new home curse...6infected batches and counting

I just moved to a new city and have everything set up new here. The week I moved in I brewed two batches so I could get something into the keg fridge. Shortly thereafter, within two days in the primary, the first batch turned for the worst. I have never seen an infection spread and kill a beer in the time span and violent nature that this happened. It appeared, at first, to be the most active fermentation I’d ever seen. But it wasn’t the yeast. Dumped, and decided to ditch that primary. It had been with me a long time, was stained and I could never really get the beer smell out any more.

Background: I figure I have averaged around a batch of beer a week for the last two years. I use a bucket primary and then into glass carboys after 4-7 days. I usually went with 7; Saturday to Saturday. I have lost 3 batches in the last two years, two with slow starts that became infected and one choc cherry stout that I clearly didn’t deal with the raw fruit correctly.

I have been here almost a month and I just dumped my fourth batch of beer into the toilet. I have two batches I kegged directly from the primary to see if I could save them but I suspect they will follow down the ****ter.
All 6 batches I have brewed in this apartment have turned south. This is after a very clean brewing record. This is killing me!!

What I do and what I’ve changed:
The first two batches were mini-mash recipes I’ve been using for quite some time. Used regular mash & hop scheduling, cleaning regiment, cooling with chiller, etc. Both dead. Cleaning: I cleaned and sanitized everything with sani-brew, then rinsed. Never had any issue with the rinse so had no concern. Also, since I’m doing a mini-mash, I top up with tap water to get to 5gl. Also, never had any issue so never had any concern before.

Next three batches: I was out of supplies so hit the local brew shop. Apparently they had no more supplies than I had. Lame. So I bought 4 Brew House kits. Never used these before but I had heard good things in passing. I “brewed” three of them. One was clearly f&@#$ the next day and the other two seemed questionable after around a week. I kegged the two since they seemed on the cusp. Not sure to what end, we will see. For these bathes I bought all new equipment. Like I said above, my old primaries had been used for years so it seemed like a good time to replace. Still cleaned and sanitized these with sani-brew and rinsed.

My last batch (the one I just flushed) fermented for three days before turning south. It was an adaptation of an old recipe (to utilize stuff I had), smelled fine yesterday and filled my apartment with the rotten stench I’m sadly becoming used to by the time I was home from work today. I had switched to sanitizing with star-san (no rinse) and, as one might imagine, my cleaning & sanitization scrutiny has increased exponentially with every batch lost!

The only consistent factor I can see is the tap water. I have altered my cleaning/sanitization practices as this brewing nightmare has unfolded, but to no avail. However, I have topped up the primary to 5gl with tap water for all batches. I currently have no way of treating the water (charcoal filter) and I’m on transit so bringing spring water to my fourth floor walk-up is not a practical solution.

So what are your thoughts, could this be something in the water here? (I’m now in Edmonton, Alberta, Ca) I know they have cloramine in the water here but that shouldn’t cause infection. What else could it be? Something in the air?

My next brew will go directly into a glass carboy in order to avoid ANY chance of airborn contamination and I think I need to go with filtered or bottled water but I’m not sure how I can manage that.
I desperately need to find the cause of this so I can brew!

Pascal

I'm no pro, but the first thing I would try is using boiled then cooled water to top off with.

If water is the only common factor you can find, you need to eliminate that.

I use straight tap water for top-up now, but for a while I was ultra paranoid and when I had the wort cooling in 1 pan, I had a second large pot boiling with water, and in it was also any strainers, glass jugs, ladles that I would use on the wort after it had cooled.

After removing everything from the boiling water, I cooled it with my immersion cooler that I took straight from the now cooled wort did a great job of cleaning the immersion cooler.

Boiling the water will also get rid of the cloramines. If you don't have an IC, you can boil the water the night before and let cool with the lid on overnight. If you only have 1 large pot, you can add the cooled water to the sanitized fermenter before brewing.

It may be something else, but until you eliminate this as a potential problem, it will always be on your mind.

I have heard of air vents in brewing rooms causing situations just like this, is there forced air in your apartment. Edmonton should have supplies somewhere you could also try a "regular" batch as its all brewhouse kits that have gone bad if I read that correctly?

Are you using a different yeast? An old kit yeast?

I would start there. Good luck!

Chloramines cannot be removed by boiling, try treating your water with a Campden tablet to remove them. I'd still suggest boiling all water that goes in your beer however.

