Fri Dec 30, 2011 9:06 am
I've been homebrewing about a year and started with buckets as that what the kit came with. This past summer I bought a 6 gallon PET carboy and have been using that ever since. I plan to add another as well as a 3 gallon Better Bottle for small batches.
For a sanitizer/cleaner I use OneStep. When I'm done packaging the beer I immediately clean the fermentor. I dump the yeast cake in the toilet then use hot water -maybe a gallon or so- put my hand over the hole and splash it around to remove the leftover grime, dump that in the toilet. Then repeat the process with OneStep, put a piece of aluminum foil around the opening and secure with tape or a rubber band, then store it sanitized.
I've never used a brush on the PET carboy or plastic buckets. With buckets I use a wash cloth to scrub clean. For the PET carboy, I just use hot water and cleaners.
I did get a rubber stopper stuck in my carboy and made some gouges in the neck of it drying to pry it out; I gave up and just left it in there as it doesn't impart flavor to the beer. When I sanitize the carboy, I make sure to let the sanitizer water sit in the neck of it for a minute or so to make sure it's clean as possible. It's been several batches like that and I've never had an infection once due to the gouges in the neck of the carboy. Due to this, I think infections from scratches in plastic buckets is grossly overstated.
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