Iodophor and Star-San are the way to go. They’re pretty much equivalent, but iodophor will stain your plastic items if you leave them in it too long.
Yeah. I use a plastic bucket for my primary. It’s all yellowish on the inside now. No harm, no foul.
Okay took the class, learned a lot. Luckily my buddy knows his stuff well and of course was willing to stock me up (at a nice cost!). But ready to go. So now have a nice Chocolate Porter brewing in the next room. Woke up this morning to a nice yeast explosion going on in my carboy. It all is looking like Bill (my buddy) told me it would look.
Let this perk away for 3-7 days, then in another carboy I add the cacao nibs and do the secondary for a couple weeks. Then bottle it and wait for it. So in 3-4 weeks or so I will know the results.
I have had this Chocolate Porter at Bill’s house and it is awesome. So I am hopeful mine will be at least decent! Wish me luck! So far so good.
For an interesting variation on your next batch of this recipe, try bottling half of it with a little peppermint oil blended in. A buddy of mine has won massive awards for his version done that way. Just a touch, though. Subtle is the key.
That could be interesting, though I don’t normally wouldn’t associate peppermint in a beer that I might like, but with the chocolate it could be interesting. So do you add it right before the secondary with the cacao?
Only if you want the whole batch that way. Sam did his by bottling half the batch without the mint, then adding a precise amount to each bottle before filling. He graduated the dosages every 3 bottles or so, and labeled each accordingly. Then, after the beer had aged, he tasted each level to see which worked best. That way you don’t waste too much beer with a bad dosing schedule.
Oh sure, that makes sense. Well when I get to the bottling I might have to try that. Thanks for the tip.
You mentioned earlier that you had some good recipes. Any good Ambers? In general that is my go-to beer. A nice amber makes me a happy drinker. I can’t think of a national one that would give an idea. Fat Tire is too thin tasting in general but it is okay when I am somewhere that doesn’t have a good selection. The one locally I like is MackNJak’s African Amber that I mentioned in my OP but it is only kegged as far as I know locally. So I probably can’t give you a reference for what I enjoy, but if you have a good Amber recipe that you like, I would be interested in trying it.
Hmmmm…I’ve got a few recipes, but I’ll have to tweak them.
Blue Moon (Adjusted)
1/2 lb. Victory malt (steeped)
4 lbs. amber extract, liquid
2 lbs. light dry malt extract
1 oz Tettanger (3.4) 60 minutes
1 oz Cascade (5.4) 30 minutes
1/2 oz Saaz (4.6) 15 minutes
Wyeast 1056
Feel free to play with the ingredients if you can’t get exactly these items. The Victory malt can be replaced by an equal amount of Crystal, for example. It won’t be as toasty, but it will still work.
A version of this beer won 1st Place in category at the Las Vegas Winterfest a while back.
If I had a three-car garage, I’d have to move 4 of my cars outside! 
Brewing beer is as easy as boiling water and washing dishs. I’ve done hundreds of batchs and only had two “go bad” (and it turns out the first actually didn’t, I just never had an ESB before).
No reason you can’t brew better than you can buy (I do!) for less money. I specialize in a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale copy. I prefer it to the original. I dry-hop the shit out of it in secondary and it kicks like a mule!
Check out Austin Homebrew Supply. Midwest is good, also, but farther from me.
Good luck and have fun!