I couldn't locate the original thread, my apologies for that. The flies seemed to be back pretty strong while brewing today. One thing I noticed was they really like to hang out on the yellow gas flex-lines, I believe I took out quite a few by way of sneak attack with a spray bottle of star san while they were congregating on those lines. I don't know if star san kills fruit flies, but at the very least they are sanitized, soaking wet and really disappointed in me, so at least we have that going for us. Also, I squeegeed the heck out of the floors and dried everything off pretty well, and our squeegees are in pretty bad shape. I was gonna get the vacuum back by the gas lines and see if I could vacuum them all up while they were all there but there were just too many people and too much stuff going on in the brewhouse today to make that happen. I think it might be time to address this professionally.
Sat, Jul 26, 2014 - 11:11pm
#1
Fruit Flies
This may be an unpopular idea, but maybe we keep our back door closed at all times and look at some of that bacterial digester stuff for the floor drain, with all the grain bits, yeast, and wort that make their way down that drain I bet they love it down there, and I believe that may be one of our primary sources.
I just spoke to my friend who used to work at anderson pest control. He says the best thing we can do is what has been working in the ferm room and hook up a bunch of fans so they cant fly around and they will soon dry off. The traps are great but they wont stop them.
ill hook up the large fan to blow into the brew space but if anyone has floor fans to bring please set them up.
Josh...what you should do is take a fan from the ferm room and bungee cord it to the sink table so it blows over the drain. The Bungee cord should keep it upright and out of people's way.
The tap plugs were delivered. I'll be by the brew house on Thursday to get them on the taps. Pete cleaned out the keezer lines yesterday, so we should be good in that area.