Need Sanitation Help!!

Hi Guys,
Well I was brewing really good beer but...something has gone terribly wrong and my last three batches have been awful! They are really sour. I need some help tracking down the problem. My last three beers fermented normally, no signs or smell of an infection. They tasted fine coming out of the fermentor into the keg. The problem I think is happening in the keg. I PBW and Star San the kegs before racking. I have replaced my auto-siphon and hoses. Is there a chance that my disconnects, CO2 hose , and regulator could be infected? I am going to tear apart the kegs, replace all the gaskets/o-rings, and boil the poppets. Is there anything else I should be looking at doing? Thanks. Al

Have you brewed since you replaced the auto-siphon and hoses? That to me seems your most likely suspect for infection. You may have fixed the problem and just don't know it yet.

Are you taking the in/out posts apart when you san the kegs? As a matter of practice, we fully disassemble the kegs when we sanitize and make sure each little part gets in contact with the PBW and San. Overkill perhaps, but not if you're facing infection issues. I also assume the San you're using is fresh and active, not old san that may have lost its potency.

In addition to replacing anything rubber on the kegs make sure your dip tube is clean. You can get in there using a line brush and make sure nothing is lurking in there.

For slightly less likely suspects, where are you doing your racking from fermenter to keg? Any chance you have airborn issues? Open/cracked windows, transferring near an heater exhaust, anything like that?

Bret is one of the most likely sources of a "soured" contamination (although it sounds like the character you're describing is showing up pretty quickly and bret usually takes a while). Anyway, assuming it could be bret, the vast majority of grain is FULL of bret. Are you transferring in the same room you keep your grain? Sounds silly, but you aren't milling grain then handling fermented wort? The bret can collect in the grain dust on clothing, etc, and make a brush up with a hose, or other thing that comes in contact with your beer, a potential source of contamination. And, sounding even sillier, are you clean when you're handling your racking? If you've been outside and you've got the same clothes you were wearing all day on when racking any multiude of bacteria could be lurking on your clothes ready to shake off into your beer / brush on your lines.

Just a few suggestions. Good luck with finding the problem. Blown batches are incredibly frustrating!

I racked an APA last week using the new siphon and hoses and got the same sour taste. Beer looks great and smells ok but tastes awful. I am tearing apart the infected kegs right now. I transfer the beer in the kitchen where I always do so I don't think that is the problem. I guess I will try the keg solution first....

It tasted fine coming out of the fermenter? One week is really fast for a taste tainting infection to go from 0-60. Can you be more descriptive on the "sour" taste. What does it taste like, vinegar, spoiled milk???? That may help with the diagnosis.

Actually it was two weeks out of the fermentor....I would say it would be more vinegar. It doesn't make you want to hurl like spoiled milk would...just a very sour taste. I am guessing it is acetabactor?? Small ring of scum in one of the kegs. Whatever it is...it is the same in all three kegs. Same sour taste in varying degrees.

Typical infection causes are tubing, raking canes, threads and valves. The keg disconnects should be taken apart and cleaned. The plastic ones have a big slot in them that allows you to remove its parts.

Tubing should be cleaned with a brush or chemical cleaners like bar line cleaner and flushed with sanitizer. Follow the directions on the bottle to be sure to clean them properly.

Backflow into your co2 lines can reinfect new batches of beer. The infected beer can dry in the lines and some will flake off and blow into the new batch.

O-rings on your posts and diptubes should be cleaned. Rubbing them lightly after soaking in some pbw or oxyclean will get any biofilm off and allow the sanitizer to work.

Anything that cannot be physically scrubbed should be suspect.