I was very much worried too. But it seems that a lot of brewers agree that at 22 degree celsius, it should be okay to keep for a long time and not worry about yeast autolysis. Most however recommend about 4-5 weeks. They say that aging in the fermenter will have better results than aging in the bottles for the same time period due to the amount of yeast present.

You using pallets? It could be that pallets don’t have this problem. Watched basic brewing videos once and there was a comment there by John Palmer about boiling hops in just plain water. The higher temperature will increase the bitterness but will not do anything on the other flavours I think. But there were using fresh hops.

Going to get Star San soon. Are you using it?

By the way, have you tried using Morgan’s beer kits? I am going to do a batch with it.

I am not certain about the grassy off flavors created by boiling hops in water rather than wort. In theory, the wort would be boiling at a higher temperature than plain water so it just does not seem sensible.

Starsan seems best to me, too.

Nice to share brewing.

Yes, I think you are correct. The main reason why I boil the stuff is sanitization/sterilization. Boiling kills off any bacteria that may have got into the beer concentrate, brewing sugar or whatever. And it of course allows me to do hopping. Yes, doing a hop tea is a good idea but note that if you boil hops without any wort, you will get some “grassy” off-flavours. It is best to boil the hops with some malt extract which basically is the same step.

Yup, the stick on thermometer is too high. Well, that was my first try, so I got a bit excited and stuck it too high on the fermenter. Not to worry, the cooling box I use has a thermometer at the bottom of the fermenter. It should give a more reliable temperature than the one on the fermenter itself.

I have to take out the fermenter out of the box to take gravity readings. Pretty tedious and back breaking as well.

For the detergent, it seems to work okay for me. Using detergent to clean then sanitizing seems to be the correct method to go about doing it. Cloth, you may not be able to get some of the hard to get rid off stains. This could then affect your sanitizing. Detergents help to lift the particles off the surface. And oily substances may not be easily removed without any detergent. Nowadays a lot of brewers seem to like Starsan, the all-in-one cleaner and sanitizier. It looks like you can’t go wrong with Starsan.

I never took an og before. I normally will take a FG at the last few days of fermenting. But now, I just merely leave the beer/wort in the fermenter for 3 or more weeks, up to about 5 weeks. Very likely, it is already done fermenting.

General comment not meant as criticism. Your thermometer looks too high up the fermenter wall. Once it is in that box , how do you draw samples? I have never used any detergent to clean the fermenter, only a soft cloth and warm water, because everything that goes in the fermenter is water soluble. Do not risk contaminating your beer making utemsils with detergent. It is not necessary.

Do you use your hydrometer to get an Original Gravity? Final Gravity? I like the comfort of having the hydrometer readings be constant for a few days before bottling. Cheers! Barrett