Infections when bottling USUALLY
 

So I keg more than half of my beers and have never had a problem with any infections when I keg.
I have bottled about probably 5-6 batches now and most of them have been become infected. I am not sure what it is, but it gets more and more carbonated as the time goes on the the flavor just becomes worse and worse until it really just becomes undrinkable.
I am trying to figure out where they are becoming infected because I steralize everything I use each step of the way. Not sure as to why certain batches would be infected but not others.
Each time after I use my equipment I clean with oxyclean then rinse thoroughly with water then before I use it I sanitize with starsan.
The only thing I can think of that I use when bottling that I don't when kegging would be the bottling bucket and the container I boil the priming sugar in. I clean and sanitize the bottling bucket and clean the boiling pot or measuring unit I boil in the microwave but I would have thought that any left over anything would be cleaned from the heat of boiling.
2 of the batches could have been from secondary additions (coconut which I baked thoroughly and another batch of vanilla beans which I sat on Vodka for a week)

Anyone have any suggestions I could try and narrow my problem down to so I stop wasting beers?? Really pissing me off because they have been some good beers right at bottling and so I go to let them age a bit and .... CRAP!

Thanks all for any advice you might give!

Are you sure it's an infection and not just over carbonation? Do you see a ring of crap around the neck of the bottle on the inside? I have only ever had one infected batch and it definitely left a ring of crud that was easily visible. Are you boiling your battle caps? How much priming sugar are you using for a 5 gallon batch?
Not saying you are doing anything wrong, but this information will help others to help you solve this mystery..

I've had crud on my bottles and the beers carb'ed and tasted fine. I believe its just a mini krausen from the reintroduction of sugar...

are you removing the spigot each time you bottle and sanitizing?

If you're boiling in a cup in the microwave, maybe the cup isn't getting hot enough to sanitize it.

Do they have to be boiled? If I already have the sanitizer out to sanitize the bucket, bottles, spigot, tubing and wand..... can't I just dump the bottle caps in a bowl of sanitizer for 5 or 10 minutes? Or is there something about the caps that requires boiling?


Sorry for intruding on someone else's thread.... hopefully you won't mind since it's all related subject matter :)

you don't need to boil caps, simply soaking them in star san will do just fine.

Thank you

:mug:

Matteo, i'm questioning it being an infection. unless you're not sanitizing the bottles and caps (and priming solution), racking to a bottling bucket is pretty much the same as racking to a keg. sometimes i notice that even a avg gravity beer can take quite awhile in bottles before it stops tasting green. 3 weeks may carb up most ales, but i generally find that 4-5 weeks and then a week or more in the fridge to be closer to the time it takes for bottled beer to come around.... all of that is dependent on the beer, but in general.
many folks prime their brews with 5 oz of sugar (like the kits come with), i find that 9 times out of ten, this is way too much sugar for 5 gal and will result in overcrbing and possibly gushers. if you aren't already, try a priming calculator like this one at TastyBrew.com.