Rahmdog from Houston

[rahmdog]

Hello to everyone on HBT! I am a graduate student in Houston, TX hoping to start brewing again soon. I have brewed five times with the first being an unmitigated disaster, then next three being solid, and the last one being somewhat disappointing. I use a 7-gallon plastic bucket as a primary bottle condition. I have only brewed extract w/ specialty grain kits so far. I look forward to learning more and becoming a better brewer in the years to come.

My current issues:

- I have been told that plastic buckets need to be replaced after several brews as cleaning and sanitization become increasingly difficult due to the microporous nature of the plastic. I am not sure how to know when the bucket is no longer usable and am torn between switching to a glass carboy to avoid this problem. I have also heard that food-grade liners can be used but have not seen them at the LHBS.

- I just moved to a new apartment where heating and cooling are now paid for by me, as a result the heating and cooling is left off. I have been taking temperature readings three times a day for five days and the variance is 27.1 C to 17.9 C, that is huge. I need to find a way to control the temperature as I have read that is a huge issue. I was thinking large tub filled with water and an aquarium heater.

- I have a small electric stove that i doubt can heat up 5 gallons of wort to a rolling boil, so my plan is to buy a propane burner, just waiting for a good deal to pop up.

- I am also planning on building a wort-chiller from copper tubing, should be fairly straightforward. My thought is that I will have a closed loop system with a cooler filled with ice and water and a sump-pump cycling through the copper tubing.

- I would like to use an aquarium air-pump for aeration, but I have read that the air must be filtered, not sure how to do that, maybe if I bubble the air through sanitized solution en-route to the fermenter?

- I am not sure about the quality of my water, it has that city-water taste that I find repulsive, I grew up in New Hampshire on well water... I was reading that I should be able to find my water-report on the city website but also that it is not always very reliable. Personal testing kits are expensive but I could send a sample to Texas A&M for $35. I also have access to deionized water, but I would have to add some salts to this to make brew-quality water from what I can tell through researching the subject.

I have probably said way too much for the introductory thread but I thought I could get all this out there and maybe some thread has already been created addressing most of my issues. Would very much appreciate any guidance the community can give me!

Thank you in advance,

Rahmdog

 

[CRoth36]

Welcome back. I have a few suggestions to your questions:

1). Never used a plastic bucket but one of my carboys is plastic. The main concern with plastic that I know of is to not scratch the inside due to bacteria hiding and being hard to get rid of. Personally every few brews I soak it Ina bleach solution for a few days to get ride of any possible bacteria in there. I just make sure to rinse like crazy afterwards and then do the usually sanitizing on brew day. I love my glass carboy and need to get more.

2). Temp is very important for fermentation. If you control the temp then do it. May cost you some during different parts of the year but sometimes that's the sacrifice for good beer.

3). Propane burners are awesome

4). A good, easy worth chiller to start with is an immersion chiller. Get some soft copper and wrap it around something smaller than your kettle. Get and adopted to your sink, hose, etc and you're set to go

5). Water can be tricky. Where I live in Wyoming 9 months out of the year we get it from an aquifer which tends to better but more on the soft side, while in the summer it's pulled off the river and treated so it's more harder. Both make good beer though. I would suggest just brewing a few batches and then taking it from there. Deionized water isn't a bad idea but I would get it tested to see how to adjust it. There's more to water than just salts.

Hope so,e of this helps. Like I said before welcome back to brewing and good luck. If you need any help there are plenty of us that are willing.

 

[Slow_Day]

You may be a little late, but Home Depot has had some of their 1/2 od and 5/8 od copper that you could use for your chiller project on a ridiculous clearance price. I got 50' of 1/2" od copper for around $21. Look on the top shelves for any that might still be around. The HD employees will not believe you if you ask, (see the topic in the HBT For Sale forum). Just make them help you look. I went by today and there was still an out of the box coil of 5/8 in Temple, TX for $0.62/ft. I didn't need it, so I didn't buy it.