klamz

Recipes 

Ok, Ive been fighting this nasty bug ever since I moved into the new house. I'm pretty darn sure that it's some kind of contamination because it seems as though it happens to every other batch of beer. Once the beer is carbonated I get a strong presence of phenols. It smells and taste like a medicine cabinet or bandaids.

Here is what I know for sure:

-It's not the yeast because I've used more than 3 different kinds and got the same results (1056,1968,1318) and my ferm temps never go over 70f

-It's not from Chlorine because I use carbonfiltered well water.

-It's not my plastics because they have been replaced and they are washed after every use.

-I sanitize all equipment with Starsan that has been properly diluted.

With that said I am pretty sure its an infection that eventually causes my bottles to gush over time.

Here is a list of possible flaws in my process:

YEAST STARTER: When making yeast starters I cover my flask with tin foil thats been sanitized. Recently I have been having very active fermentations that cause the flask to overflow causing a huge mess. I usually just clean the mess and replace the tin foil. It seems like this is very sloppy because the whole inside of the flask is caked with yeast and fermented wort. Could this be cause of all my infections problems?

BREWING AREA: I brew in the garage where I have 2 drains incase it gets messy in there. I usually hose down the garage floor and mop out most, but not all of the water. My drains smell very musty. Could this be harboring mold? Maybe there is too much humidity in the garage causing some kind of mold? Perhaps I should get a dehumidifier. Any thoughts?

SwampassJ

Recipes 

I had an infection issue that made some very phenolic beers that tasted fine at bottling but gushed within a month or two and turned to ****. I found a small clump of crap inside the spring of the bottling wand when I took it apart at the suggestion of someone else on the forums.

I've also seen some people report tracing the infection back to the bottling bucket spigot.

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audger

Recipes 

you said well water, so this shouldnt be an issue, but i figured id mention- carbon filters will remove chlorine, but not chloramine, which is also sometimes added to water for disinfection, and will cause the same issues as chlorine will.

if you want to make sure, just go buy a 5 gallon container of water from home depot or something for one brew.

what plastics? buckets? if there are micro scratches, regular washing wont necessarily remove all debris harboring bacteria.