Seeing a lot of infections today.

I noticed today that there are a lot of posts on infections or problems with beer.

I am writing this to remind everybody...SANITIZE, SANITIZE, SANITIZE! I know I am preaching the Choir, but it is very important.

I sanitize like crazy, and I have not had any problems in the 4 batches I have made (knocking on wood right now).

OMG, it's SPREADING!!!! cover your crotch!

and, seriously peepz...sanitization is very important. don't get lazy in that respect.

DeathBrewer said:

OMG, it's SPREADING!!!! cover your crotch!

Click to expand...

This is why I keep StarSan in the spray bottle. Makes easy work of disinfecting everything from Paraphernalia to Genitalia.

BigKahuna said:

This is why I keep StarSan in the spray bottle. Makes easy work of disinfecting everything from Paraphernalia to Genitalia.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip! It's been burning pretty bad when I rack.

My only infection came from re-using yeast on the fifth generation. I shouldn't have done that anyway. I now only re-use yeast for one generation.

lets not forget that some people purposly infect their beer.

+1 for starsan in a spray bottle, I use it to disinfect everything.

farmbrewernw said:

+1 for starsan in a spray bottle, I use it to disinfect everything.

Click to expand...

Including my fifth generation yeast.

I had my first infection recently, I made a blackberry porter and woke up one morning to find the airlock laying on the ground next to it. This was at the peak of fruit fly season, so I was sure they had their way with my ale during my slumber. A couple weeks later it looked like this:

Well that Brett pellicle pumped out an incredibly complex and tasty beer, I am really enjoying drinking it. Since then I have been trying a lot of sour beers and loving them, now I am fermenting a Kentucky Common that I intentionally infected and can't wait to drink it!

Tonedef131 said:

Well that Brett pellicle pumped out an incredibly complex and tasty beer, I am really enjoying drinking it. Since then I have been trying a lot of sour beers and loving them, now I am fermenting a Kentucky Common that I intentionally infected and can't wait to drink it!

Click to expand...

that looks like a thing of beauty to me

histo320 said:

I noticed today that there are a lot of posts on infections or problems with beer.

I am writing this to remind everybody...SANITIZE, SANITIZE, SANITIZE! I know I am preaching the Choir, but it is very important.

I sanitize like crazy, and I have not had any problems in the 4 batches I have made (knocking on wood right now).

Click to expand...

AHEM.....ACTUALLY...

You aren't seeing a lot of infections...What you're seeing is the usual spate of nervous n00b threads of people who THINK THEY HAVE AN INFECTION....and no more than we debunk and calm the brewer down, on a daily basis...It's just like stuck fermentations....It SEEMS like there's a whole bunch of brewers who have stuck fermentation, when in reality they are using airlock activity as a fermentation gauge, and NOT a HYDROMETER, or NOT WAITING 72 HOURS before panicking...

99% of the time when we look at a picture of the SUPPOSED infection it is just odd krauzen, or yeast colonies on the surface of the beer in secondary OR the mess that comes from dry hopping in secondary with pellet hops trapping CO2 bubbling...

Just like 99% of the time when the person takes a hydro reading they come back with this...

Name Witheld said:

Rev.
Wanted to let you know that everything is o.k. Checked on the primary this morn. There is still no bubbler activity, but when putting my nose to the bucket, there is that distinct aroma. I opened the lid and saw A LOT OF KRAUSEN. So much that I had to resist the temptation to make a beard and mustache out of it. hahahahaha. I'm going to give it 10 days until I check S.G. again.
Thanks

Click to expand...

Thanks for your concern, and yes Sanitization IS important...but you have to discern between the rare TRUE infection posts and the panic n00b posts...one out of every 20 or 30 threads on here (if not more) is a true infection...and although it's not fun for the brewer, it is fun for some of us "firemen" on here to actually get to tackle one...

It is actually more likely for an experienced brewer, like me, to get an infection- Perhaps we let something slide in their cleaning/sanitization process and something from their previous batch got nasty between brewing sessions, and infected their latest batch- It sometimes happens that small matter gets lodged in a hose connection and doesn't get cleaned out or zapped with the sanitizer....Or perhaps over many uses a fermenter or bottling bucket develops a scratch in it, which becomes a breeding ground for contamination.....but with brand new, cleaned and sanitized equipment, in a first time batch of beer...highly unlikely.

I wrote a blog about jumping to conclusions and bandying about the "I" word on N00b threads awhile back.It's funny, I was just thinking how it seems there's been a decrease in talking about infections around here...There seems to be a cultural shift over the last year, where we don't feed the fear factor, and calmy explain to the panicked brewer that what he is seeing is normal...and asking for pictoral proof...


We're going to be seeing a TON of nervous beginners in the next 6 weeks or so, as homebrewing kits are being given as gifts...(it's time to start copying your answers to a seperate file, so you can cut and paste them at will)

If your equipment is clean, it LOOKS clean, it SMELLS clean, and every contact surface is properly sanitized with a good sanitizer such as StarSan or Iodaphor, your chances of infection are nearly zero.

