Reddit reviews Five Star - Star San - 16 Ounce - Brew Sanitizer High Foaming Acid Anionic
We found 8 Reddit comments about Five Star - Star San - 16 Ounce - Brew Sanitizer High Foaming Acid Anionic. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
STAR SAN is a high foaming, acid anionic, no-rinse sanitizerSelf-foaming acid sanitizer ideal for brewing, dairy and other food and beverage equipmentExtremely effective bactericide and fungicide and is not affected by excessive organic soilsReduces water spotting and can be used without rinsing under the proper concentrations
> $549 retail
Damn it, I have to do math again....
For $550 you can also purchase the following:
That's really everything you need for one batch and we're only up to $218...
To fill the gap of $282, how about 7 extract kits estimating about $40 per kit?
So with my plan of $548 (that's one dollar cheaper!) you get 40 gallons of beer! How much does the competitor make per batch?
> The newer keg, which is the same volume (1.75 gallons) as the old keg will have simplified connectors.
>What is the best way to ensure I don't have the carbonation start to come into play?
By understanding what your hydro is telling you. There are a variety of stabilization methods covered on the wiki, including time and abv, running out of sugar, heat, chemicals and forced filtration. Chemicals are the easiest for a rookie, I personally prefer ABV. Each method has pros and cons.
>made for home brewing buckets
food grade =!= o2 impermeable through the walls. I have to look it up every time for which plastics are both food safe and o2 proof. Seals can be an issue in any bucket, like you were thinking. Oxidation is a huge killer for brewing. If you don't overstay your welcome in a random bucket it is a non issue. You can buy a bucket with airlock, spigot and lid for ~14$ though. It's hard to get all that for less.
>sanitizer
https://www.amazon.com/Star-San-4C-YKNL-FWNT-San-16oz/dp/B0064O7Y64/ref=asc_df_B0064O7Y6450285
That's a lifetime supply for most brewers. I think I'm on number 3 of those bottles at most and I have 800 gallons or so to my name.
your LHBS is generally going to be the cheapest for everything but honey and kegging equipment, and maybe bottling supplies depending on the deal. I bully the local shop into volume discounts when I buy a few hundred bottles.
https://www.amazon.com/Kirkland-Signature-Pure-Honey-Pound/dp/B007F2EQEW/
There are plenty of honey's available on amazon. The above is a decent cheap one. There are better honey's out there but this shows up at your door tomorrow for a reasonable price. A lot of "raw" and "organic" honey's are full of shit, but it's hard to tell what's good an what's not without tasting. If something is grade A and "raw" it's probably a lie. USDA grades have a lot to do with clarity and honey that hasn't been heated of filtered has better aroma and flavor may struggle to mead Grade A criteria.
I think the last batch over-fermented. Were they fizzy, too? If it's too warm the culture goes crazy.
Here's my current recipe.
per quart of water:
3.5% brine (33g non-iodized salt per quart of water)
2 Tablespoons Dill seed
1 Tablespoon Mustard Seed
1 Tablespoon Black Peppercorns
1 Tablespoon Coriander Seed
1-2 Bay Leaves, crumbled
1/2 to 1 bulb Garlic, cloves separated, skinned and smashed a little
Small Whole Cucumbers (like Kirby), as many as will fit!
Leave out until brine becomes cloudy (about a week), then put in the fridge. Taste often! I like to wait at least 10-14 days -- if I have the willpower.
DON'T cut the blossom end! Any incision into the cuke greatly speeds the process and they get mushy fast. If you want, you can gently scrub any blossom remnants off.
Links that may help:
Pickle Me Too Hot Pickles
Arthur Schwartz Recipe from David Lebovitz
It's Alive with Brad
Sandor Katz's Sour Pickles
Last, you can do a quick sanitize with Star San. A little goes a long way.
Good luck!
Mead is VERY forgiving, far more so than beer or wine. As has been suggested, JAOM is a great "toss it in and walk away" recipe, but almost any recipe will work for a beginner, even if it's done a bit off.
Things to remember:
Don't use bleach to sanitize, it's fucking hard to get completely out, and can render a batch unusable. I prefer IO Star to Star San as it doesn't foam up when you scrub the shit out of stuff with it, and it's easier to completely rinse.
Mead needs separate nutrient, it is quite cheap on Amazon you should also add Energizer perodically (once every other day for the first week and once a week for the next month) to prevent things from getting stuck along the way. A good guide on how/when to add fruit and how to perform step feeding, which produces the tastiest results, can be found HERE.
Wine Tannin can help to make your flavors "pop" and come out more brightly, add around 3 grams to a 5 gallon batch in primary.
Also, don't let things ferment in too warm a space, the place I ferment in is a steady 69 degrees, if you let it go too warm, you might end up with weird alcohols getting created, and your brew providing a headache along with a buzz.
Lastly, if you've decide you're going to get into brewing, don't go the carboy/bucket route. For a little bit more money (like $40 more than everything else combined), you can get a MUCH better/easier and compact solution. A conical eliminates the need to rack from one container into another (has a bottom drain to suck out yeast cake) it has a side drain to bottle from (I plug this into my filter pump and bottle right from there) is MUCH more compact then separate bucket/carboy & racking canes, and is a lot easier to clean because the hole in the top is like 6 inches across, plenty big enough for a hand and a scrubby sponge as opposed to the tiny 2" opening in a carboy (which are a bitch to clean).
Also, the supplier in this link (highgravitybrew.com) doesn't charge for shipping for these conicals, it seems like everyone else who sells them does even though they're all drop shipped from the factory regardless from whom you get it.
Your recipe sounds like it'll turn out well if all goes according to plan! You may want to add some sweetness back if it ferments dry, but you've got several weeks to figure that out and read the Wiki to get all caught up on the method and terminology to things like back sweetening and nutrient addition schedules. I admire that you're being industrious with your fermentation equipment, I wasn't brave enough to start fermenting with whatever I had on hand with my first batch.
If you think you'll stick with it, here's the equipment I used for my first batch. I highly recommend looking into it if you think you'll do another batch! (I apologize if you aren't in the US, Amazon is my go-to)
All-in-all, this is just about my current setup excluding yeast, yeast nutrients, and extra carboys and airlocks. The list above comes out to about $127.45 USD before tax, which really isn't too bad considering one gallon should yield just shy of 5 standard wine bottles! Most commercial meads I've seen ranges from $15-$25 with some exceptions (There's a winery near me called Oliver Winery that makes a mead called Camelot Mead that sells for about $8 per bottle. Very good for such a cheap mead, you can probably find it at Total Wine & More if you have one nearby).
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Sorry for such a long comment! Best of luck in your mead-making adventure!
Edit: If you have a local homebrew store, I would opt for that rather than Amazon. Prices may not be as cheap but you won't have to wait for shipping, you'll be able to support a local business, and employees at homebrew stores are usually really helpful and they can recommend recipes and give you pointers. Nothing beats face-to-face interaction!
If you're really concerned about bacteria, wash thoroughly with hot soapy water, then sanitize with a brewing sanitizer like Star San then rinse/dry.
Lets start at FG and OG which stands for final and original gravity. Original gravity is the density of the apple juice before you add anything to it(so basically open the apple juice and take the OG). The final gravity is the density after fermentation has completed. To measure OG and FG you will need a hydrometer or spectrometer. Hydrometers are really cheap and everyone starts out with this.
To take the OG siphon(you will probably want to get an auto siphon also not very expensive) of enough
waterjuice into a plastic cylinder(like a graduated cylinder but with no precision marks and drop the hydrometer into the fluid. Then you simply read the marks on the hydrometer and that will be the OG. To get FG you just do this after fermentation. To determine when fermentation has stopped you getting taking hydrometer readings 1-2 days apart when the reading from one to the next are the same, fermentation is no longer active. Make sure you sanatize everything that will come in contact with the apple juice....hydrometer, cylinder, siphon, air locks, keeping the apple juice free of any living thing that is not yeast is a key to success here. If you do not have the OG and FG you will have a much harder time figuring out the ABV(alcohol by volume) 
Link to an auto siphion (which you can purchase at a local home brew store)
 
