How to prevent off-flavors and contamination in your home brewed beer!

welcome to better reality brewing this is how to prevent off flavors and aromas and i know you're thinking aromas yes eighty percent of what you taste is through your nose so if your nose says it smells bad your tongue's gonna go yeah it's probably your nose having a nice uh hot tickler from sun king brewing and it's got stuff floating around there i'm not sure what it is but it tastes good hopefully it's clean you know i think it would have a bad bad aroma or bad flavor if it wasn't but it's a nice little smashable citrus as they call it or citra ipa i'm going to jump right into this i've got about 11 items to cover it's not going to be a long video but we'll knock it out here pretty quick and if you brewed beer for long enough i think every one of us have experienced this at least once sadly for others it plagues them through their process of brewing beer and i know this might be old news for many of you and i know i've mentioned some of these items on many occasions but i recently saw an article in zymergy if i can say that right from my understanding that's how you pronounce it so correct me if i'm wrong i don't care i suck at pronouncing things but energy um if you're not a member of american home brewers association whether you're drinking craft beer or making craft beer you really should support them they're supporting you more than you realize i'll leave a link down below on that but i've been a member for years i think a year after i started brewing so going on about five and a half years now something like that so but great great article i was already kind of working on something like this and they just kind of hit the topics and hit the majority of what i was saying anyways i think they have one more in there i wasn't thinking um and i had a few others that i was kind of playing with but they did a great job they always do a great job and i love going online checking out what they got going on and the magazines i'm old school i like a physical magazine so i pay a little extra i just re-upped my subscription back in i think february for two more years it was two years whatever the deal was i took it for the i never get the deals where you get the bonus stuff i get the deals where you you get the little longer time or you know whatever's going on so it's just the way i like to deal you've known that also as i'm a member of the brewtubers group i'm going to do a little shout out to five star chemicals because in this video we will be talking about pbw and star sand and i want to make sure that you know i mentioned that because they are sponsors for the brewtubers group if you haven't checked out brewtubers i'll leave a link for that too it's an online beer group um a bunch of us that we brew and we record what we're brewing and we share it we talk about it and we got a discord it's free to join if you want to be a supporting member it's like 50 bucks but you end up getting like a really nice shirt so it's really more like 20 bucks or 25 bucks you know if you want to throw that around but is what it is but it's a great little club some great numbers some really cool people and a lot of people you wouldn't even realize are in there from time to time just matter who uh is on there at the moment you jump on let's jump right into this right away so we don't take too much time from everybody but yes and i know most of this is going to be obvious hopefully i mentioned something that's not quite as obvious and i have a few details in there that you might not think about but number one cleaning and yes i know this should go without saying i'm not talking about star salmon i know a lot of you are thinking i'm talking about star sand when i'm saying cleaning i'm not and this is one of the things that kills me as i see people talking about cleaning and they're like well i put starchy in and i cleaned it and i cleaned it and i put stuff i've started chemical wouldn't make pvw if this did everything now it just kills me pbw is a cleaner star sand is not pbw is an alkaline cleaner that helps to break down organic material not as a sanitizer but as a cleaner so it helps to break the stuff down and if it's not clean enough for you to eat off it's not clean start over a couple things that i know people don't do and i've been guilty of this too is use the recommended dosage based on how much water you're using there's it tells you how much to use based on how much water you're using you should follow that you should do that if you're expecting it to be effective if it's not effective you're probably not using the right amount of cleaner so keep that in mind if you're using less you're going to get diminished results on the cleaner it's not going to be as effective also if it's not super clean yeah trust me you're going to find out because your next beer is not going to be that good number two now we're going to go to star sand sanitize number two is sanitize this part i definitely give credit 100 to xymerci they have the perfect quote and it's in this episode this whatever you call this uh uh i'm gonna call it episode volume whatever you want to call it but the quote is cleaner doesn't sanitize and sanitizer doesn't clean yeah perfectly said i'm not a chemist i'm not a scientist i can't give you all the details but i understand the basics and this is an alkaline this is an acid five star makes sanitizer or make star sand as a sanitizer not as a cleaner remember the star stand has to be in the right dosage to do its job and like we said in number one on the cleaner if you get a little dough ball or something going on and when you're you're what's that called the counter chiller or something like that and it goes in anything inside of that little clump of gunk contaminates your next brew so you need to be aware of this stuff and understand that it has to be clean then sanitized and if you do a really good job understand that this will not sterilize things which i have a mistake of saying that sometimes but this will not sterilize things but if it's super clean and sanitized it's pretty close and not to mention if you were using really hot water hopefully everything's dead and it should be all good number three and this one kind of hits home recently or some issues i had and luckily i didn't have a problem with it i won't say it was an issue it was an awareness thing but know your water number three is know your water if your water doesn't taste good or it has an off flavor there is a very good chance it's going to be in your beer so be careful about that i have two great examples one cashier at my local grocery store one time mentioned that she liked a certain i won't name names but i don't drink this water a certain spring water because it tasted sweet i looked at her and i said that's not good your spring water should not taste sweet but recently and this is where it hits home i buy my distilled water and my spring water from walmart it's close it's cheap they always have it in bulk they don't freak out if i'm buying a bunch of them and i brought it home and within about two weeks two of the spring waters turned like yellow and i mean almost dark yellow i'm so happy i didn't use that in something i was like what happened to that water why did it turn dark yellow my wife's like put it outside i'll use it to water the plants do me a favor put a comment down below if you understand why spring water