Saturday, January 7, 2012

Switched Sanitizers, news

So for brewing I used to use iodine. We had a couple of tragic sanitation failures, traced it back to over-inebriation and expired iodine. Early brewing with iodine ... last year ... led to some getting into beer, killing the yeast and making it undrinkable.

I was also using isopropanol as a sanitizer, but not only does it make the missus ill on the merest whiff, it's fantastically flammable.

I've been using StarSan for the last few weeks (both sanitizing sausage equipment before use and for brewing) and I'm a big fan. It's some sort of organic acid, so when you pour beer on top of it, it's rapidly diluted and rendered harmless to the yeast. It hasn't attacked any surface I've sprayed it on, and unlike iodine, you don't have to keep adding it to airlocks (it doesn't go bad once mixed).

Today I have made about 3lbs of kielbasa (american style emulsified sausage mildly spiced, but I added toasted caraway seeds). We are headed over to Jaydee's house to smoke the sausage (he's got a propane smoker), fix my ABS system (got a new sensor), and probably drink beer and play video games. Incidentally, if you ever want to level up your meatcraft, this is the book I get all of my recipes and guidance from. Best present ever.

I intend to hot smoke the sausage until done (meat thermometer is crucial) and then incorporate it in some kind of yukon potato fry-up.

I'm working overtime tomorrow then flying to South Carolina for two weeks on Tuesday. I think Marissa is flying out to spend a weekend there in the middle.

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