Campden tablet to inhibit wild yeast?

I have ~20 brews under my belt, and I think I'm pretty thorough with cleaning and sanitation, but I MAY be dealing with a wild yeast in some of my batches. In order to test that theory, I had the idea of throwing in half a crushed Campden tablet to "stabilize" the beer post-fermentation.

The problem doesn't seem to happen on every batch, and I can't figure out a pattern to what causes it. But when it does strike, the beer finishes fermentation just fine, steady at 1.015 or so, depending on the recipe. I'll bottle or keg it and let it condition for ~2 weeks. The beer tastes for for the next couple weeks, but around a month old, I start to notice weird things in the foam - like the head will break up into clumps instead of forming a solid layer. And it starts to taste sour and thin. The next brew I make won't exhibit any of those symptoms.

So what do you think of using Campden to try to narrow down the problem?

Not sure about the Campden helping out on this one. Never tried it, so I won't say it's a bad idea but I won't say it's good one.

My first steps in this type of situation would be retiring a lot of my rubber and soft plastic components. Autosiphon, bungs, keg gaskets, etc. and just going through and making sure everything is cleaned and sanitized before trying to throw any chemicals into my beer.

My thoughts are, sulfites are only effective for so long, you could sulfite your beer but if the infection problem lies somewhere else it is still going to surface eventually. Gaskets and tubing are cheap, auto-siphons not exactly, but they are cheaper than losing a batch of beer.

Yeah, the auto-siphon is the leading culprit at this point. Hard to believe that something is harbored in there, since I racked an entire 5 gallon keg of Star-San through it before transferring this batch.

I'll throw it away, but I'm also interesting in salvaging this batch before it gets too sour. Since Campden creates sulphur gas, will it leave sulphur flavor behind in a sealed, pressurized keg, or can I just purge the headspace afterwards like usual?

Do you bottle condition your beer? The Camden tablet should kill all you yeast after fermentation. If you bottle condition your bill, you will need to repitch some yeast to get your beer to carbonate. Otherwise it seems to me that it should work.

Campden may or may not work. A couple of years ago I did a cider experiment where I fermented 4 batches of cider at the same time from the same source with 2 yeasts, 2 with campden and 2 without. The 2 without got pitched yeast as soon as I got it home, airated, and added nutrient. The other 2 got campden to get pitched 24 hours later.

Well to make a long story short, I got interupted the next day and only pitched 1 of the 2 campden batches. 48 hours later I remembered forgeting to pitch one batch and when I went to look in the fermenter it was already well underway at full kreusen from the wild yeast in the cider itself. Apparently the campden didn't do much to the wild yeast or at least one kind that was already there.

Funny thing is that after fermentation the wild batch tasted horrible and I was tempted to dump it, but after reading many many cider stories here I decide to try to wait it out. After 3 months in the fermenter and another 9 months in a keg it turned to be the best tasting cider of the bunch and according to my wife the best I ever made.

FWIW, the 2 other yeasts were Wyeast 4766 (Cider) and S04. Which all came out good, but not as good as the wild yeast.

LuiInIdaho said:

Do you bottle condition your beer? The Camden tablet should kill all you yeast after fermentation. If you bottle condition your bill, you will need to repitch some yeast to get your beer to carbonate. Otherwise it seems to me that it should work.

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well, I am force-carbing this particular batch, so no problem killing all yeast

actually, I am surprised anything could be growing in the keg at 40 F? Shouldn't all yeast go dormant at those temps?