is my error pre or post bottle?

so 2 out of 3 of my brews have turned out horrible, even after 5 months the first is bad.
after 3 weeks in the fermenter(each), the beer tastes fine, just flat and warm. but after 3 weeks in bottle they became horrible....

is this an indication my bottling procedured need to be fixed or can the beer taste fine before bottling and still be able to come out bad?
thanks!

What do you mean by horrible? Describe what you're tasting.

did you sanitize the bottles before adding beer to them? did you sanitize the sugar you primed with? I've had beers be horrible at bottling, but taste fine when carbed. maybe you need to let them age a bit? What kind of beer? more details....

Describe the taste is it like a phenol plastic, or cardboard, or what?

What is your process for bottling?

im bad at describing the taste, my gf says the stout taste like vinegar, and i think the porter, which is only 5 weeks old is a more horrible version of the older stout at 5 months. its like sour vinegar.
and yeah i sanitized the bottles by spraying some mixed sanitizer in each bottle then taking a bottle brush to each one. and i put the priming sugar in boiling water before mixing with the rest of the beer.

hmm... the setup I use to sanitize my bottles is the vinator, which shoots SaniClean all inside the bottles. I then let them dry upside down on a bottle rack.

http://www.rebelbrewer.com/shoppingcart/products/Vinator-Bottle-Rinser.html


It's also possible that these beers may need to condition in the bottle some more.
Don't dump them!!

My thought would be that the bottle brush is out of sequence. The bottles should be clean before sanitising, thus, the brush shouldn't be used with sanitiser. If there's anything living on your bottle brush, it's possible it could be transferred to the bottles when brushing. If there's an actual chunk of something in there, it could survive the sanitiser and colonise the bottle.

Maybe...

Vinegar sounds like acetobactor.. A bacteria. It sounds 100% like a sanitation problem with bottling.

Make sure the bottles are really clean. I use screaming hot water and oxyclean to clean my bottles. A long soak in hot water and oxyclean and then a quick hit with a botyle brush should do the trick. After that, rinse them really really well and then you need to soak them in a santizer ( star san or iodiphore(sp?) ). Once you have soaked them in sanitizer, do NOT rinse them or touch them with the bottle brush (thats probably where the bacteria is comin from).

I agree. I soak all my bottles in a 5 gal pail of bleach water (cleans and sanitizes) for a couple of days. That way the labels can be peeled off easily when I take them out and they are sanitized and ready to be filled. If I'm not ready to use the bottles I just put a piece of tin foil over the top and set them aside until ready. When bottling, I just squirt the inside with a little hot water to rinse out most of the bleach residue, and bottle as normal. Works like a charm and now I have hundreds of bottles with tin foil ready to be used.

And cut the bottle brush, or resanitize after you stick it in the bottle. Also, don't forget to sanitize your bottling bucket, tubing, and bottle filler wand before use. (I forget sometimes)

Your bottling brush is probably harboring all manner of bacteria in the crevaces and the bristles, they are meant to be used to get gunk out of the bottles, PRE sanitization. You are more than likely re-infecting your bottles by using them with the sanitizer.

Look at all the spaces and gaps where biomatter can hide, and even escape sanitizing.



Like others have said, the vinator works best, as does just dunking and draining. You don't need to rub the sanitizer in. Just swish and drain. Nor do you want it to dry. Just make sure everything is clean, PRE sanitization.


But this is the easiest.

Also, when you sanitize everything, make sure you work the sanitizer through it. Your buttle filler should be pressed down to make sure sanitizer gets all through it. If you're using an autosiphon, pump the sanitizer through it a couple times. Make sure you suck some sanitizer through all your tubing, then sanitize the end you put your filthy mouth on. If you have a spray bottle, spray some sanitizer into the spigot, if you're using one. Oh, also, don't use the bottling brush to spread sanitizer.

What I do is fill my bottling bucket to 2.5 g with water, mix half ounce Starsan in, and throw everything that will fit in that bucket. I rinse out all my bottles with super hot water, just to make sure they're clean, then fill my sink with the bottles and pour the sanitizer into half of them. Then from the bottles, I pour the sanitizer into the rest of the bottles, spinning the bottle as I pour. Never got an infection this way.

mikeysab said:

What I do is fill my bottling bucket to 2.5 g with water, mix half ounce Starsan in, and throw everything that will fit in that bucket. I rinse out all my bottles with super hot water, just to make sure they're clean,.

Click to expand...

I do pretty much the same thing but someone will freak out on this thread in about 30 seconds and point out that you just sanitized them, and then completely defeated the point of sanitizing by rinsing them.

Star San is a "no-rinse" sanitizer and does not require that you wash out the residue. By rinsing afterwards, you're taking "non-sterile" water and introducing it into the bottle, after you just strerilized it.

Like I said... I do it to... with just a tiny bit of hot water just to get all of the star san bubbles out... but... you don't have to.

I don't rinse the starsan out. I rinse the bottles, THEN put the sanitizer in. Then I just pour the sanitizer from one bottle to another.

gotcha... sorry... just read it wrong I guess.

Cleaning =/= Sanitizing

In order for a sanitizer to do its job the organic compounds that may have been caked on there from last time need to be evicted (especially since they haven't paid their rent in months -- bastards!). I have some spare Igloo containers that I clean then fill with a sanitizing solution (Iodophor works fine for me) to soak the cleaned bottles in. Just make sure to follow the directions on each cleaner and sanitizer because they do behave differently (things like temperature for the solution and time needed to clean the equipment change from chemical to chemical).

thanks alot guys! im hoping that is my problem, it sounds like it is!
i thought i was being extra clean by using the bottle brush with sanitizer on each bottle but now i know thats a bad idea.
thanks again!