August Homebrewings and Doings

Yesterday I racked 10 gallons of rye pale into kegs(dryhopped one so it'll be more of an IPA), and racked an oatmeal stout onto the yeast cake.

 

Replaced ~5yr old liquid tubing on kegerator with some silver barrier tubing. R&Red faucet

 

Brewed my festbier yesterday. 2nd batch in the new house, 2nd giant unexpected PITA.

Everything went fine from dough-in through ~ 30 min left in a 90 minute boil. That's when I connected the cooling water to my Chillzilla. For some reason, I thought to test it for leaks because I was going to use the same outdoor faucet that is prone to coughing up rusty sediment (see earlier post in this thread re: first batch at new house). It has a higher flow rate than water from inside, and it's more convenient. I figured it wouldn't matter if some fine particulate passed through the chiller... but I wanted to be sure none of it ended up in my wort - hence, the test.

Started flowing water through, and I disconnected the wort-in tubing (which I had been pumping sanitizer through.

Sanitizer drained out as expected. But it seemed to trickle out a bit longer than I expected. And it kept going. Then it stopped.

"Hmm..."

Reconnected the sanitizer and fired up the pump.

Star San started flowing through the outlet hose, and immediately turned a tell-tale reddish color. #$%*ing sediment-laden water had to have leaked into the counterflow's wort line. It was the only explanation.

I had ~ 12 gallons of boiling wort w/ 15 min remaining, it was 4:00 pm on a Sunday, and I had no backup chiller. I gave my immersion chiller to a friend years ago. Can't move a full Boilermaker into an ice bath - and even if I did, it would have taken forever to chill.

Nearest homebrew store is ~ 30-35 min away. They close at 5:00!

So, I did what anyone would do.

Asked my wife to set a timer for 15 min. I tossed in the whirlifloc and asked her to kill the flame when her timer went off. Jumped in my car and drove as quickly as possible to the LHS.

Bought a Blichmann Therminator.

Drove home.

Scrambled to get the thing out of the box, cursed like hell at the plastic caps on the pipe threads while a wondered why they didn't put THREADED plastic caps on, promptly sliced my thumb open on the RAZORLIKE threads, more cursing while I asked my wife to get me a bandaid. Look at 'before first use' instructions. "Soak in PBW" gah!!!! Who's got time??? But of course, I did it. Mixed up PBW, got it soaking, scrambled in the meantime to scavenge fittings and hoses, dumped out the rusty sanitizer in my mash tun, cleaned and refilled with fresh Star San, threw together a sink faucet adapter so I could flush out the PBW, got it outside to connect to the sanitizer line. Sliced a *different* finger on the threads (seriously WTF?? It's like trying to avoid razor wire). More bleeding and cursing while I rigged a bandage from paper towel and duct tape.

Nothing like scrambling to use new equipment for the first time while your wort is sitting around off the boil for 90 minutes.

Finally got it all sanitized and set up, and it worked beautifully - but holy crap. Stressful couple of hours.

Chillzilla meets scrap heap later today.

 

Brewed 10 gallons of brett saison yesterday. Mostly Pils, some vienna, and about a half pound of some leftover flaked grains (barley, wheat) from a previous brew. Hit it with some citra late in the boil and pitched my house brett saison culture in half, with a fresh pitch of 3031 going in the other half.

Brewing a flanders style red this week.

Bottling an apricot sour this week too.

 

What is your experience with the silver barrier vs. regular bev line? I've never hear of it before.

 

That's good to know. I had another brew recently that had an unexpected FG, and that explains it.

 

I'm not krusty, but I made the same switch last year. The silver barrier tubing is a bit softer than bevlex which makes getting 3/16" ID lines over 1/4" barbs on my faucet shanks bit easier (still have to heat it in boiling water for a second or two) and it's definitely easier to REMOVE from the barbs after it's been clamped on (I've had to use a razor to cut cold bevlex off).

It has no discernible flavor or odor (to me) though I have seen people post things to the contrary. If you clean it regularly, it stays clean (imagine that!) - but it seems to stain/discolor if you allow darker beers to stand in the line for any length of time. As for inhibiting microbial growth? What can one say about this (w/o doing micro studies) other than that spoilage in the lines has never been in issue for me w/ either type of tubing.

I do like that it's made without plasticizers, if only from a feel-good/peace of mind perspective.

In short? It's nice tubing, but pricey and the actual benefits of using it are small. If the price doesn't deter you, I'd say go for it. Otherwise, buy 2X as much bevlex. Either way, you still have to clean and replace your lines regularly if you want to keep them from getting nasty.

 

I've had this tubing for over a year and just now getting around to installing (some of it). I had sours on the tap in question so it seemed like the thing to do. Jury is still out, but so far so good. What Dunkelfester said.

 

@GreenKrusty101 @DunkelFester I need to get some new lines, where did you get the silver barrier tubing? I like the sound of "flexible" since the last tubing I had was a bit of a PITA.

 

Got it at a LHBS, but it should be readily available almost anywhere online as well. I got this on without heating, but was sure to use clamps because of it's softness.

 

May I ask what clamps do you use? Worm, oetiker, rubber bands?

 

Found some worms small enough...saved me having to buy/borrow a tool.

 

I ordered mine from morebeer.com

https://www.morebeer.com/products/u...c-free-beer-tubing-316-id-foot.html?site_id=5

Re: clamps, I just reused the worm clamps that I had for bevlex. They'll cut into the tubing eventually if you're overzealous tightening, but I've had no leaks and no problems.

 

I have my clone of Bell's Two Hearted fermenting and will be dry hopping on Tuesday.

 

Porter was not the first brew! Always ipas...

 

Ran a deep clean on my brewgear last night after letting it set from Saturday. Long circulating oxiclean run cleaned all the tubing and debris off. Now it is ready to get dirty again in a couple weeks.