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Vitalux
Stranger from the next universe



Registered: 02/15/11
Posts: 2,695
Loc: Canada
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Bulk Steaming vs Simmering after Soak on WBS?
#14735189 - 07/08/11 07:56 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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Can a bulk steam after the soaking phase of WBS be an alternative to simmering?
Here is my hypothetical situation.
Say I am soaking 150 lbs of birdseed. ( 3 x 50lb bags) for 24 hours in large 5 gallon pales (with gypsum, coffee, lime).
after the 24 hour soak, instead of boiling a bunch of water and trying to simmer all that wbs before it hits the PC, would it be just as efficient to load it into a bulk 50 gal steamer that I made and bulk steam it t0 165-170 degrees for an hour.
Photo and tek as from Akira

In the bulk steam, i can easily do 50 - 150 lbs of wbs in one shot and be done in 4 hours.
From what I understand, the purpose of the simmer is to kill off any bacteria, hatched endospore, etc as soon as possible.
The problem at hand is that with preparing so much grain, it often can take two or three days to PC it, which leads to a higher chance of failure due to endospores reforming between the time of the soak and PC'ing.
Its just that boiling so much water in a pot when trying to work with so much grain would be both labor intensive, time consuming as well as cost a lot of energy in heating water.
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orange771

Registered: 01/26/11
Posts: 288
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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Re: Bulk Steaming vs Simmering after Soak on WBS? [Re: Vitalux]
#14735252 - 07/08/11 08:26 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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I recently made up some jars after reading a lot of peoples experiences simmering vs not simmering. I made about 36 quart jars, and I decided not to simmer because I don't have a big enough pot to simmer as much as id like.
Everything turned out fine, I pressure cooked for 90 mins instead of 60 and all 36 jars are showing growth, and about half of them are ready to spawn to tubs when I get home today.
I don't think the simmer is to get and bacteria or endospores, the soak germinates all the baddies in the bird seed then the pressure cooker kills em, don't quote me on this but I'm 90% sure the simmer is just to raise the water content of the grains to the max or field capacity. It works fine without it, though some will want to take the extra step.
Me personally, will probably never simmer my grains again.
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Vitalux
Stranger from the next universe



Registered: 02/15/11
Posts: 2,695
Loc: Canada
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Re: Bulk Steaming vs Simmering after Soak on WBS? [Re: orange771]
#14735292 - 07/08/11 08:38 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
orange771 said: I recently made up some jars after reading a lot of peoples experiences simmering vs not simmering. I made about 36 quart jars, and I decided not to simmer because I don't have a big enough pot to simmer as much as id like.
Everything turned out fine, I pressure cooked for 90 mins instead of 60 and all 36 jars are showing growth, and about half of them are ready to spawn to tubs when I get home today.
I don't think the simmer is to get and bacteria or endospores, the soak germinates all the baddies in the bird seed then the pressure cooker kills em, don't quote me on this but I'm 90% sure the simmer is just to raise the water content of the grains to the max or field capacity. It works fine without it, though some will want to take the extra step.
Me personally, will probably never simmer my grains again.
Like you I have had success as well, however, when dealing with loads that often exceed 10 cases of jars (120 jars) I have had my share of failed batches where I have had to dump and ditch many cases of jars that became contaminated.
I was always trying to use the easiest method that produced good results. Simmering the grain is viewed as a pain in the ass. When I read in other folks tek's that they were skipping it, I historically did as well.
However, about half of my jars have ended in failure. Rather or not it was because of not simmering, or just bad liquid culture, or contamination during the grain to grain transfer is debatable ...all I know is that I am on a road to eliminate those parts of my tek that is causing such losses.
Always trying to determine where along the process the failure may occur, I have come to determine that RR must be simmering that grain for a good reason. My thoughts are that he is doing a preemptive strike against the bacteria so that it doesn't have a chance to multiply and produce more endospores before it hits the PC.
Now I am just trying to figure a good method to bulk simmer batches of grain that are 50 lbs or more.
I am wondering if steaming them will help.
Edited by Vitalux (07/08/11 08:40 AM)
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SomeGuy
I feel better now :)


Registered: 04/18/10
Posts: 7,496
Loc:
Last seen: 4 months, 24 days
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Re: Bulk Steaming vs Simmering after Soak on WBS? [Re: Vitalux]
#14735322 - 07/08/11 08:52 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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I didn't simmer my wbs for the first couple years, and had decent results. What I currently do is "scald" it with boiling water, kinda like the damion 50/50 coir tek. I get the water boiling, drain the soaked wbs and dump it in the boiling water. then I take it off the burner and wait 10 minutes and rinse it off. then I drain it and pc 90 minutes. It's been working better than any other method I've tried. Without the scalding, I had a high rate of wet-spot
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orange771

Registered: 01/26/11
Posts: 288
Last seen: 2 years, 7 months
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Re: Bulk Steaming vs Simmering after Soak on WBS? [Re: SomeGuy]
#14735668 - 07/08/11 10:52 AM (13 years, 6 months ago) |
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Well theoretically steaming for a couple hours would be the same as simmering, and I don't think it could hurt so hell if you got a huge ass steamer I say go for it, 150 lbs would take forever to simmer, you'd have to do multiple loads which is the main reason I skip simmering now.
I'm actually liking this idea for massive amounts of birdseed, might have to give it a go, if you decide to do it let us know how it goes!
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