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Spongiform said:
I'll share my biggest mistake so far.

The first dozen quart jars I did, I figured I would PC them while I waited for my syringe to show up then right before inoculate I'd poke the inoculation holes with a nail/hammer.

So I found out quickly that these jars form a serious vacuum that way, so as soon as I poked the holes they sucked in massive amounts of air and every single last one of them contam'd!

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fahtster said:
lol... well if you hit a glass jar against any surface hard enough it's going to break.  Try a bike tire like RR does or a Knee like I did.  One thing that I did (Have fixed in the writeup) not mention is that you can put a pinch of gypsum in the water in the grain jar and that will help them not stick together that much.  Maybe you're not cleaning them enough if you're having a really hard time breaking them apart.  I did it for over a year and didn't have the problems you're speaking of.  Duct tape doesn't sound like it would give all that much though.  I just knocked them against my knee once, gave the jar a quarter turn, shook, and knocked it again; repeating until broken up.  It wasn't even as hard to break up as a colonized jar was... idk.  I'd say the gypsum would really help. 

Contamination has less to do with my writeup and more to do with your sterile technique I would guess.  I would lose maybe 1 in 75 jars.

RR's way is probably a better way to go as it takes more attention, but my writeup does serve it's purpose for increased times; sorry you had a bad time with it.  I'm sure others have found it useful.

F

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There's no need for apologies to me.  I respect your work and your write ups.  A solid write up is hard work.  It takes time to think out a technique, photograph it, and then write it up in a logical and understandable way.  Actually I apologize for calling it a practical joke.  That was rude.

I did five cycles of 7 quarts with that tek.  (A cycle being the process of cleaning the grain, jarring it up, pressure cooking it, and injecting the jars.)  I used gypsum for some of the cycles but I don't remember how many.  As I recall it did help some but not enough.  It was still very difficult to break up the grain.  The grains were clean.  The water was clear.  Using RR's rye tech I don't bang the jars against anything.  I just give them a shake after I inject them.  I still use duct tape to break up colonized jars.

With regard to the contamination I'll take it back.  That very well could have been my fault.  Also I think I should have given an idea of the scale of contamination.  I think it was like 5 or 6 jars out of the 34 had a contamination (would have been 35 but one blew up in my face).  I was using doubled up postal tyvek for some of those cycles.  I was out of my normal stuff.  So, in fairness, that could have been one contributor.  Especially since it was trich and it was always in the top of the jars.  Still I now pressure cook my rye for 90 minutes again, as I did before.  I just don't trust 70 minutes to get the job done. 

I'm not saying it's out of the question that it could be my sterile technique but I'd put it at fairly unlikely.  I've got in the high hundreds of jars under my belt now.  On the other hand I do like my weed and my beer .  It is possible that if I was drinking or smoking before starting my work that I could make errors.  Therefore I take it back.  That was an unfair statement.

Now having said all of that, I stand by my what I said.  I really really don't recommend this particular tek.  Though it does work.  I think conventional methods for preparing grains are better.  I find they are less total effort.  To me it is much less effort to wash the rye in a big pot rather than shaking and straining the individual jars.  If you couple that with the effort in breaking up the rye grains after pressure cooking I find that I come out ahead with conventional methods. 

Finally I want to be sure not to misrepresent my opinion of your over all body of work.  I think you do some incredible work.  In fact you can see in my journal where I store links to various teks that I am complimentary toward your late casing tek.  Over all I think your posts are well thought out, educational, and inspiring.  So thank you for the hard work.  I've enjoyed it.

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Oatman2000 said:
Just to throw a few more from a few days ago.

This was a mislabeled jar of Light Malt Extract
purchased before, no prob.

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