Bitch Work – Part Deux
Since I haven’t cried in over two months about dumb stuff, I figured I might as well give it a try.
Yup, bitch work time again. Why on this fine Memorial Day weekend did I find time to hide in my basement and clean a bunch of crap, you got me!? So for a couple of hours I blasted my iPod and cleaned and sanitized. First I did the 6 carboys, which really weren’t that bad, but playing with glass and chemicals and moving heavy stuff gets shady after a while. Three were secondaries, one was a transfer vessel for lack of a better term, and two were primaries that had been soaking for at least two weeks. After that came the kegs, which again weren’t horrible. When I released the pressure valve on the Imperial Amber keg it still smelt so hoppy good, yum.
One of the kegs was the keg from the Gnome Root Beer. I have heard horror stories about how everything will smell like root beer forever and how it is the hardest smell in the world to make completely go away. And sure, the keg smelt overwhelmingly like root beer at first, but after everything was busted down and cleaned up the root beer smell was pretty hard to detect. Well, actually the seal on the lid still smelt of root beer. But it makes me wonder, if just that one seal, or maybe all the seals were replaced, could the keg be used as a normal beer keg and then swap in the root beer seals when a root beer was wanted – I think so.
After everything was cleaned and I took a break for dinner I had the lovely chore of making a yeast starter. Garrett has the equipment to use a pressure cooker to properly can starter wort and has offered me the opportunity to use it, but some how time is not on my side . . . until I make a yeast starter and then I have little visions of canned starter wort dancing in my head. Honestly, it’s just time consuming and boring, not hard. I used the starter on a vial of WLP004 Irish Ale Yeast. It was unfortunately 3+ months past its best before date. It really should be fine since it was stored properly and I am building it up with a starter, but I will have some dry yeast on hand as an insurance policy. I am planning on brewing an Irish Red tomorrow. The good news is, I really want to brew and am looking forward to it, the other news is it is an after work in the evening/night brew session with a 30% chance of showers. Of course I’ll try to make the best of it. If all goes well I’ll have flame to kettle before 5PM and be tiding up janitorial duties before 11PM.