Thanks folks,

I'll try the boil as it should hopefully kill anything that would cause this but from what I've read it won't touch cloramine as it is much stabler than clorine. (Not that I'm that worried about it, just a thought)

I guess one of my key questions is: could there actually be anything in water that is treated with cloramine that could live through that process and cause infection in beer?

@ Finnagann - I have brewed (or tried to) different brews in different spots in the apartment without any gain. A few different yeists depending on batch. 3 kit batches, 3 batches from ingredients (mini-mash style).

I did use Campdem for one of the brews (brewed from ingredient, not kit) but it turned just as quick. For that batch I had added Camdem to ALL my brewing water; that needed for boil and that for top-up. Didn't help with this infection.

Also, I have cleaned this place out very well between these failures to try and avoid any sort of spread but it hasn't seemed to help.

Snicks said:

Chloramines cannot be removed by boiling, try treating your water with a Campden tablet to remove them.

Click to expand...

Actually, then can be removed by boiling; extended boiling.

From wikipedia:

Home brewers use reducing agents such as sodium metabisulfite or potassium metabisulfite to remove chloramine from brewing fermented beverages. Chloramine, like chlorine, can be removed by boiling. However the boiling time required to remove the chloramine is much longer than that of chlorine.

Chloramine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Topping off with tap water is the culprit here. Boil some topping-off water the night before and toss the pot in the fridge, or use distilled bottled water. Toss all your tubing and replace it with tubing that can be boiled... it's cheap insurance in the long run.

wow it sounds really bad, i would be very upset if this happened to me so good luck with solving it. I see you suspecting water as a source of contamination and from the info provided looks like its very possible so i would work on this first, boil it or use bottled/filtered water (i would just go for groceries filtered water for about $1 per gallon) also bleach your carboy use fresh starsan dilution (i sometimes reuse the same solution), make sure all your equipment is dismembered and sanitized (aeration, racking, cooling, spigots ect)
Does all the contaminated batches look the same, is it the same bug?, how does it look like r its just smell?, is there a way to identify contamination (post the picture of your contamination on lambic forum maybe?)
good luck

just a stupid question, what is your indication that the batches are infected. 7 days would be pretty quick for an infection to take over a proper pitch of yeast i would think.

commonsenseman said:

I'm no pro, but the first thing I would try is using boiled then cooled water to top off with.

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Exactly what I was thinking. my buddy had that happen and now he tops off with boiled water from the tap (cooled of coarse).

-BobbyB

Finnagann said:

I have heard of air vents in brewing rooms causing situations just like this, is there forced air in your apartment. Edmonton should have supplies somewhere you could also try a "regular" batch as its all brewhouse kits that have gone bad if I read that correctly?

Are you using a different yeast? An old kit yeast?

I would start there. Good luck!

Click to expand...

Good point about the air. If boiling your top off water doesn't work try replacing you air filter in your apt AND shutting off hvac during your brewing process. That should minimize airborne micro bugs from infecting your brew.

-BobbyB

Thanks CCISZEW,
I've been using strong, fresh sani-bre & star-san. I had bleached my containers between uses after the first infection, threw them out after the second.

Your last question is the most important: YES, clearly the same bug. The smell is increasingly bad, a sort of rotten sea food smell. How aggressive it is is also interesting. A batch will show no sign of issue but be totally fd the next day, enough to stink up the entire place when lid is removed. The first bath that turned on me had white flecks all over the top, seemingly in a thick layer. It actually looked like dry yeast had been dumped in excess all over the wort. Others, that I caught earlier, had what appeared to be small areas of white growth, like mold on the top. That was after 2 or 3 days of fermentation, not any extended period of time.

Yeast: I use nottingham for most of my ales lately (3 of the 6 noted) and the kits I used came with coopers

You're rinsing after sanitizing? If you have starsan try not rinsing?

rockfish: Did that with the last batch, the one I put in the toilet today. Rinsing was with sani-brew which is what I was using for most equipment before this problem. I used to just use star-san for kegs.

I figure waster has to be the answer to this problem. Hauling water home in containers however isn't a real answer since I'm on the bus and live top floor of a 4 floor walk-up.

Possible solutions (betting on water being the issue):
a) Charcoal filter for the tap?
b) Boil ALL brew water the day before?
c) can tablets help with this sort of thing?

Charcoal won't remove microbes that cause infections.

You should boil/cool the topping off water the day before you brew.

Tablets would harm the yeast you pitch as much as anything else. Replace your tubing, nuke everything with strong/hot bleach water solution, pre-boil topping off water, turn off the central air when racking/pitching -- you should be good to go.

