Ok, I'm not just being paranoid about infections...

A couple of months ago, I posted a thread about how I felt some of my batches were turning a bit sour after about 2 months in bottles.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/turning-twangy-79139/

I kind of decided that I was just being paranoid, and carried on. The only thing different I did was switch to Starsan instead of OneStep for sanitizer. I have always used Oxyclean as a cleaner.

Well, I am obviously still doing something wrong. Here's why:
1. An IPA I made, again after about two months in the bottle, all the bottles turned into quasi-gushers (I say quasi b/c, when you would uncap them, they wouldn't just spurt out, after about 30 seconds, they would slowly foam over - tasted fine, though).

2. I made a ginger flavored amber that tasted great coming out the secondary, but after bottle conditioning, tasted distinctly smoky instead of gingery. I read in a book (Homebrew's Answer Book, Ashton Lewis) that unexpected smoky flavors are likely from wild yeast in air). Also, I made this recipe before, and there was no smoky taste.

3. I racked my first all grain batch into the secondary last week. After racking, I noticed some unexpected activity. No airlock activity, but a lot of moving around inside carboy and some foaming. The foaming keeps stopping and reappearing. Now, there are some spider looking things encrusted on the carboy (see picture below).

I have read a ton of threads related to infections, and one of the main answers seems to be replace my tubing. Anything else I should consider? Should I replaced my airlocks/bungs, bottling bucket, bottling wand, and spigot, too? I assume my glass carboys are ok, or am I wrong?

BTW, I just upgraded to Premium, I figured it was about time with all the information I have been getting.

Switching from onestep and replacing all your tubing are good things...also take apart any spigots you have and clean them thoroughly (bottling bucket and things like that.)

Or replace them....same with the autosiphon and bottling wand...you should at least take them apart and clean throoughly or replace them as well.

Make sure there are no scratches on any plastic that touches your beer (bottling bucket and fermenters) they can harbor, and the sanitizer won't be enough.


Racking to secondary will normally kick up some fermentation, so that just might be a wee bit of fermentation in the neck of your carboy...it's hard to tell in the pic...

This picture might be a bit more illustrative. I should add that I found this weird, dark brown, flat stuff in the trub when I racked the all grain batch. The weird stuff looked like a bunch of tiny beads.

Since you said that it was AG, maybe it was proteins.

How are you bottling, are you going straight from your spigot, tubing, raking cane or a bottle filler?

The close up doesn't look like an infection just CO2 bubbles with some lacing on the neck.

hopsalot said:

How are you bottling, are you going straight from your spigot, tubing, raking cane or a bottle filler?

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Spigot to tube to bottling wand.

cheeseshark said:

This picture might be a bit more illustrative. I should add that I found this weird, dark brown, flat stuff in the trub when I racked the all grain batch. The weird stuff looked like a bunch of tiny beads.

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That looks like a combination of starsan bubbles and the stuff on the neck looks like dried krauzen after the small fermentation occrued and it fell....

cheeseshark said:

This picture might be a bit more illustrative. I should add that I found this weird, dark brown, flat stuff in the trub when I racked the all grain batch. The weird stuff looked like a bunch of tiny beads.

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Wow!!! That thing is full. Hopefully you won't have a overly violent fermentation.

I believe he said it's his secondary.....

Revvy said:

I believe he said it's his secondary.....

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Man, I need to go take some reading lessons

It's been in the secondary for a week now and there is still movement. The foam keeps appearing/reappearing, so I don't think it's starsan foam.

My experience in the infection dept is that its usually something you don't physically clean like tubing, racking cane and spigots.

I now brush all my tubing and my raking cane. I invested in a stainless 3/8 " raking cane and I love it. I can boil it if I like.

I don't have spigots in any of my fermenter buckets because of the trouble of cleaning them well. My next step is to go stictly to corney keg fermentation and push everything with c02.

Hope you solve your problem. Look at your cane and tubing. Take that spigot apart each time and clean it well before you sanitize it.

Looks like a spider got in there...

A little update:
1. I tasted a sample of the "beer" from my secondary show in the picture. Mmm... It tasted like, uh, gross. That's really the only way to describe it. I can't really pin it to any of the typical off flavors you see described (grassy, cidery, etc..) because it was so overwhelming. It was just so gross when it hit my mouth that I spit it into the sink. I've drank a half bottle of wine since and I still can't get the taste out of my mouth.

2. Bought all new plastic stuff (tubing, auto siphon, bottling wand, spigot, bottling bucket, bungs, funnel).

3. I inspected the heck out of all my plastic equipment before it went in the garbage. I saw suspicious spots in the tube part of my funnel and the inside bottom part of my auto siphon.

