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bottled water and other things...
I am brewing a pumpkin ales which I try to do every year for the holidays. When I lived in Dallas it wasn't a problem using tap water but since moving to the sticks in Minnesota with my own well water I've had to use bottled water. The well water is greyish and has silt and a strong iron taste. Tried charcol filtering it but the filters clog up in 5 minutes.
I brewed a batch of the pumpkin beer two years ago and it came out sour. Tried figuring out what went wrong but I followed the same steps I have always done when brewing beer in texas. Only difference is the bottled water. I have read in beer brewing books bottled water can be put right into the fermentor and add the boiled water/wort into it and it should be fine. But this time I boiled some of it, topped it off with unboiled bottled water, and then added the hot wort directly to the fermentor (glass carboy, and no it won't break if you have cold water in there prior to adding the hot). So it is now fermentaing away so i will know in about a week how it is. It went bad during fermentation last time so the only thing I an figure out is it was either not enough sanitizer (doubt it) or it got contaminated when transfering to 2nd carboy to clear.
I use Iodophor for sanitizing. 1 Tlbspoon per 5 gallons. Last time I only used 2 tsp per 5 gallons and I used tap water for soaking. Still got the bronz color so I thought it was sanitizing ok. Maybe not.
Went back to 1 Tblsp per 5 gallons.
When I had siphoned in past I used plastic hose and done it the old fashioned suck it out method. I would gargle real good with Vodka (hic) and it worked ok, but leads me to beliee it was what caused the last batch to go bad.
I now have a beer thief for syphoning so that shouldn't be a problem anymore.
I though about building my own sytem I can brew with instead of having to haul everything from the basement but looking for systems o nthe internet it could be too expensive. I prefer to stay just extract brewing for simplicity. i can always change things up with spices, herbs, peppers, and other things. Has anyone built a system without spending an arm and a leg? Link?
Also, I have keg system but it has been sitting in the barn for 8 years. Will it be ok by just replacing the gaskets or should I buy new parts? It is closed up, not open and exposed.
Thanks for any comments.
deafcone
First thing I would do is break open that keg system and hook it up! My outlook on brewing has completely changed after tasting beers out of the keg. Beers that I thought were great in the bottle, showed me my ignorance and naivity once I kegged. Depending on what you have in the box, there should be very little that can't just be soaked a couple of days and be back to brand new. I just built 2 kegerators and am still blown away at the simplicity and ease of the system. You may just want to buy a replacement gasket kit for the kegs, they are like $4 per keg better safe than sorry.
Your iodophor solution should be fine, 3tsp=1Tsp, so if you used 2tsp, it is pretty close, You may want to consider checking the rest of your racking eqipt for sanitation, lines,siphon, mouthwash, etc.
Good luck!
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