Bottle to Bottle Variation/Tang? Infected with what?

I'm finding that from one bottle to the next I sometimes get an off flavor after conditioning. Some are somehow "tangy" a bit. What's it infected with, and what can I do to limit that infection? I'm soaking with starsan, but I wonder whether the possibility of wild yeast in the batch could require other sanitizing?

Would it help to kill odd wild yeast by running the bottles through the dishwasher or the oven after starsan (or instead) be useful?

Starsan is a surfactant and acid. Lactic acid bacteria like low-pH environments. It's possible you have a low-level lacto infection in some bottles that is resistant to starsan. I alternate between Starsan and bleach-water-vinegar sanitizer to reduce the risk of a resistant bug.

Check your cleaning regimine. You can't sanitize dirt. I might also try oven sanitizing on occasion. Whenever I bottle condition I oven sanitize but mostly becase it is convenient for me. Make sure to wet the inside of the bottle before you heat them it improves the efficiency of the process.

Last inspect your plastics. EVERYTHING plastic post boil is replaced ATLEAST yearly most things more frequently in my brewery

I have only done 5 or 6 batches but since the beginning all I do is rinse out the bottles thoroughly in warm water right after I pour the beer, from there they sit in twelve pack cases until bottling day. On bottling day I just heat sanitize in the oven at 340F for an hour with some tinfoil caps. If I see any debris at all that doesn't take a quick rinse before the oven I toss the bottle. I have never had any issue with off tastes or anything but the main perk is saving my star-san for other sanitizing needs due to cost.

I did the current round of bottles in the oven... I had them at 240 for about a half hour for each round. Is that sufficient, or is it needing more than that? That was the heating regimen I've used for canning equipment and yeast starter jars...

Also, FWIW, the plastic is all new from this year. Nothing has been around that long...

superslomo said:

I did the current round of bottles in the oven... I had them at 240 for about a half hour for each round. Is that sufficient, or is it needing more than that? That was the heating regimen I've used for canning equipment and yeast starter jars...

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I do 400 for an hour ( after confirming with an oven thermometer ) pressure cookers are far more efficent than dry heat. The water ( in the steam) transfers heat much more quickley than dry air, hence the longer contact time.

As far as the plastics are concerned it is less about age more they are much more easily scrached than anything else. Scraches harbor nasties, plus plastic parts are cheap so I replace frequently. I would rather toss $2 in tubeing than $50 in beer

Referencing "How To Brew" by John Palmer. (where I get any info I don't get from here) At 250F it requires a 12 hour baking period. I use 340F because that is the shortest time the book states at 60min. I only use brown bottles and always let the bottles preheat inside the oven to prevent breaking and I have only had one bottle with a crack in it.

Edit: To be totally accurate I wait a little longer than 60min just to be safe

What about a pressure cooker/pressure canner?

superslomo said:

What about a pressure cooker/pressure canner?

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You could use a pressure cooker but it will take a long time to load, let the glass cool and repeat. I can fit 80 bottles in the oven, only about 6 in my preasure cooker. And you MUST let the glass cool slowley or they will break. Cooling is what takes the time.

All of the oven / pressure cooking methods are for sterilization. For "normal" use, to simply sanitize is sufficient. I'm inclined to agree with LordUlrich, and make sure there isn't any gross debris or scratched plastic tubing.

It's all pretty new gear, no metal utensils on the plastic etc.

Just trying to figure out whether it's something I've done that is making the stuff inconsistent from one to the next... thought it might be some odd wild yeast, but I'm stumped as to why somed are sour and some aren't.

superslomo said:

Just trying to figure out whether it's something I've done that is making the stuff inconsistent from one to the next... thought it might be some odd wild yeast, but I'm stumped as to why somed are sour and some aren't.

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Do different bottles in the same batch have different tastes?
Are you comparing different batches to eachother?
How long do you ferment for and bottle condition for?

I could see if you are going with minimum fermentation and conditioning times you could be tasting young beers. Same goes If you are constantly making heavy beers maybe you just need to let them condition a bit longer, many off tastes might just need time to mellow out.

Two batches, both fermented on the warm side. One extract hefeweizen, one petite saison extract with specialty grains.

Both were in primary for three weeks, some bottles were great, some were just kind of sour-ish, in each batch. Not brewed in the same fermenter, either, nor on the same day, both done in new buckets, with a full boil.

superslomo said:

Both were in primary for three weeks, some bottles were great, some were just kind of sour-ish, in each batch. Not brewed in the same fermenter, either, nor on the same day, both done in new buckets, with a full boil.

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OK, the important part of that is "some were just kind of sour-ish, in each batch".

So you're saying that from one batch, totally ignoring the other batch, just focusing on the one batch, you had some bottles that were fine and some that were off.

Simple, you need to take a look at your bottle cleaning/sanitizing regiment.

If some came out fine, then your process up until bottling day is probably ok. It's the bottles that are making the difference.

