Third infection in a row..

By the mother of greatest sorrows, I've had a string of bad luck.

I think I've narrowed it down to the oxygen stone not being boiled but simply soaked in iodophor. I'm really starting to get unimpressed about this.

At least one of them I pitched a ton of dregs and am just going to let it ride.

Anybody else lost a loved batch to bacteria lately?

Rough time. That's a lot of time (and a few bucks) down the drain. I hope you are just sanitizing/replacing the crap out of anything and everything that comes into contact with your post boil beer.

4th times the charm?

Majafoo said:

By the mother of greatest sorrows, I've had a string of bad luck.

I think I've narrowed it down to the oxygen stone not being boiled but simply soaked in iodophor. I'm really starting to get unimpressed about this.

At least one of them I pitched a ton of dregs and am just going to let it ride.

Anybody else lost a loved batch to bacteria lately?

Click to expand...

I'd just heard about infections coming from stones recently. I've never had a problem just soaking it in sanitizer (the one infection I've had was accidental cross-contamination with a sour beer), but I'm going to make sure to boil it from now on.

I've been boiling, bleaching and iodophor'ing since the first one, really starting to get cheesed. At least I've had some success in between its been about a 50/50 ratio this last week or two.

Don't use the oxygen stone on the next one. I don't use one and I come out with fine beers. Do you have pics of these infected batches?

I have been soaking my stone in star san prior to aeration and not having a problem, yet, he says.

After using my stone I immediately put it in hot oxyclean and turn it on the O2 for a few seconds. My thinking is that will help blow/loosen any beer caught in there. I then give it a hot rinse. Of course I let it sit in star-san for a few minutes before using it. So far....so good.

I had two earlier this year due to leaving a blowoff tube in too long. Ended up trashing everything that was plastic and have been good ever since.

might sound stupid but are you changing the tubing which CONNECTS to the stone?

I lost a Porter to an infection, it came from the bottling spigot which I wasn't taking apart, actually didn't know it could be taken apart, now I know and not a single infection since

Good luck and don't give up on finding/eliminating the little buggers

Toy4Rick

Scinerd, no actually, good question though. I took apart all the tubing and bleach bombed it now though!

Curious, how did you know they were infected?

Pellicles, big fat bubbles

If you don't want to dump it try Campden tablets, do one, crush it drop in brew and slosh around. This will render any yeast inactive then after a few days you can repitch yeast and bottle or just keg. If caught early you can have pretty good scusses. Don't feel bad I have 30gal of sours with Lacto and Brett in a separate room and got infections to far along and have dumped 35gal this year. I will clean and clean, no problem for five batches then out of no where three in arrow.

Majafoo- Personally although bleach may work, general practice for me is to swap the line itself. You can get more fairly easily and it is super cheap... let us know what happens next time you brew,

Another question for you- are you fermenting in glass or plastic? I may have missed it if already said. Assuming plastic- consider swapping that out too.

Toy4Rick said:

I lost a Porter to an infection, it came from the bottling spigot which I wasn't taking apart, actually didn't know it could be taken apart, now I know and not a single infection since

Good luck and don't give up on finding/eliminating the little buggers

Toy4Rick

Click to expand...

Been there, done that too. None since I take it out after every bottling and give it a good cleaning and run StarSan thru before bottling.