Beer tastes like vinegar

I just popped the cap off my first ale and it tastes like vinegar and was barely carbed.

I steeped 4oz of Debittered Black Malt for 30 mins at 155F in 2 g of spring water, then boiled 6lbs of light DME with 1 oz of Cascade and 1 oz of Centennial hops for 1 hour. Quickly cooled in an ice bath and mixed into 3 g of spring water and pitched a starter of S04 yeast at 70F and fermented in primary 3 weeks.

I racked onto 5oz of water/priming sugar solution and bottled a week ago. When I bottled, the top of the beer had a slight oily look.

Any advice?

Try another bottle or two. If they all taste like vinegar, you have an acetobacter infection and you're on your way to having 5 gallons of vinegar, not beer.

Malt vinegar is a good thing to have on hand though -- just not 5 gallons of it.

I am particularly concerned now with my 2nd batch. I am using the same fermenter. I sanitized it with Star San for a good while, but...

Very discouraging.

Happens to everyone sooner or later. Definitely try a couple more bottles. If they're all like this, chances are the infection started in your fermentor or your bottling bucket. Cooling with an ice bath is also a potential place for problems because it may take a while to cool and leave the wort at dangerous temperature ranges for longer.

One place to look that a lot of beginners forget is the spigot on your bucket. You have to take it a part and completely immerse it in sanitizer (scrub it well, to make sure there's no hidden corners).
Good luck

boist said:

one place to look that a lot of beginners forget is the spigot on your bucket. You have to take it a part and completely immerse it in sanitizer (scrub it well, to make sure there's no hidden corners).
Good luck

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+1

dont forget about fruit flies

After bottling the yeast cake did smell a bit acidic in the fermenter.. Must have started in the fermenter. I did remove the airlock for a bit to check gravity about 2 weeks in. I am thinking this is where it caught the infection, as the sample I took smelled and tasted fine. Definitely a practice I won't repeat. I will just wait til bottling to check gravity from now on.

My hope is that my fermenter isn't ruined as I have a Dubbel going in it right now about a week in. Don't want 5 more gallons of vinegar.

i thought it takes A LOT of time and A LOT of oxygen to make vinegar.

i like sour beers that have a moderate/high level of vinegar, Cuvee Rene for example.

I wouldn't say its vinegar yet, but it's definitely on its way. Opened a few more bottles and it's in all of them. How stubborn is this stuff in a plastic bucket?

if you can afford to buy a new plastic bucket and spigot, do it. if there are any scratches in the plastic bucket then it might be impossible to clean.

What are the chances of my current batch becoming infected in this fermenter? As the last batch was my first beer, having 2 out of 2 ruined batches would be awful.

If the last batch was your first, and assuming that you got a new bucket when you started, chances are that the fault is in your process, not your equipment. Buckets do wear down over time, but to have one that's infected out of the gate is rare.

That said, there's nothing you can do for your current batch right now, so relax and don't worry about it. For future batches, however, you should look over your cleaning and sanitation procedure. Are you using the proper cleaner? Do you take out the spigot and clean it (inside and out) using a stiff hair brush? Do you scrub your bucket with a scotch pad/brillo? (If you do, stop it! That's how you get scratches in a ferm bucket) Do you clean the lid, including the groove around the edge? Do you sanitize the airlock? What do you put in the airlock? What do you use to pour the wort into the bucket? How do you chill? And so on and so forth.

Basically, from the moment you turn the heat off, everything that touches your wort must be sanitary. With that in mind, look for weak spots, and see what you can do better.

+1 to above post. Sanitize the **** out of everything. Better safe than sorry. I had a faulty tap on a fermentor that was leaking beer and fruit flies found it. Real strong vinegar smell around the tap. Sounds dumb now but I had no way of properly sanitizing it, so just bottled it. I normally keg but had wanted to bottle this ipa. it's probably a lost batch but I'll leave it and see. Anyway, I ordered some starsan and hopefully I won't have this prob again. By the way, I'm in oz and starsan isn't that easy to come by down here.

Unless you've seriously gouged up your fermenter and don't clean well, the odds that you've ruined a fermenter are negligible.

boist said:

If the last batch was your first, and assuming that you got a new bucket when you started, chances are that the fault is in your process, not your equipment. Buckets do wear down over time, but to have one that's infected out of the gate is rare.