Link to a hydrometer (which you can purchase at a local home brew store)
 
Link to sanitizer (which you can purchase at a local home brew store)
 
What is a cold crash. Exactly, you just bring down the temp to a serving temp. Simply put for the cold crash you need to keep the airlock on the glass jar and stick it in a regular fridge for 3 days time.
One other thing to mention. Cider yeast will want to ferment in the 60-75F degree range. Its best to get it between 62-68F however that's not always possible but it absolutely will produce some off flavors if you allow it to get above 75F degrees. The temp of the juice fermenting will be about 5 degree warmer than the ambient room temp because fermentation is an exothermic reaction(it gives off heat). Don't be scared at all, if you really want just ferment the apple juice at whatever room temp with just sugar yeast and juice. It will produce a drinkable alcoholic beverage. If you want to get further in an refine the hobby and make some honest to god delicious cider follow my steps. However I want you to know my first time brewing anything was a cider. I simply used wine yeast and apple juice. I used a condom as a fermentation lock and by god college kids drank every ounce of this brew that taste like a bready cideryish wierd thing. However it was awesome and I had a blast doing it.
The carboy you are looking at was the first one I had ever purchased, the airlock and stopper work great for 1gal batches. definitely recommend.
I use the Red Star yeast for my batches and it works well, might switch to a more specific yeast later, but for just starting out it works well. If used sparingly, you can make up to 55 1gal batches with the amount of yeast you are buying.
As for the sanitizer, you'll find most people use Star San because of how homebrewing-friendly it can be, but its really up to you. Just make sure your equipment is thoroughly cleaned and sanitized before brewing.