Note the every contact surface part.. I do not use buckets with spigots because it is too difficult to sanitize them properly. Every time you use such a bucket you should remove the spigot, soak it in oxyclean, rinse, then soak in sanitizer, mount it back on the bucket, and then run sanitizer through the contraption. If you don't, you can get an infection because of bacteria hiding in the crevices between the spigot and the bucket wall. I find it's less trouble to just use a racking cane and bottle filler, all of which can be soaked in sanitizer before use. (Cool tip from SoperBrew: use a plastic flower box from the garden center, it is big enough to soak your autosiphon or racking cane) Every time I use a keg, I break down the keg posts, sanitize everything, and re-lube the dip tube and O-rings. It's time consuming, sure, but so is wasting a batch!

To illustrate Revvy's point... I went to rack my beer out of the fermenter a few weeks ago, and doing my usual visual inspection (is it CLEAN?) I discovered there was some grime in the racking tube. Huh, that's weird. So I gave it a sniff. WHEW! Smelled like a locker room! Plastic is porous, so once it sits dirty and gets bacteria in it, it's done. The tubing went into the trash, and since I did not have a spare on hand, I left the house to buy new tubing. I soaked the new tubing for 5 minutes in StarSan, and then proceeded to finish the job.

As I have mentioned before I have had one infection and it came from the 5th generation of re-pitching yeast. Every time you re-use yeast, the contaminants grow by a factor of 10-100x, so no matter how good your sanitation is, after awhile you have to start over. I now only harvest and re-use yeast for one generation because it's cheaper to buy a $6 tube and split it 5 ways than it is to split it 25 ways and ruin two batches.

...that's What She Said!!!

Season of "Best of HBT Answers" coming up...

Better polish up those blog posts, Revvy.

Bopper359 said:

...that's What She Said!!!

Click to expand...

Da dum....crash.

Saccharomyces said:

If your equipment is clean, it LOOKS clean, it SMELLS clean, and every contact surface is properly sanitized with a good sanitizer such as StarSan or Iodaphor, your chances of infection are nearly zero.

Click to expand...

Brewing Advice....Dating Advice....who can tell the difference?

Come on dont spread infection fear. Not cool OP, not cool.

Revvy said:

We're going to be seeing a TON of nervous beginners in the next 6 weeks or so, as homebrewing kits are being given as gifts...(it's time to start copying your answers to a seperate file, so you can cut and paste them at will)

Click to expand...

I was going to ask how much these kind of posts take off this time of year. This is my first Christmas as a non-first timer. I got my kit last Christmas from SWMBO. Every time she get;s annoyed with me talking about brewing, I can say, "it's your fault'!

mmb said:

Season of "Best of HBT Answers" coming up...

Better polish up those blog posts, Revvy.

Click to expand...

I think it's time for ALL of us to pitch in....and like Buffalosabresbrewer said...not spreading infection fears...but ALL of us help to calm and edumacate....

It sometimes feels like a handful of us does the work...

You don't have to be a brewing expert to help...(heck I'm not) AND you don't have to be a great writer.... all you gotta do is quote me, or Deathbrewer or BK, or Nurmey, or Yooper or ANY of the people you've learned from...god knows we've all given the same answers over and over and over and over and over...(get it?) just find one of our posts...and save us the work.

BigKahuna said:

This is why I keep StarSan in the spray bottle. Makes easy work of disinfecting everything from Paraphernalia to Genitalia.

Click to expand...

Wait WAIT!!!!! You have to put your Genitalia in your beer? Is that part of secondary fermentation?

BuffaloSabresBrewer said:

Come on dont spread infection fear. Not cool OP, not cool.

Click to expand...

+1 on this....

Though I think his hearts in the right place..He's trying to help...

He just doesn't get the "culture" of this place yet...

I bet you don't realize that the majority of what I write is not technical or scientific in nature...It's PSYCHOLOGICAL....because in actuality the majority of the "is my beer ruined" thread are NOT about ruined beer, or infections....They are about the brewer's fear, and the thought that beer is such a frail thing that it will "die" if they don't watch it constantly...

Maybe it's 'casue of my training, and 4 years of counselling training in seminary AND training for 6 months as a hospital chaplain...but the first thing I noticed here was the fact that those thread arise becasue the poster is scared.....and because fermentation is so freaky smelling, and looking and the basic concepts of are not quite grasped just from books, but experience...They are just the natural thing that happens when someone is trying something new for the first time...People get scared, and they over think.....

SO we try to both calm fears and educate...but mostly calm fears....

Oh, I've got some pearls of wisdom among the swine that make up a majority of my posts.

I just get sick of the "Thanks for taking the time to post your answer to my n00b question, but F*(*& off. I'll do it my way." attitude that pops up way to often over the last couple months.

Maybe time to get back into the playpen.