That said, there's nothing you can do for your current batch right now, so relax and don't worry about it. For future batches, however, you should look over your cleaning and sanitation procedure. Are you using the proper cleaner? Do you take out the spigot and clean it (inside and out) using a stiff hair brush? Do you scrub your bucket with a scotch pad/brillo? (If you do, stop it! That's how you get scratches in a ferm bucket) Do you clean the lid, including the groove around the edge? Do you sanitize the airlock? What do you put in the airlock? What do you use to pour the wort into the bucket? How do you chill? And so on and so forth.

Basically, from the moment you turn the heat off, everything that touches your wort must be sanitary. With that in mind, look for weak spots, and see what you can do better.

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There were definitely some rough spots in my process. For starters, I didn't have any Star San. Although I was using bleach and water for sanitation. I now have Star San and used it to sanitize all materials on my 2nd batch. As far as proper cleaner, I am using dishsoap, hot water, and a rag to clean. I am sure there is a better cleaner I should get from my LBHS.

With my first batch, I fermented too hot in the first 24 hours. 79F inside fermenter with Safale S04. I have since made sure to keep my fermenting temps at bay with the swamp method. Once I cooled everything down, the change in temp sucked the ISOPROPYL ALCHOHOL through the airlock into the fermenter. (Yeah, I know) Using Star San solution in my airlock now.

Also with my first batch, I took a gravity reading 2 weeks in. When I did this the beer smelled good and tasted ok. I took the reading through the airlock hole. When I did this I took the airlock off and with me while I went and sanitized my racking cake to take the reading (I need a thief if I am ever going to do this again). This step took a long time and exposed my beer to oxygen and critters and whatnot. Pretty sure this is what got me.

When bottling, the beer smelled...meh. The yeast cake smelled HORRIBLE. So the process up to bottling is where it happened for sure, however bottling was a huge learning experience (and pain in the a$$). I have now bought an autosiphon and a bottling wand.

well, if you used bleach and water only for sanitation, you really didn't sanitize anything. You of course had to rinse the bleach from the equipment and in order to do that you had to use water (which would not have been sanitized). I would say this was the major flaw and if you properly sanitized this time, you should be alright.

As for cleaning your equipment, you can use oxiclean FREE and rinse well (important). A lot of people do that (including me) and it works very well.


If all the bottles truly are turning to vinegar, save some if you'd like some vinegar, and dump the rest. Personally i wouldn't reuse the bottles, others may argue otherwise.

Jwood said:

well, if you used bleach and water only for sanitation, you really didn't sanitize anything. You of course had to rinse the bleach from the equipment and in order to do that you had to use water (which would not have been sanitized). I would say this was the major flaw and if you properly sanitized this time, you should be alright.

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All sani brew is a powdered bleach . Chlorine is a bleach, chlorine is in water from your tap. I have always rinsed my sanitized equipment with extremely hot tap water and never had an issue.

Relative of mine brewed all grain for 20 years and he always rinses with tap water in his fermenter all other instruments he use iodophor in a spray bottle.

star san is not powder nor chlorine, it is a liquid phosphoric acid

Ramitt said:

star san is not powder nor chlorine, it is a liquid phosphoric acid

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My mistake turns out I use sani brew.
Still bleach is a sanitizer , pretty sure Palmer even recommends bleach .

Before I brewed my new batch I sprayed everything down with Star San and let sit a good while. Then I sprayed again. And then one more time.

MisterShah said:

Before I brewed my new batch I sprayed everything down with Star San and let sit a good while. Then I sprayed again. And then one more time.

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That a boy , you can never sanitize too much.

Ozzfest05 said:

That a boy , you can never sanitize too much.

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Then again, letting it sit is unnecessary. The beauty of Star San is that it sanitizes in 15 seconds. (Unlike some other sanitizers, like ammonia-based stuff, that can take up to 15 minutes) But Ozz is right, you can never over-sanitize. (Well, you can, if half of your 5 Gallon batch is Star San foam, you're probably over doing it. But you get the drift... :cross

MisterShah said:

With my first batch, I fermented too hot in the first 24 hours. 79F inside fermenter with Safale S04. I have since made sure to keep my fermenting temps at bay with the swamp method. Once I cooled everything down, the change in temp sucked the ISOPROPYL ALCHOHOL through the airlock into the fermenter. (Yeah, I know) Using Star San solution in my airlock now.

