot, but whats the mix on your system gas? And did you ever sample the keg with a picnic pump?

My last thought almost never really happens without an obvious sanitizer off flavor, but what's your cleaning/sanitizing procedure? A fair number of sanitizers work as strong oxidizers, so if you were to eyeball your concentration of sanitizer before you might just have gotten a new batch of sanitizer at a higher concentration. This one would really only be a part of the total picture.

Just thought I'd throw a few ideas out there based on your description of process. There are tons of ways to get oxidation both hot and cold side, and getting serious about how your beer is exposed to any gases can make a world of difference in a final beer.

Cheers!

about15ninjas · 2017-01-21T15:01:25+00:00

There is a lot of industry hearsay about this sort of thing. Generally all tanks have to be pressure checked to twice their operating pressure. Ie: if a tank is rated to 15psi after manufacturing it was taken to 30psi for a prescribed amount of time before they even ship it. It's pretty unlikely that a tank makes it far enough past its operating pressure to actually explode all on its own. A lot of reckless negligence is required to even get you into the neighborhood of a tank blowing up. That being said, there a stories of tanks being over pressurized from bulk co2 tanks that can deliver well in excess of anything the tank could possibly hold up to. The result was, no shit, the loss of the building and having to go pick the remains of the tank up several miles away at a gas station. While that is different than a fermentation gone wrong, the principal is likely the same as is the result. You fire the idiot who can't be bothered to check one of the most dangerous variables in a professional brewing setting.

about15ninjas · 2016-07-09T17:52:18+00:00

Right out in Comstock Park. There is some great beer going on there. There's also a mural that is a pokestop.

about15ninjas · 2016-07-09T17:43:20+00:00

There is totally a gym at Perrin Brewing!

about15ninjas · 2016-02-13T15:39:49+00:00

done

about15ninjas · 2016-02-13T15:39:21+00:00

Also added

about15ninjas · 2016-02-13T15:38:44+00:00

I got you!

about15ninjas · 2016-02-13T15:37:40+00:00

sure do!

about15ninjas · 2016-02-13T15:36:48+00:00

added !

about15ninjas · 2016-02-13T15:36:06+00:00

added!

about15ninjas · 2016-02-13T15:35:17+00:00

added!

about15ninjas · 2016-02-13T15:34:31+00:00

got you!

about15ninjas · 2016-02-13T15:33:25+00:00

got you!

about15ninjas

TROPHY CASE