Terry,
Keep it simple mate. Off flavours must be eliminated & you need to follow the simple steps correctly to make life bearable & produce sound brews: Practice good sanitation on all items used. Use iodine based sanitisers, peroxide, bleach, or sodium metabisulphite as your bug killing agents. I recommend household bleach 50:50 with hot water. You need to finally rinse clean in hot water &/or cold FILTERED water. "Metabisulphite" is a sanitising solution made up & favoured by many brewers. Available at any brew shop & requires less careful rinsing. Your fermenter must be as sanitary as you can make it, & should be covered every moment until you finally seal for primary fermentation. Always use a bubble trap lock with salty water or metabisulphite solution as the fluid seal. Your bottles & caps must be sanitary also but need not receive meticulous attention, suggest an initial bleach treatment, store dry protected from insect & dust intrusion. Get the yeast culture started in the wort within 4 to 8 hours, should be vigorous at 8 hours. To do this I always use two different but "same style" yeasts. Pitch at controlled temperature (use refrigerated water or hot water to adjust) in range 22-24 degrees, I pitch directly onto the wort foam, I do not favour the starter technique. Use a reliable (& sterile) thermometer & not the stick on strip indicaters. This will pretty much guarantee an infection free fermentation & the rest is relatively easy. Hope this helps & probably confirms what you alredy knew. Pete
"Terry Caton" wrote in message news:VQizd.3007$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
Greetings,
> I'm an aspiring home-brewer, and the two batches I've done so far
> haven't quite lived up to my expectations. They seemed to have a "skunky"
> flavor to them, and I'm thinking it might be due to insufficient
> sanitization. I know one of the best ways to protect against bacterial
> contamination is to get the yeast active as quickly as possible, as the
> resulting alcohol will help kill any resident bacteria. That being said, > has
> anyone ever tried adding a half-shot or so of grain alcohol to the wort, > to
> provide a bit of protection until the yeast gets going? Obviously, the > real
> solution is to sanitize everything better, but this would serve as another
> layer of defense. My concern is that it might stunt the yeast growth (the
> amount necessary to prove fatal to bacteria would also prove fatal to the
> yeast), so I wanted to get a professional opinion first. Thanks, >
> Terrence
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