I'd take your entire bottle collection and go through this process. Blast them with your Jet bottle washer (if you don't have one, get one). Then a 24-hour soak in a strong tub of oxy-clean solution. Rinse with the Jet bottle washer again and then sterilize in the oven. Leave them in for double the usual recommended time since you know you have an infection lurking in there somewhere. Once they come out of the oven, take some sort of measure to keep the openings covered (aluminum foil works well). If that sounds like a lot of work, well, yeah, it's going to be.

This is my whole reason for going to kegs. I don't actually mind the physical process of bottling, but storing bottles in a way that doesn't turn them into fungus pits is a giant PITA..... Filling a bottle with beer and crimping on a cap is easy. Making sure that bottle is sanitary just plain sucks the life out of me when you're dealing with over a hundred at a time.

Sheesh.

It's a little confounding, as these were all bottles that were rinsed immediately after first use, then jet washed, then PBW soak to removed the labels, and finally fully dunked in starsan and left to sit inverted on a starsan dipped rack and bottled immediately. There was no dirt visible, and I thought I was pretty rigorous in terms of the process.

But sure enough, in both batches I'm getting the odd bottle that doesn't taste right, and doesn't match its stablemates.

I guess I'll oven sterilize before bottling the next batch.

Good to know it's not bad technique in terms of the fermenting.

Just a thought, but did you sanitize your caps?

Not sure what went wrong, but if there's that much of a difference between bottles from the same batch, it really seems like the bottles and/or bottling procedure have to be where the problem lies somehow (although your process sounds pretty good to me...).

Caps in starsan straight onto the bottles... thrown away if they had been previously soaked and left over.

Bottled another batch last night, hoping I controlled the variables a bit better.

Freshly made batch of sanitizer, ran six to eight bottles at a time, left them inverted with necks in starsan until ready to fill. In a total RDWHAHB moment, the filler flipped out of a bottle, scuttled across the floor and probably picked up ebola when I reached to grab something else.

I ran it clean, sanitized again and finished. We'll see how this one comes out... next time I'll try and oven sterilize everything glass.

I've had this problem too. I think I am getting some micro-infections in some of my bottles, because I get that "ring around the neck" symptom on quite a few of them. I have an amber ale in the fermenter, and I need to figure out how I want to blast the bejeezus out of any bacteria in the bottles before that time. Part of the issue is that the "bottle brush" that originally came with my homebrew kit is a pain in the rear to get past the neck, it's just a bit too big.

I do have a jet bottle washer, think the next time I'm going to soak in oxyclean, scrub with a new bottle brush, rinse with jet bottle washer, and then bake them as suggested here. Hope that takes care of it. Hope to keg sometime in the near future.

I can only assume maybe sitting upright with the tops open allowed some funk in some of them, or I wasn't sufficiently careful, so I am going to try the starsan and maybe the next batch I'll just pop in the oven at 340 for the hour-plus to nuke them sterile.

Well I think the take home lesson here is that sanitizing alone doesn't necessarily take care of the problem. Any caked on deposits in the bottle may harbor bacteria, and may persist from batch to batch if the insides of the bottles aren't thoroughly scrubbed.

In the past I soaked for a few hours with oxyclean, rinsed with the jet bottle washer, and then just dunked the bottle in starsan moments before filling it with beer. Of course, from bottles that had not been thoroughly rinsed after the beer in them was drunk, I would sometimes find mold floaties at the top of my plastic tub full of the oxyclean solution and water. The soak would loosen the mold and cause it to float up out of the bottles, but there's no telling if there were trace amounts of that, or any bacteria adhered to the glass that a starsan dip may not be able to eliminate.

For my batches since I've started (don't remember if I noticed this on my first batch) I would find a bit of a twang when drinking beers, and it didn't really seem like a full-blown infection, but it varied from bottle to bottle. None of them really tasted like vinegar or anything, but I definitely got a bit of a slight sour note from some of my beers. Not really having a ton of experience with homebrewing, my mind was kinda fluctuating between thoughts of micro-infections, or is this what extract twang is supposed to taste like, etc, etc. The fact that some bottles tasted better than others indicated to me that there was some sort of problem causing inconsistency that should not be there.

Yeah, I get the point, but these were all rinsed IMMEDIATELY after being emptied, and were also soaked in PBW to get the labels off before a rinse and starsan before bottling. I'm not saying cleanliness isn't next to godliness, I'm just having a hard time seeing what I'm doing differently from the recommended protocol.

No caked on dirt, no mold, sparkling clean from what I could tell.

I don't get overly concerned about sanitizing / sterilizing, but then again I've never had any problems in 15 or so batches of beer...

I generally soak my bottles in a weak bleach solution overnight. Air dry.

Sometimes I run them through the dishwasher with the heat dry option to sterilize.

I am FAR MORE concerned about the bottle caps. I will ALWAYS boil my bottle caps. I never use chemicals on the bottle caps as I wouldn't want to affect the bottle fermentation.