Sorry, to get back to an earlier question, if the tap water is chlorinated with chlorine or chloramine (sp?), that water should not have ANYTHING in it that could cause an infection in a brew, could it? Would that water not be fairly close to 'sanitized'? Sorry, I'm ignorant on this concept.

Have you considered that you might have a mold problem somewhere in your new place? If so, you might have health problems in addition to your beer problems after long term exposure to mold spores in the air. Was there any airborne pathogen assessment done and documented before you moved in? I'm not trying to freak you out, but perhaps a mold test might be in order.

@brewtus: no worries, I've dealt with mold in the past so I appreciate your post without being freaked out. No, unfortunately due to timing and other issues I rented this place sight unseen and moved in around 3 weeks ago. To the eye it looks good but for mold, who knows. I did have similar thoughts. If the problem is not water, some sort of fungal culprit was my thought. Yeast can not move around on it's own (if lid is on, brew is safe) but fungus can move around and get into areas.

Is there a test that you're aware of that can be used in an apartment type setting?

What kind of shape is your faucet in? Maybe a shot in the dark... but could there be bugs on the underside of your faucet that may get into the water and are strong enough to live until they get a new home in your wort?

Definitely the water. Blame canada.

Brek81 said:

just a stupid question, what is your indication that the batches are infected. 7 days would be pretty quick for an infection to take over a proper pitch of yeast i would think.

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I was just reading along and I am sorry but did you ever answer this question by Brek81?

Pascal - Not sure. I am a chemist, but biochemistry is not my specialty. I know that at my place of business, we were having people with all sorts of sinus/respiratory issues. We asked our Environmental/Safety guy to check into what was in the air. He got some environmental company to come in and they placed what amounted to petri dishes all over the office for a few days and then collected them. They did the analysis and it came back as black mold. After searching the building, they eventually found mold in the plenum air space in a couple of areas.

Maybe you could talk to the local health department or whatever it is in Canada. I think that there are online places that can do mold analysis for you, but I'm not sure what they cost. Try an online search.

Not sure if you want to trust your landlord, he may be biased.

Good Luck!

From reading this whole thread, I'd suspect the top up water from your tap too, but there might be something else you are missing. Here are my suggestions.

Boil your top up water the day before you brew and store it covered in a sanitized container in your fridge. Or buy bottled water. I saw where you said that buying water would be inconvenient due to use of bus transportation and living on the 3rd floor, but just suffer it for one batch. It's not like you need that much water for top up.

Make sure you completely DISASSEMBLE and CLEAN and SANITIZE EVERYTHING that touches your wort post-boil. Remove airlock from bung. Sanitize stirring spoons, measuring cups and spoons, hydrometer, thermometer, et. al.

Sanitize the outside of your yeast packages before opening them.

Ferment in a glass carboy, or buy a brand new fermenter.

Buy a new airlock and bung.

Switch sanitizers. If you are using Star San, switch to Iodaphor, or vice versa.

The chloramine can influence the taste of your beer. Otherwise it is harmless. John Palmer says that metabisulfite (Campden tabs) will neutralize it. Chapter 4 - Water for Extract Brewing

Just a blog, but worth a read regarding chloramine: Beer Geeking: Water: Chlorine, Chloramine and Chlorophenols, my nemeses


As the previous poster and a couple others earlier mentioned, it might also be worth having the air quality in your apartment checked. You might have a mold problem.

@ReverseApacheMaster: Yep, blame Canada. But the water in Prince George was great!

@Brek81 & jgln: Fermentation starting properly, for a few days. Then batch turns rancid in a matter of 12-24 hours. When I say rancid I mean largely the stench coming from the brew. Hard to miss. Not a whole lot to speak of visually, except for what I've already mentioned. Yes, 7 days is very quick for such a thing to happen, 12-24 hours is ridiculous. As I mention earlier, I've never seen anything so aggressive as far as an infection is concerned. Then again, I haven't seen very many infections.

thanks billtzk. As far as the switching cleaners and sanitizers & replacing equipment I've tried those. I agree, I'll suck it up and pack the water for next batch in order to eliminate that variable. I figure I'll bring enough for the entire bath though, not just top-up. I'm also changing to glass carboy for primary instead of plastic bucket style primary.

With regard to chloramine, I didn't suspect it was the culprit. My question was if that treatment would kill wild yeast or bacteria that could be causing issues from tap water. After all, it is treated, isn't that what it does?

Pascal said:

@ReverseApacheMaster: Yep, blame Canada. But the water in Prince George was great!

