I correctly guessed that my girlfriend got me a kegging system for my birthday and made sure I had a really nice IPA that would be ready to package. I stored it cold for the last several days and it was nice and clear. I had been fermenting it in a Big Mouth Bubbler, which I had a strap style carboy carrier around because it has no handles and is made of slippery cheap plastic. After washing, sanitizing, and purging my shiny new keg, I picked up the fermenter of remarkably clear looking ipa and it fell through the holder and bounced and toppled on its side. I now have a fermenter full of oxygenated beer that needs to sit for days before I can keg it to settle down again. What kind of f#@ery is this?
As an aside the Big Mouth Bubbler is going in the trash. This is the last straw for the biggest heap of steaming excrement on the home brew market. It has none of the advantages of a bucket and most of the disadvantages of a carboy and the added bonus of deforming when washed with hot tap water.
Aww, that really sucks. It miiiight be okay. I doubt it’s fully oxidized. Keg it up anyway once it settles out again. But yeah, get a bucket. You’ll thank yourself for it.
I have several buckets but for some reason, I think something to do with me being in the middle of rearanging the cellar and using that which was easily found I used this POS instead.
If the carboy was airlocked, oxygen should have been absent from it. I’m assuming the airlock popped off or sucked in some oxygen through this mess, but I would think the oxidation would be minimal at this point. Leaving it in the carboy would allow the beer to absorb the oxygen that had leaked into the carboy. I would keg immediately into a CO2 purged keg. Put the keg in your kegerator. That beer will be clear in a few days. Your first glass will be gunk, but every pint after that will be clearer until it’s gone.
Yeah, I agree. if there wasn’t any oxygen in the carboy, then the beer just took up the CO2. But it sucks that you’ll have to wait to play with your new toy. When you go to keg it, have a couple of beers first, so you won’t be so excited.
I would fix up that carboy carrier rather than blame the fermentor.
+1 to this.
There is a lot of sediment left over from a big whirlpool addition of hops so there is just too much in suspension right now. If I racked into a keg now the dip tube would end up in gunk. I feel I have to wait and hope not too much oxygen got taken in
Carboy carrier didn’t break,my fault for wrong tool wrong job. The Bigmouth just sucks in too many ways.
Speidel time.
That sucks, Pete. I’m betting it’s not as oxidized as you think. The O2 should’ve been purged out for the most part. Crash it for a few days and keg it up. Let us know how it comes out.
Lol… I knew this was coming! Are you getting a kickback from Speidel, Jim?
I looked into them before. They are pretty sweet!
I thought Jim was going to tell his hot dog/priming solution story…
You might be right. I try to filter that crap out before it goes into the fermenter. I zip tie a knee high leg stocking onto the end of my hose and run it into a bucket. Then I dump it from the bucket into a carboy. My wort gets plenty oxygenated this way as well.
My batch tuesterday was 16.5 gallons. I had a pound of hops in the kettle. I repeated the stocking process 3 times into each bucket. It took some squeezing to get the wort out of the stockings due to all the hop matter. Powder free latex gloves are recommended unless you enjoy being really sticky.
Like Jon said, cold crash the matter out for a couple days. Then keg.
I go back and forth on this, Frank. I often strain but sometimes, like this time I only partially do. If something like this doesn’t happen its not worth it to me to fuss around with it.
At least we went shopping yesterday:
Nice haul !
Nice! It appears that one is empty lol
It appears that ONE is empty, but that is no longer true. Four are empty, as well as other things not in the picture.
No kickback, I wish though. They are just a fantastic product.