I am a new brewer and I have finished three beers and have a fourth in primary fermentation now. All of them tasted great before I bottled and primed, but when I open them two weeks later they’re mostly flat and sour. After the first one I figured I wasn’t sanitizing carefully enough so I started going crazy (boiling cleaning, and bleaching bathing all of my equipment). But it hasn’t seemed to have worked. I have read books and watched hours of videos on the proper techniques for sanitizing and brewing in general and I genuinely have no clue what I am doing wrong. Any advice or possible blind spots anyone could point out would be incredibly helpful.
Don’t know why I keep getting lacto infections
- Thread starter Rett03
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Beernik
Well-Known Member
“Visibly clean” is your friend. If it isn’t visibly clean, sanitizer won’t work.
Scratches are your enemy. If it’s scratched, it can harbor bacteria.
Other thoughts:
1. You have crud crusted to the bottom of your bottles. Very possible if they were donated from friends.
2. You have crud crusted inside your spring-tip filler wand. It probably screws apart. Don’t loose the spring when you try it.
3. You have crud in your bucket spigot, you might be able to take it apart.
4. You have a dirty autosiphon. The cap on the bottom comes off.
5. You have residue inside the tube between your spigot & filler wand or your racking tube and your bucket.
6. You are using a cleanser (Straight A) instead of a sanitizer, like PBW, Idophor, or Sanstar.
7. You are not using a “no rinse” sanitizer (Starsan, IO Star) and you are tasting sanitizer residue.
8. Your caps aren’t sanitized.
Scratches are your enemy. If it’s scratched, it can harbor bacteria.
Other thoughts:
1. You have crud crusted to the bottom of your bottles. Very possible if they were donated from friends.
2. You have crud crusted inside your spring-tip filler wand. It probably screws apart. Don’t loose the spring when you try it.
3. You have crud in your bucket spigot, you might be able to take it apart.
4. You have a dirty autosiphon. The cap on the bottom comes off.
5. You have residue inside the tube between your spigot & filler wand or your racking tube and your bucket.
6. You are using a cleanser (Straight A) instead of a sanitizer, like PBW, Idophor, or Sanstar.
7. You are not using a “no rinse” sanitizer (Starsan, IO Star) and you are tasting sanitizer residue.
8. Your caps aren’t sanitized.
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How easy would it be to do a batch in another FV and see if that solves your issue? Even if it's just a bucket with a lid and a airlock. Then if you still get the infections, you know it's not likely something in your current FV. And instead it's something in your other things you do. Maybe even just breathing to hard with excitement as you look into the FV. 
You should take apart any valves that you can disassemble. You'll be surprised at the crud that can get in behind the ball of a ball valve.
You only mentioned bleach. Is that your only sanitizer? While it will destroy most everything that will infect, since you have to rinse the item after using it, then that's a potential for infection again. So use a no rinse sanitizer too. When you get the current infection source identified, you likely don't need the chlorine bleach anymore.
You should take apart any valves that you can disassemble. You'll be surprised at the crud that can get in behind the ball of a ball valve.
You only mentioned bleach. Is that your only sanitizer? While it will destroy most everything that will infect, since you have to rinse the item after using it, then that's a potential for infection again. So use a no rinse sanitizer too. When you get the current infection source identified, you likely don't need the chlorine bleach anymore.
Which cleaners and sanitizer(s) are you using?
If your beer tastes good out of the fermenter, but your bottled beer doesn't 2 weeks later, the problem may very well lie in your bottling process, and its associated cleaning/sanitizing regimen.
Can you describe your bottling process in detail (all steps), including all the equipment you're using with it?
If your beer tastes good out of the fermenter, but your bottled beer doesn't 2 weeks later, the problem may very well lie in your bottling process, and its associated cleaning/sanitizing regimen.
Can you describe your bottling process in detail (all steps), including all the equipment you're using with it?
It's very possible the contamination is happening just about anywhere in the process and it's just gaining a grip on the beer over the time spent in the bottle. Do you use a bottling bucket with a spigot? Have you taken it out and taken it apart to clean and sanitize?
Are your bottles cleaned and sanitized? When you pour a beer, do you rinse out the bottle soon after, or forget about it a few days? It's amazing how much crud can collect (and harden) in the bottoms. This is also a reason to be wary of bottles offered on Craigslist. Once I picked up a few free cases of long necks and most were filthy--dried beer film, cigarette butts, dead bugs, etc. I couldn't reliably clean them. They went into the recycle bin.
If you can't clean them, you can't sanitize them. I only use new bottles from the LHBS, or bottles from craft beer that I drank.
And those bottling bucket spigots harbor microbes like you wouldn't believe. Take the spigot apart, soak in PBW, sanitize, then re-assemble. Replace lengths of tubing every few brews or so. Plastics are porous, with lots of little nooks for bugs to hide out.
If you can't clean them, you can't sanitize them. I only use new bottles from the LHBS, or bottles from craft beer that I drank.
And those bottling bucket spigots harbor microbes like you wouldn't believe. Take the spigot apart, soak in PBW, sanitize, then re-assemble. Replace lengths of tubing every few brews or so. Plastics are porous, with lots of little nooks for bugs to hide out.
