Prionburger
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2008
- Messages
- 173
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So I picked up brewing in July after a short hiatus, and my new beers have have been more problematic than when I started last fall.
At first I thought the problem was chlorine, which I hadn't been treating for, but a week ago I noticed a drastic change in the amber ale I made. The bitterness changed to an unpleasant buttery dull bitterness. The sweet maltiness disappeared. The citrus aroma was replaced with a sick honey-like smell. The body became a little slimy. The normal beer tartness drops out. Later I noticed the bottles were gushing, and had specks on the necks of the bottles. In the older bottles there's even a pellicle film.
And then I noticed the same thing in beer after beer. I had been drinking them before the infections became noticable, but sure enough, the same sick honey aroma and gushing appeared in all my beers, whether carbonated to 1 volume or 3. I'm going to have to dump 5 batches at least I'm trying to drink my Janet's brown before it goes too
I've tried getting new tubing, new spigots, disassembling the spigot for cleaning, nuking all my equipment with an overnight oxyclean soak and overnight iodophor soak (at 1 tbspn/5gal dilution). Also tried switching back to my glass carboy and even then, I'm detecting the same off flavor, and it's now starting to gush at 2 months.
So here's what I think I'll do:
1. Avoid the basement? I do everything down there except boiling. Even fermenting. It's damp, but it's the only place I can wash bottles efficiently. Maybe I can sanitize them upstairs but I'd be carrying the infection upstairs that way.
2. Dump all my plastic equipment, and replace them with silicone or metal where possible. Most glaring is my old bottling bucket, over a year old.
3. Switch from iodophor to starsan--maybe my infection is resistant, maybe my iodophor is contaminated or expired somehow (over a year old now).
4. Kegging! My house is filled with bugs, maybe I should just eliminate all this plastic crap and be done with it.
I'll RDWHACB for the time being. Any thoughts/commiseration?
At first I thought the problem was chlorine, which I hadn't been treating for, but a week ago I noticed a drastic change in the amber ale I made. The bitterness changed to an unpleasant buttery dull bitterness. The sweet maltiness disappeared. The citrus aroma was replaced with a sick honey-like smell. The body became a little slimy. The normal beer tartness drops out. Later I noticed the bottles were gushing, and had specks on the necks of the bottles. In the older bottles there's even a pellicle film.
And then I noticed the same thing in beer after beer. I had been drinking them before the infections became noticable, but sure enough, the same sick honey aroma and gushing appeared in all my beers, whether carbonated to 1 volume or 3. I'm going to have to dump 5 batches at least I'm trying to drink my Janet's brown before it goes too
I've tried getting new tubing, new spigots, disassembling the spigot for cleaning, nuking all my equipment with an overnight oxyclean soak and overnight iodophor soak (at 1 tbspn/5gal dilution). Also tried switching back to my glass carboy and even then, I'm detecting the same off flavor, and it's now starting to gush at 2 months.
So here's what I think I'll do:
1. Avoid the basement? I do everything down there except boiling. Even fermenting. It's damp, but it's the only place I can wash bottles efficiently. Maybe I can sanitize them upstairs but I'd be carrying the infection upstairs that way.
2. Dump all my plastic equipment, and replace them with silicone or metal where possible. Most glaring is my old bottling bucket, over a year old.
3. Switch from iodophor to starsan--maybe my infection is resistant, maybe my iodophor is contaminated or expired somehow (over a year old now).
4. Kegging! My house is filled with bugs, maybe I should just eliminate all this plastic crap and be done with it.
I'll RDWHACB for the time being. Any thoughts/commiseration?