Anybody think I should do anything else other than what I have already done? What about my glass carboys (I use glass for primary and secondary)? There are no cracks or scratches that I can see. Thanks for the help so far.

As someone who's been battling a microbial war, I have this advice.

Bleach Holocaust. Bleach all of your brewing equipment that doesn't get boiled. And I DO mean EVERYTHING! All your tubing, buckets, carboys, bottling tree, and your bottles. Yes, your bottles too. If the infection was in there, it will only sit and wait until you bottle and it'll show up again.

I will say again that you have to actually clean what the beer touches. You either need to physically brush the insides or use a caustic or other inline cleaning solution designed to get the organics off the surface.

I prefer hot oxyclean and a line brush over harsh chemicals.

Many people rinse and sanitize and have no problems but you see what can happen sometimes.

EvilTOJ said:

As someone who's been battling a microbial war, I have this advice.

Bleach Holocaust. Bleach all of your brewing equipment that doesn't get boiled. And I DO mean EVERYTHING! All your tubing, buckets, carboys, bottling tree, and your bottles. Yes, your bottles too. If the infection was in there, it will only sit and wait until you bottle and it'll show up again.

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Thanks for the advice. I had been wondering about bottles. What was your bleaching procedure as far as ratio, time left in bleach solution, times rinsed, etc.?

BargainFittings said:

I will say again that you have to actually clean what the beer touches. You either need to physically brush the insides or use a caustic or other inline cleaning solution designed to get the organics off the surface.

I prefer hot oxyclean and a line brush over harsh chemicals.

Many people rinse and sanitize and have no problems but you see what can happen sometimes.

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When you see caustic or other inline cleaning solution, do you mean something like PBW? Thanks again!

EvilTOJ said:

As someone who's been battling a microbial war, I have this advice.

Bleach Holocaust. Bleach all of your brewing equipment that doesn't get boiled. And I DO mean EVERYTHING! All your tubing, buckets, carboys, bottling tree, and your bottles. Yes, your bottles too. If the infection was in there, it will only sit and wait until you bottle and it'll show up again.

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+1. Mixing up the sanitation regiment is always a good idea. I do this every 3 - 4 brews just to F up the microbes and wild yeasts. After a thorough cleaning - Bleach water + a little distilled vinegar to bring the pH down to neutral. Let it sit for awhile then rinse really well.

After that Star san..

For my bleaching procedure (and because I was pissed at the microbes for DARING to mess up my brews) I ran the bath full of water, and kept pouring bleach into the water until it reeked like a pool, then into the bath it went! I left it at least overnight.

Afterwords I gave everything a thorough bath until it no longer smelled like bleach and set it out to dry. A laborious process, but so far so good.

For the glass I echo everyone's sentiments about a bleach slash and burn....

EvilTOJ said:

For my bleaching procedure (and because I was pissed at the microbes for DARING to mess up my brews) I ran the bath full of water, and kept pouring bleach into the water until it reeked like a pool, then into the bath it went! I left it at least overnight.

Afterwords I gave everything a thorough bath until it no longer smelled like bleach and set it out to dry. A laborious process, but so far so good.

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Cool, thanks, sounds like a good idea. I, too, am angered. I might add that your signature line also becomes much more clear.

Thanks, I stole it from Dave Barry. It seems quite appropriate for this mental ill.. erm hobby, don't you think?

So, as I said, I bought new tubing, spigot, etc. Today, I'm bleaching my glass carboys and bottles. Think I should throw out the cardboard boxes holding my bottles, or is that too paranoid?

OK that's being TOO paranoid. The boxes are fine.

Ahhh, too late. After an unknown amount of drinking last night, I decided it was imperative that I purge my house of the possibly, no almost certainly, infected cardboard. Hobby / mental illness line officially crossed. Oh well.

Well, I ditched all my plastic and bleached all my glass. After a few month hiatus, I brewed two batches today. Morebeer's american amber extract to warm up, and then a Fuggles IPA all grain. Happily in the fermenters now. Waiting game now to see if the infection rears its ugly head again... Now, time to keep getting loaded off commercial beer (Hopslam!)

cheeseshark said:

Well, I ditched all my plastic and bleached all my glass. After a few month hiatus, I brewed two batches today. Morebeer's american amber extract to warm up, and then a Fuggles IPA all grain. Happily in the fermenters now. Waiting game now to see if the infection rears its ugly head again... Now, time to keep getting loaded off commercial beer (Hopslam!)

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Okay... so how did it go? Inquiring minds what to know....

Hydrometer samples tasted great. I bottled both batches today, and the samples I had tasted great as well. We'll see how it tastes in a few weeks.

Well, if anyone is interested, I tasted both of my batches after my replace plastic/bleach glass offensive against infections. Both tasted good. The all grain tasted REALLY good. The extract was so-so, but no off flavors or anything like that.

