Does this scale linearly? I really like the idea of a low tech starter method but tend, due to time and space constraints, to stick with my small batches (~1 gal). In lieu of using yeast calculators, how can I scale this method to my batch sizes and get similar results?
Do you enjoy starting flame wars? That’s an area where no electric guitar playing engineer with a sense of self preservation dares tread. The average guitarist believes that the tone capacitor is part of an simple RC treble cut circuit when it is actually part of an RLC circuit that is formed by the tone potentiometer, tone capacitor, and the pickup coil resistance, inductance, and self-capacitance. In reality, the tone capacitor is not directly in the signal path. What is does is shift the resonant frequency of the circuit down in frequency (i.e., lowers the frequency where the pickup is loudest for non-engineering types). If it was a simple RC treble circuit as most guitarists believe, then there would a significant loss of signal from the magnetic transducer. Any difference in performance between capacitors can be traced to different measured values or construction-related nonlinearities.
Now convince a community of the most dogmatic individuals you have ever met that the thing they are “hearing” when they use old Sprague PIO caps is vintage “magic”. I don’t bother to jump in anymore! Engineers on these forums are normally lambasted as having deficient hearing or being “tin-eared” for there inability to hear the subtle nuances. Comical really.
Thank you. Will try this on my next 1 gal batch. Should be about a 1L container necessary. I think I may have a 1/2 gallon glass jar and cap downstairs…
My threads tend to wind in and out of various topics and occasionally turn into trainwrecks so I’m glad that things are going as usual. :D I was about to ask Mark about his feelings about Starsan (I truly don’t know what they are) but I thought that may be too many forks in this thread. Cheers Beerheads.
Well, has it been covered? If so, does anyone have a link? In my early brewing days I used Iodophor as my sanitizer and switched to Starsan at some point. I have been brewing for 16 years and it’s probably been at least 12 years that I’ve been using Starsan.
He has covered it before. He is a bleach user and feels starsan gets more credit than it deserves in brewing. I’m sure you can find a thread or three where he explains why he feels that way.
Actually, I am a bleach and iodophor user. :) I have been using more iodophor than bleach lately. Martin B has me thinking about trying home-brewed peracetic acid.
If you have not encountered any problems in 12 years, then you do not have anything to worry about. I had a run in with a wild yeast strain, which is how I discovered StarSan’s Achilles heel. In a nutshell, StarSan is an acid-anionic sanitizer. Due to their mode of action (attraction to cells with a positive charge), acid-anionic sanitizers are not effective yeast and mold killers.
As for the tone circuit on a guitar, removing one didn’t seem to change the tone in any way. But my hearing has born the brunt of loud amps and jet noise, so what do I know?
I think the best take on star san is to repeat Denny’s mantra of evaluate it for yourself. It isn’t perfect, but it seems to work for me enough of the time. From what I’ve learned from Mark, I have a plan B to fall back on.
Other than the fact that it want’s to stain anything porous, 12.5ppm iodophor is just as easy to use as Star San, and it is a halogen-based sanitizer that kills everything. Bleach and vinegar are easy to use as well, but sodium hypochlorite is shrouded in too much myth within the home brewing community to ask people to give it a shot. Anyone who can taste 62ppb decomposed sodium hypcholorite (worst case scenario) is a gifted individual.
I had the opposite situation. I was a die hard iodophor user for many years. I picked up a low level house infection and starSan knocked it out when iodophor wouldn’t. I’ve been a StarSan user ever since…with the exception of sanitizing my yeast starter equipment. I still use iodophor for that, but only because I feel it’s easier to measure small amounts of that than StarSan.
I alternate between Starsan and iodophor on an irregular basis. Started doing because I had both and wanted to use them up. Still doing it because it seems like a good idea to change it up now and then.
+1. Same thing I do. I don’t know if there’s any credence to microbes that get resistant to sanitizer, but since I started switching now and then I’ve had no infections - been a few years since the last one.
I have never encountered any microbe that iodophor would not kill, but there is always a first. I cannot imagine any piece of equipment being more challenging to sanitize than the utters on a cow, and iodophor makes short work of it.
When I was a new brewer our kitchen counters were off-white laminate and the iodophor would stain them along with any household containers I used and sanitized. When I watched a thread where someone was asking for the best sanitizer, like 99% of the respondents said Starsan which I had never used. At first I did not care for the foaming but you get used to it. I also like the fact that when brewday is done I can dump some of the leftover solution into the kettle to effectively get rid of beerstone. I always keep information like this in the back of my brain so you never know… one day I’ll hit the LHBS and pick up iodophor! Cheers gang.
