Any opinions regarding my thoughts about placing the emptied cans of hopped extract into my kettle and stirring them around in order to get every last nanogram of extract out of the cans? The cans would be sterilized in a Star•San bath, opened with a sterilized can opener and emptied into my kettle with me wearing latex gloves which have also been sterilized. Then I’d stir the cans around in the hot wort until all the syrupy deliciousness has been washed out. As a safety measure, I’d heat the wort to a little below boiling for about ten minutes in order to kill any bacteria that might still be present. Given the price of hopped extract and the forcible rape that is the shipping charges, I want to get every last bit of syrup for which I paid. Is that so wrong?
Not wrong in any way, but I would wonder how much you would really get out of it. If you warm up the can before you dump it in, that would make the syrup easier to pour. In my opinion, and it is only on opinion, I would not risk the idea of the can being in the wort in the off chance there is anything on the can that will affect it. But, that is just me, and I would defer to the experts.
That’s why I’d scrub the cans down with one of those coarse, green, no-scratch scrubbers for non-stick cookware. Also why I’d have the wort close to boiling temperature for about ten minutes. A member wrote several months ago that bacteria bites the dust at 165 degrees or so. I just thought about the glue used to adhere the labels to the cans. That’s got to be scraped off or otherwise neutralized.
I would warm the cans in hot water, as mr. beer suggests. The cans would be opened with an opener that has been soaking in Star•San for a few minutes. The spatula used to remove the syrup will also have been soaked in Star•San for several minutes.
When I used cans of LME, I would use a soup ladle and put a couple of cups of boiling wort in the can and then swirl it around. Seemed to work well for me.
Paul
Dunking the entire can into the diluted wort seems like a waste to me. After all, the syrup was on the inside. Slowbrew has the right idea, above.
(Just a note: you are not sterilizing anything. You are sanitizing it.)
All of this
Back when I was doing extract brewing, I just used a flexible spatula to get it all out of the container and swirled the spatula in the hot wort. The second or third swipe with the hot spatula usually did the trick of getting every last bit of LME.
Admins - This is why we need like buttons for posts!
+1
I wish
I thought about it some more and came-up with the idea to empty the cans into my eight-gallon kettle, then swirl the cans around in filtered hot water in my four-gallon kettle from way back in 1990 an’ some. Once the cans are cleaned of syrup, I can heat that water up to nearly boiling for maybe ten minutes to kill any bacteria. After that, the water in the wash-out kettle goes into the eight-gallon and we’re brewin’ with the tall dogs.
I have 8.9 pounds of liquid Pale Ale malt; volume to be fermented will be 6.8 gallons. Would 4.5 gallons of water/wort mixture in my kettle be enough to avert scorching? I will use my eleven-inch CALIDAKA flame-tamer which has the same diameter as has the kettle. Boiling will be on my huge 7,000 BTU gas stove.
It feels like you’re over complicating this.
I’d be less concerned about the bugs than whatever crud you’d be getting from the exterior of the packaging (printing / ink, paper, glue, etc.). Why bother with steeping the cans if you can just rinse them out with hot wort? The inside of the can is food-safe, whereas the outside is probably anybody’s guess.
Do whatever works best for you, but I’m lazy… I would rather rinse the cans out than deal with scrubbing all the glue and stuff off of them.
I removed one label from a can of mr. beer American Ale several weeks ago. It came off in its entirety save for a few little spots of adhesive. I have used mineral spirits in the past to remove the sticky residue left on plastic bottles of things like Walmart’s Southwest Hot Mustard. The mineral spirits takes that stuff right off, like it was never there. The label from the American Ale was really on there; the several spots of glue remaining on the can were of half an inch to three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The directions for how to make the beer are on the underside of the label, but the label’s on the can with such tenacity that a man would require a breather and a beer after removing it. Getting the label off without ripping it into several pieces is something left to be done by those who have the patience to carve ivory into highly-ornate pieces of personal jewelry. I just want to make beer.
I can employ Slowbrew’s method of hot water and a rubber spatula. I wanted to get every last bit of the syrup for which I’ve paid so dearly, but the Point of Diminishing Returns can sometimes be quite sharp. There are going to be losses below the spigot in the primary, as well. I’ll tell myself I got all the syrup out of the cans until I believe I’m telling myself the truth. My palate is not so educated that I’ll taste one or two missing ounces of syrup out of 5.61 pounds of hopped extract.
i like forums but an FYI is that discord (which is honestly not a super inventive platform, but simply has several features along with contemporary internet useability) is increasingly the way people interact in groups. there are things it cant do as well as a forum imho, but its what people are jumping on a lot these days. just letting you know (and you may already) re: AHA online discussion considerations.
and it has likes and emojis and stuff
My club uses Discord. I hate it. Seems like a platform for 12 year olds.
Frankly, I think the forum is the last thing the AHA is thinking about these days.
I like it, but I use it purely like an internet old-school chatting program ie. ICQ or MSN messenger. Any kind of IRL based discord uses seem to require you to “”“verify”“” your “”“”“identity”“”" which i loathe (i just like the free and easy anonymous internet of yesteryear). i just dont do it at all since i like to be relatively anonymous and definitely dont want to put my real name and info online. thats why i dont have the problem with phone and email spam so many people i know do.
I hate that kind of sewage solids, too. Whenever I want to look at my email, I must suffer through receiving a text message and then entering the six digits of that message into a block, then clicking to verify that it’s me wanting to get into my emails. The internet is a wonderful thing. What isn’t so wonderful about it is that there are those who would use it for evil and criminality…
But back to one of my questions from the original post: Would 4.5 total gallons of LME and water to be boiled have too much LME in it such that scorching might obtain? The LME looks to be about 3/4-gallon; weighs 8.9 pounds. The water would be 4.5 - .75 = 3.75 gallons x 8.3507 pounds per gallon, for a water weight of 31.3 pounds. So, we have 8.9 divided by 31.3 = the LME is 28% of the total mass being boiled. I’d think there wouldn’t be too much of a possibility for scorching but sugar likes to burn if too much heat is applied, so I may very well be entirely wrong about the 28 percent thing. What does y’all think?
Don’t think there’s any problem. Take the pot off the heat, dissolve the LME, put it back on heat.
I’ve been in breweries that use cans of hop extract for bittering. They remove the lid and the can goes in the boil.
I know the question was about malt extract, but I thought a can in the boil would be a reference.
I’ll guess those cans do not have a paper labeled affixed with great gobs of sticky, gummy adhesive. I’ll do something when comes the time. I’ve got an obstacle regarding my automobile to overcome, as of today. The punishment never ends…