Well, roughly 15 batches into my homebrew career I officially have my first infection. This is not a "is my beer infected" thread. I am absolutely sure that it's infected. I bottled an ESB at the end of April. Three weeks later I threw a homebrew party and got a lot of good comments on it from casual craft beer drinkers. At the time, I noticed a slight tartness to it, but just figured it was still a bit green. Carbonation was still good at that point. I hadn't drank it again until just yesterday and I had a gusher and the beer was sour. Also, gravity dropped from 1.018 at bottling to 1.012. Hoping it was isolated, I popped open three more bottles and they were all the same.
I'm pretty sure it got introduced at bottling time. This was a primary-only beer and it was seemingly flawless. My primary culprit is the valve on my bottling bucket. It's been a while since I've taken it out and thoroughly cleaned it, besides just running OxiClean and then StarSan through it.
I sanitize my bottles by running it through the steam cycle on my nearly new, mid-range dishwasher. I used to also spray StarSan into the bottles before filling, but I've been skipping that step lately. I just bottled another batch of beer two weeks ago and I haven't detected any signs of infection yet, but it took a while on the previous batch so I'll keep an eye out.
So what now?
I'm planning on replacing all of my siphon/bottling tubing. Unrelated to this, I just bought a new bottling wand (lost the spring inside of my old one). Should I bleach my bottling bucket, valve, and auto-siphon? I was planning to boil the valve by itself.
I'm pretty sure it got introduced at bottling time. This was a primary-only beer and it was seemingly flawless. My primary culprit is the valve on my bottling bucket. It's been a while since I've taken it out and thoroughly cleaned it, besides just running OxiClean and then StarSan through it.
I sanitize my bottles by running it through the steam cycle on my nearly new, mid-range dishwasher. I used to also spray StarSan into the bottles before filling, but I've been skipping that step lately. I just bottled another batch of beer two weeks ago and I haven't detected any signs of infection yet, but it took a while on the previous batch so I'll keep an eye out.
So what now?
I'm planning on replacing all of my siphon/bottling tubing. Unrelated to this, I just bought a new bottling wand (lost the spring inside of my old one). Should I bleach my bottling bucket, valve, and auto-siphon? I was planning to boil the valve by itself.