suddenly turns yellow i mean is there a reason i'm thinking maybe i had iron i'm totally guessing i don't know like i said i'm not a chemist but yeah two weeks after buying it it turned yellow and it was pretty dark i was a little concerned about all the rest now like almost every other day i'm checking all the water for color to see if it's changing color because i'm terrified about using it now and once i get to my final destination on my new house i'm getting an ro system because i don't want to count on anybody else for clean water so number four consider a longer boil and i know a lot of you like well i like to do 60 minutes almost everything i've read almost always recommends 90 minutes 90 minutes i always do 90 minutes for 99 95 whatever you want to say about the things i do keep in mind only negatives for doing a 90 minute over a 60 minute boil from my understanding is a slightly darker srm or a darker finished beer so if you're going for a super light light light like a white ipa or something yeah you may not want to go for a full 90 although i have done a 90 with an extremely clear looking beer which is cool um and caramelization and i know you're thinking oh my gosh i don't want to over caramelize things let me help you here don't worry too much about caramelization because as most sugars don't start to caramelize significantly until they hit about 320 degrees fahrenheit yeah 320 degrees fahrenheit or 160 degrees celsius although fructose which is naturally found in fruits and honey will start to caramelize at 230 degrees fahrenheit or 110 degrees celsius so if you're dropping a bunch of honey in towards the end and that's fine but if you're dropping it in you know at 20 minutes for some reason you're gonna let it cook for 60 or 70 more minutes or 80 minutes yeah that's going to caramelize because even at 212 you're going to see some some caramelization from that because it's pretty close to the 230 range in my mind number five fully oxygenate your wart yes your yeast needs a good aeration with lots of o2 to get a good start number six pitch the right amount of yeast i'm not saying you have to dump in a giant v-starter but understand that under pitching has a much higher possibility of off flavors or failing to ferment so a decent yeast starter is always recommended healthy yeast yeast that you know is going to repopulate quickly is always recommended number seven and this one i already mentioned in a previous video on something where a lot of professional brewers had been interviewed and one thing that they'd said that as a home brewer they would have focused on more and spent more money on initially was fermentation temperatures fermentation temperatures are critical remember your yeast needs to stay in its comfort zone if the yeast is too cold it's just not going to do its job if the yeast is too hot it may or may not do its job it may die off soon or it may firm it really quickly and i know people are like oh hey i'm done in 48 hours or i'm done 61 or 65 whatever if it ferments too quickly there is a possibility that it could produce off flavors and one of the most known is the whole fossil fuel where it tastes like you know you're drinking pure alcohol to me that doesn't sound real good i don't think i want to drink something that tastes like vodka and it's called beer so number eight don't move your beer until fermentation is complete yes there's a lot of time between almost done and done completely done fermenting remember giving the yeast enough time to not only finish its job to kind of clean up its job it will go after all those sugars but as it's starting to dissipate and there's no more sugars to really eat it will clean up some of the off daisitel things like that it'll take care of those but you want to give it time to finish that you don't want to give it time to where hey it's almost done with the sugars let's move it on yeah no let it finish let it do it let's do its job number nine no o2 after fermentation or at least after the fermentation's kind of peaked basically you should do everything in your power to avoid introducing any o2 avoid harming the beer you've worked so hard to produce just be careful be super careful try to minimize it i'm told absorb a little bit of absorbic acid will help a little you know and there's some other things out there but nothing will truly save the beer once it's been exposed to too much o2 so be very careful number 10 keep it in the dark yes i just did this in a recent video take an old t-shirt like this cover your car boy and i know if you're fermenting in a fermentation chamber where it's all dark that's fine but most people don't have that advantage so if you're doing like i do where i do my saisons in my living room i just put a t-shirt on it or i take i have another thing and my wife made me it's really cool which of course i don't see oh there it is a little drawstring on it it's got a little embroidered hop on it it's really cool but it's dark and it keeps the light out of my beer so that the beer can ferment and not have issues now i know blossom they did some testing with light exposure during fermentation and they didn't notice a major issue but there's been a ton of evidence showing that the final product can easily be damaged ultraviolet light with even minimal amounts of it so always just error on the side of safety keep it dark i mean there's no reason for you to go you know i spent all this time brewing this beer i don't care i'm gonna put it in the light and see what happens oh man it tastes a little funky yeah sorry but just something to be aware and this one i didn't think really about so much for all flavors but i credit worse credits due they mentioned this one and i want to mention it is if you're aging your beer number 11 is keep it cool keep it cool aging your beer so a cellar or basement is much cooler than your hall closet pantry room temps so keep in mind that the cooler the temp in your area or where you have available to keep something cool for aging is better i prefer to age my beers in my beer fridge because i know it's going to be nice and cold if i had something like a little wine fridge which a little warmer but not quite as cold i would put them there maybe i don't know i'd probably put wine in there but hey i'm just saying but those are 11 items that really cover the majority of items that you need to be aware of and there's other things we all know you know like not using something that's you know moldy malts or it goes with the thing quality and quality out but you need to keep it clean keep it sanitized and do your best to preserve what you've worked hard to make and make sure it comes out the best possible beer as possible thank you again for joining us here bitter reality brilliant don't forget like subscribe keep sharing definitely appreciate it kudos to star shannon pbw there for helping us out

Channel: Bitter Reality Brewing

Views: 3,965

Keywords: home brewed beer, prevent off flavors, prevent off-flavors, off flavors, how to brew, off flavors in beer, avoiding off-flavors, beer, contamination, beer making, beer styles, home brew, home brewing, aroma beer, bad beer, brewing beer, brewing beer at home, infected beer, infected beer fermentation, is my beer infected, beermaking, brewing tips, fossil fuels, homebrewing, in my beer contaminated, Contaminated beer, homebrewing 101

Id: Z8yegxOuUb0

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021