So, we'll see - the infections in the past did not rear their ugly head until about 2 months in the bottle - these are at 4 1/2 weeks.

Well, both batches of my recent beer are strongly sour. They tasted a hint of sour last week, but I tried to convince myself that I was imagining it. I'm not. They taste disgusting. No real flavor / body other than the sour. It is not an overwhelming sour taste, but that is all you taste.

So, mother effer times 100,000. I am actually quite depressed about this, and at a total loss. I don't know what else I could possibly do.

Summary of what I have already done:
1. Beer started getting infections. Would generally taste fine out of fermenters (except once), but would turn bad in bottles (sour taste usually, also smoky once, and several gusher problems).
2. Fought infection by switching to star san for sanitizing (oxy clean for cleaning). Replaced all plastic. Used PBW on carboys, then bleached them. I even got new bottles.
3. Brewed 2 new batches. Tasted fine out of fermenters and after a month in bottles. Tasted sour after 1 1/2 months in bottle.

I mean, I REALLY don't know what else I could do. I don't want to throw away any more money, but I also want to make some beer that is good.

How do you clean & sanitize your autosiphon?

Have you dismantled and cleaned/sanitized your spigot?

sometimes it's in the smallest crevices that the microparticles hide.

Have you checked your bottling bucket for scratches?

Revvy said:

How do you clean & sanitize your autosiphon?

Have you dismantled and cleaned/sanitized your spigot?

sometimes it's in the smallest crevices that the microparticles hide.

Have you checked your bottling bucket for scratches?

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I replaced all my plastic, autosiphon and bottling bucket / bottling bucket spigot included. I had not used a spigot on my brew pot in the past, but on these batches I used one, but it was new.

Someone on HBT once claimed (and this is second hand, and not verified AT ALL) that their air conditioning unit became infected with Lactobacillus, which was then spread to all of their future brews until they changed their air filters and sanitized their whole A/C unit.

This may very well be BS, but honestly, if I was in your shoes, I would be willing to drink straight shots of Star San to clean up my brewery. It's just a thought, and probably not a great one, but I'd hate to see you suffer from any more infections.

llazy_llama said:

Someone on HBT once claimed (and this is second hand, and not verified AT ALL) that their air conditioning unit became infected with Lactobacillus, which was then spread to all of their future brews until they changed their air filters and sanitized their whole A/C unit.

This may very well be BS, but honestly, if I was in your shoes, I would be willing to drink straight shots of Star San to clean up my brewery. It's just a thought, and probably not a great one, but I'd hate to see you suffer from any more infections.

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Yeah, I think I may have read that thread. I turned off my furnace while brewing / bottling to try and reduce any air contaminants. I don't know if I'm ready to brew again just off changing my furnace filters. Not slamming your idea, mind you, because I sure don't have any better ones.

Edit - Of course, nothing is really going to guarantee a lack of infection at this point. I really have to think it is something floating around in the air at this point, since I basically had all new equipment.

I don't sanitize half as much as you do and i have never had an infected batch of anything in the past year...mind you i just started making beer.

On to why i posted...

When i first moved into my house I set my winery (I never made beer at this point) in the basement. Everything I made went bad, which for those of you who don't make wine you must understand is a challenge. I fixed the problem by making it upstairs and thought it must be the dampness and dust in the basement. A few years later I helped remodel and build a room down there, behind the drywall were wine posters for different kit manufactures. As it turns out the previous owner was a home brewer as well.

What does it mean? No idea. I think that he was experimenting with MLF or maybe he spilled a large amount of wine in the carpet and wine spoilage bacteria are still breeding. Maybe that has nothing to do with it and its actually just the dust. I don't know. Seems like a weird coincidence.

I still can't brew or make wine in the basement. Although I don't have access to no rinse sanitizers at a reasonable cost.

If your really want to make beer try a complete change of scenery. Try and brew it outdoors or maybe your friends place.

I got hit with pedio infection due to AC a few years back.

Do you see anything on top of the beer? Lacto and ped usually leave some sort of white film on top.

I suggest this: find another nearby brewer and ask if you can take your gear to their house to brew a batch. Then have them WATCH (and watch only-- no helping) while you brew the batch.

They are looking for where your process introduces a contaminant--- you might not even be aware of your behavior.


By doing it at their house you have eliminated your hosue as the infection source.

Denny's Evil Concoctions said:

I got hit with pedio infection due to AC a few years back.

Do you see anything on top of the beer? Lacto and ped usually leave some sort of white film on top.

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Yeah, I saw your mention of that in an old thread. No, I saw no white film on the beer. But, are there any other bugs that would cause the strong sour taste?