Recovering a Fermenter after infection.

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Indian_villager

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Hello folks. It has been a long while since I have posted but I had been brewing away.

Recently I had my first infections. Yes that is plural.

Bucket Fermenter:

A brew bucket that I have used multiple times before developed an infection. The beer in question is Austin Homebrew's Orange Creamsicle. I suspect that the bacterial strain is a lacto that consumed the 1lb of lactose that was in the beer. It doesn't taste bad.

But I am wondering if it is worth it to try and resanitize the bucket. If it is even possible. I will have no major issue throwing this bucket away if it is not possible.


6Gal Glass Carboy:

This is the one that kinda sickens me. I love this carboy, it is what I started with. I use it as a secondary. I had a strong beligan wheat IPA in there which I though was infected. But cleared up and tasted fine so I bottled it and am drinking it.

To be on the safe side I flushed the carboy through with water and bleach. Heavy on the bleach, rinsed with water, then sanitized again with Star San like I usually do. Now I have a blonde rye in there that is showing clear signs of infection. I have looked through every infection picture on this site and it looks bang on.

How can I go about saving this carboy. I really would not like to lose this one.


Thanks in advance,
Alex
 
The bucket I would just pitch and get a new one. The glass fermenter should be fine scrubbed, bleached and star-sanned. Are you sure you're not introducing it at some step on the way INTO the fermenter?
 
Pitch the bucket or save it for sour beers.

The carboy is not the source of any infection if it was cleaned and sanitized properly, I would look elsewhere in your process for introduction of infections.
 
I tought it was my racking lines. They have been bleached through as well. And the beers I have racked with after have not been infected. So I have gone through the deductive reasoning and am stuck on the Carboy.
 
Bleach bomb anything in question / rinse thoroughly. I'd probably ditch the bucket and get new lines if suspect, they are cheap enough.
 
I tought it was my racking lines. They have been bleached through as well. And the beers I have racked with after have not been infected. So I have gone through the deductive reasoning and am stuck on the Carboy.

Well nothing can live inside the glass (unless there is a crack, which you should check carefully for). If it is scrubbed well and bleached, everything is dead.
 
If you had a lacto infection, you'd most likely know it by taste. It would taste sour. I use lacto as a primary strain for one of my beers, and here's a couple neat things about it. First, most strains are gram-positive, meaning that they have difficulty surviving in worts over 20 IBU. Second, some lacto strains look pretty much exactly like sacc when fermenting and form sediment pretty much identical. They can even produce alcohol and CO2. The lacto strain that I use looks like a weizen yeast when fermenting and is capable of blowing an airlock off. So it's difficult to identify a lacto infection by sight--what was it that made you believe you had one? The bottom line anyways is that lacto won't "infect" your equipment. That is, unlike brett it cannot really stick around and pop up later.

Your carboy will be fine as long as you scrub anything stuck to the sides off and sanitize it. If you want to be careful, pour some boiling water in there. People often overlook boiling water as a sanitizer. If there's anything that you ever worry bugs are hiding in, even a water bath of 160 degrees for a minute will kill them.
 
Please don't pour boiling water in your carboy, that is just asking for a broken carboy.
 
If you want to be careful, pour some boiling water in there. People often overlook boiling water as a sanitizer. If there's anything that you ever worry bugs are hiding in, even a water bath of 160 degrees for a minute will kill them.

DO NOT DO THIS!! First, it takes more than a minute of boiling to achieve sanitization. As soon as you pour a little boiling water in there, it immediately cools and isn't doing anything. The only thing you're doing is stressing the glass. That's it.
 
I had a buddy who lost a bunch of mead and beers to an infection picked up during a move. Terrible waste of good alcohol.

His completely successful solution was to toss and replace anything plastic. Your glass is going to be fine - but all of those stoppers, airlocks, buckets and hoses are likely to be much harder to fix. Since they're all cheap items it makes sense to toss and buy new. Some hose, stoppers and airlocks are going to cost you less than the ingredients of your next batch of beer - so if replacing them saves even one batch you're even, more than one batch and you're money ahead.
 
DO NOT DO THIS!! First, it takes more than a minute of boiling to achieve sanitization. As soon as you pour a little boiling water in there, it immediately cools and isn't doing anything. The only thing you're doing is stressing the glass. That's it.



I'm a Chemical Engineer. I got that. It just frustrates me that after a round of bleach the problem came back. I am just angry about it and racking my head trying to find a solution.
 
Ya the problem is most likely not the carboy. I'd replace all the plastic in the equation.
 
Well it seems that I cant catch a break. I'm using a new racking cane and lines and got another infections. Now I'm starting to look upstream. could it be possible that I am getting an infection from my cfc as I am going into my primary? and that I am not seeing anything until the secondary because it does not have enough of a cell count and the minor aeration from racking is enough to wake the bacterial cells?
 
CFC's are a huge source of contamination if they're not cleaned out 100% after every batch and depending on your sanitization each time. I have a plate chiller (which is even worse to clean) and my friends have a CFC. After each use, we run the pump with PBW though for a half hour or so, switching flow direction, and then flush with water and dry. I made a connection to my air compressor so I can blow everything dry inside. For the longest time though, my friends were just flushing their CFC with water and sanitizer after each use. When they did get a wild hair up their a__ and ran PBW through, the globs of nasty crap that came out quickly made up their mind that it needs to be done every time.

You may have better cleaning methods than my friends did, but since you can't see inside, you can't really go overboard cleaning it.
 
What about the environment your fermenters are located within?

My Ale Pails sit in the same room as my central furnace/AC. I have to shut off the HVAC system and wait at least 10 minutes for the dust to settle before I can open my Ale Pail lids. If I try to sneak a peek while the AC is running, I get an infection almost every time, simply due to my house's natural airborne particulate.

Check for air movement, dust, etc. before you pull your hair out and replace all of your hoses for the nineteenth time.

Good luck beating this. Infections suuuuuuck. :(
 
If you use a bucket for a sour beer you never can really use it for anything else...

Glass is a different story... it cann be cleaned... I would fill it with cold water, put in some oxyclean and forget about it...

When you revisit it you will reinse it with hot tap water, fill it Starsan and forget about it for a few days... cover it, (no light) seal it... and you can use the StarSan for something else if you want...
 
You know the other thing I was thinking is if you suspect your CFC, you could make up a small batch of starter wort and run it through your CFC into a sterile jar or flask and see if it grows the same funk. That's where I'm putting my money.
 
I just ran hot bleach through the cfc on a pump loop for an hour. And it did let loose a bit of funky looking stuff. I guess my running of warm water through the process side immediately after use was not doing the job.

In regards to the air I usually cut the air while racking and spray the exterior of the bucket with sanitizer before opening.
 
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