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Just wanting to clarify what you know about using Isopropyl Alcohol. This is not the same alcohol that we want to drink. That is ethyl alcohol. Isopropyl is POISON!!!! It takes just 15mL of isopropyl alcohol to be at poisonous levels. Luckily, this beer got ruined, as even if you dont ingest 15mL of the stuff, it is broken down into acetone by your liver. Acetone is another nasty solvent we may know as nail polish remover. Fun stuff to have floating around your bloodstream. In addition to ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL being POISON, it also evaporates so fast that you will likely run your airlock dry, increasing the chances of contamination when the wort stops becoming a closed system. Just wanted to share

Btw, i know that this is my first post, and that i am a relative newb, but i feel like a regular brewmaster with all of the great knowledge that people with passion are willing to share. Thanks everyone

Lyghtnin

If you MUST lock with something other than water, I strongly encourage tequila. It seems to be the gloppiest of the high ETOH liquors on the market. I've filled airlocks with rum and vodka before and they didn't seem to "last" as well as using tequila.

As for the comment about 15ml of isopropynol being a poison, let's get real -- 15 ml out of 20,000 ml is just about nothing when consumed 335ml at a time -- its less than 1 part per thousand. Or put another way, he'd have to drink 3 335 ml bottles to get 1 ml of isopropynol.

1. the powders are cleansers, not sanitizers
2. rags can cause infection. i hop you used a fairly clean rag and sanitized the hell out of it with a bleach solution.

tallgirl said:

As for the comment about 15ml of isopropynol being a poison, let's get real -- 15 ml out of 20,000 ml is just about nothing when consumed 335ml at a time -- its less than 1 part per thousand. Or put another way, he'd have to drink 3 335 ml bottles to get 1 ml of isopropynol.

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Yes, you are right that the likelihood of the small amount of alcohol hoovered back through an airlock due to pressure/temperature differential would outright kill someone is small. Just because 15mL is the estimate for poisonous levels doesnt mean that less wont hurt you. However, anyone with a compromised liver (lots of people with liver issues still drink like fishes) that has to process the ethanol, the isopropanol, and potential other medications at once are at a high risk. Normal folks may have an anaphylactic reaction to having isopropanol acetone running through their veins. I for one would rather preserve my liver to let me destroy it the way i want to, not by using something that can kill you outright. Just stating that it is a really, really, really bad idea to get the stuff anywhere near your brew.

Lyghtnin

Dogphish said:

1. the powders are cleansers, not sanitizers
2. rags can cause infection. i hop you used a fairly clean rag and sanitized the hell out of it with a bleach solution.

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Diversol or Sani brew is a pink chlorinated powder which is a sanitizer as well as a cleanser.

MisterShah said:

Before I brewed my new batch I sprayed everything down with Star San and let sit a good while. Then I sprayed again. And then one more time.

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YES! I do a StarSan soak of everything that touches my cooled wort, after dumping the StarSan right before throwing the wort into the fermenter, I give everything a good spray down with StarSan making sure everything is wet, even the rim and outside of the bucket and the outside of the lid.

MisterShah said:

I just popped the cap off my first ale and it tastes like vinegar and was barely carbed.

I steeped 4oz of Debittered Black Malt for 30 mins at 155F in 2 g of spring water, then boiled 6lbs of light DME with 1 oz of Cascade and 1 oz of Centennial hops for 1 hour. Quickly cooled in an ice bath and mixed into 3 g of spring water and pitched a starter of S04 yeast at 70F and fermented in primary 3 weeks.

I racked onto 5oz of water/priming sugar solution and bottled a week ago. When I bottled, the top of the beer had a slight oily look.

Any advice?

Click to expand...

Me to. I am a concentrate brewer not a real one. Really careful on sanitation. Follow the same formula and brewing method for years. Now I have 23 litres of slightly vinergarly beer. Deciding if it's drinkable or down the sink. It's sad huh