Agreed it wasnt a post meant to induce fear necessarily but I remember my fist batch how paranoid about infection I was because I kept reading over and over about how you needed to sanitize, sanitize, sanitize. I killed myself worrying about if every little thing was properly sanatized. Yes sanitation is important but only after the boil is infection a risk and basic sanitation will cover your ass. Over time I have only become more relaxed with sanitation. Relaxed isnt right word as in I have become apathedic or lackadaisical, but with time you learn how hard it is to get an infection and you stop worrying about it like a noob does. Thread definatly get started to stop a brewery worry about there beer. A dozen new threads everyday. Thats why most of our responses are, "Relax you beer is fine that is exactly how its supposed to look". Its to calm the new brewer down. I guess this type of thing just annoys the crap out of me because of how much I worried about an infection my first time and this only adds to a new brewers list of things to stress over.

BuffaloSabresBrewer said:

Agreed it wasnt a post meant to induce fear necessarily but I remember my fist batch how paranoid about infection I was because I kept reading over and over about how you needed to sanitize, sanitize, sanitize. I killed myself worrying about if every little thing was properly sanatized. Yes sanitation is important but only after the boil is infection a risk and basic sanitation will cover your ass. Over time I have only become more relaxed with sanitation. Relaxed isnt right word as in I have become apathedic or lackadaisical, but with time you learn how hard it is to get an infection and you stop worrying about it like a noob does. Thread definatly get started to stop a brewery worry about there beer. A dozen new threads everyday. Thats why most of our responses are, "Relax you beer is fine that is exactly how its supposed to look". Its to calm the new brewer down. I guess this type of thing just annoys the crap out of me because of how much I worried about an infection my first time and this only adds to a new brewers list of things to stress over.

Click to expand...

I agree wholeheartedly with you!!!

that's why I wrote my very first angry blog about.

http://blogs.homebrewtalk.com/Revvy/The_quotIquot_wordand_other_brewing_words_Im_tired_ofa_Rant/

...when I got here it seemed that more and more people just fed into the n00bs fear...and most of the threads didn't even have pictures of the supposed infection...yet people were "diagnosing" a problem based on a description of something....Descriptions are subjective....If I didn't know what krauzen looked like, I would describe it as an infection too...

Then I realized that the threads had a similar pattern...They were all first or second batch posters

That's when I realized it was just new brewer nerves....and that it seemned like the "fear feeders" were relatively new as well....

I THINK we've shifted a bit in the last few months....for the better...I dunno if I had anything to do with it...If my writing's did....but if they did, I'm glad I helped...I get a lot from this place, and I just try to give back...

Not quite sure how I missed your blog, Revvy- but it's bloody brilliant!

I will add that, to the neophyte brewer still wet behind the ears, sanitization and best practices cannot be emphasized enough. Not because the risk of infection is necessarily high but because it gets the new brewer in the habit and mindset of sanitizing.

Revvy said:

I agree wholeheartedly with you!!!

that's why I wrote my very first angry blog about.

http://blogs.homebrewtalk.com/Revvy/The_quotIquot_wordand_other_brewing_words_Im_tired_ofa_Rant/

...when I got here it seemed that more and more people just fed into the n00bs fear...and most of the threads didn't even have pictures of the supposed infection...yet people were "diagnosing" a problem based on a description of something....Descriptions are subjective....If I didn't know what krauzen looked like, I would describe it as an infection too...

Then I realized that the threads had a similar pattern...They were all first or second batch posters

That's when I realized it was just new brewer nerves....and that it seemned like the "fear feeders" were relatively new as well....

I THINK we've shifted a bit in the last few months....for the better...I dunno if I had anything to do with it...If my writing's did....but if they did, I'm glad I helped...I get a lot from this place, and I just try to give back...

Click to expand...

Rev.
I'd like to say that above all, your posts/blog link last week were reassuring to me. Although I'm still a noob myself, if I see a new poster worried about their beer, I plan on posting a link to your blog. It helped to back me off the ledge a bit.

It was similar to my first child. You don't know what to expect, every cry means something, you panic over the slightest change, when in all actuality, everything happening is perfectly normal. If I understand the brewing process correctly (and I probably don't) the task of the brewer is simply introducing the ingredients and the environment. The rest is nature taking its course, and the most difficult part is having the patience to let it happen.

I appreciate the participation on these boards by all of the more experienced brewers. It's nice and calming to be able to rely on the collective knowledge of hundreds of brewers who have better "parenting skills" than me. T/Y

flyangler18 said:

Not quite sure how I missed your blog, Revvy- but it's bloody brilliant!

Click to expand...

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
Revvy's blog is like the Bible in the drawer at the motel, You may or may not agree with it, you may or may not ever look at it, but ****....EVERYONE knows it's there!

BigKahuna said:

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
Revvy's blog is like the Bible in the drawer at the motel, You may or may not agree with it, you may or may not ever look at it, but ****....EVERYONE knows it's there!

Click to expand...

Very interesting analogy indeed. I was actually preparing to mention the fact that I hadn't seen the blog before and it is great. However, after reading your post, I have decided to lie and just agree with you...