@Brek81 & jgln: Fermentation starting properly, for a few days. Then batch turns rancid in a matter of 12-24 hours. When I say rancid I mean largely the stench coming from the brew. Hard to miss. Not a whole lot to speak of visually, except for what I've already mentioned. Yes, 7 days is very quick for such a thing to happen, 12-24 hours is ridiculous. As I mention earlier, I've never seen anything so aggressive as far as an infection is concerned. Then again, I haven't seen very many infections.

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Ok, I was just wondering if what he was getting at was how familiar are you with brewing and not assuming some of the strange smells coming out were normal. Most of us love the smell of beer fermenting but I am sure some would think it unpleasant. Sounds like you had a couple good ones though.

lol, the smell of fermenting beer is a wonderful thing indeed!

Pascal said:

thanks billtzk. As far as the switching cleaners and sanitizers & replacing equipment I've tried those. I agree, I'll suck it up and pack the water for next batch in order to eliminate that variable. I figure I'll bring enough for the entire bath though, not just top-up. I'm also changing to glass carboy for primary instead of plastic bucket style primary.

With regard to chloramine, I didn't suspect it was the culprit. My question was if that treatment would kill wild yeast or bacteria that could be causing issues from tap water. After all, it is treated, isn't that what it does?

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Yes, that is what it does, but it does not eliminate 100% of all bacteria. The water that comes out of your tap isn't sterile.

It doesn't, for example, kill all parasites either. Cryptosporidium, caused by fecal contaminated water, is fairly resistant.

I didn't suspect "sterile" or even sanitized for that matter. However, if water is my issue, it would seem odd (at least to me) that something that persistent could be readily present in such treated water. Prominent enough to kill 6 batches from the 2gl top-up?

I'd definitely get the tap water tested. But, in the mean time, it seems a simple experiment might prove enlightening.

If you have some malt extract handy, boil up some tap water and make up an average OG test batch, just a couple of cups of worty stuff. Divide it in three, place one third in a sanitized container and immediately cover with sanitized foil. The next third, mix in a quarter cup or so of untreated tap water and immediately cover tight with sanitized foil. Finally, place the last third in a sanitized container, but leave it exposed for, say, 15 minutes or so, then seal with sanitized foil.

Now you have a control and two test samples. Let 'em simmer at room temp and give them a look every so often to see what happens...

Cheers!

day_trippr said:

I'd definitely get the tap water tested. But, in the mean time, it seems a simple experiment might prove enlightening.

If you have some malt extract handy, boil up some tap water and make up an average OG test batch, just a couple of cups of worty stuff. Divide it in three, place one third in a sanitized container and immediately cover with sanitized foil. The next third, mix in a quarter cup or so of untreated tap water and immediately cover tight with sanitized foil. Finally, place the last third in a sanitized container, but leave it exposed for, say, 15 minutes or so, then seal with sanitized foil.

Now you have a control and two test samples. Let 'em simmer at room temp and give them a look every so often to see what happens...

Cheers!

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Fun. I like it.

Yeah, that seems like a stretch to me too. That's why I suggested complete disassembly of everything that can be taken apart. Airborne contaminants might be more plausible.

What is your lag time after pitching before fermentation starts? Can you describe your process?

day_trippr's idea seems like a good one too. Don't brew beer, just make some wort like you would for a yeast starter.

Gold!

It just so happens that my order of DME arrived today.

I will be sure to update in a few days after tying this little test out.

Pascal

@billtzk: If you read my original post, I've brewed a few hundred batches with a loss of around 3. I know how to clean and sanitize, not trying to "stretch" anything too much here.

Lag time for active yeast activation: around 4-10 hours, depending on batch & yeast
Process is described in post.

I overlooked some elements of your first post, but I believe you. No offense intended. It's just that sometimes we can be blind to what we are most familiar with, especially when it is routine.

Agree indeed. I appreciate your advice. (and sorry if that last response was a bit snappy)

What worked for years is no longer working, so, adapt. But it hasn't worked so far. Perhaps it's what I'm doing, perhaps not. Don't know yet! Looking forward to trying the test outlined by day_tripper. I just finally received my homebrew order today but now I'm so nervous about brewing a batch I figure a test is best.

I have no experience with mold infections or the potential off-flavors they can produce (knock on wood) but I would have a professional come in an test for mold in your home, for your health and secondly your beer. Sounds like you may have a lot of spores floating around in your household air, and that's not good for anything.

No amount of equipment sanitizing will prevent mold spores from the imminent collision of ambient air reaching your sterile wort at some point before fermentation begins.