HELP! Can StarSan solution get contaminated ? Got a bad batch.

[AnbyG]

So the last batch I brew was my first wheat beer and some of the bottles are very sour with a yoghurt like taste. I recall that on the bottling day, while sour, the brew was nowhere as sour as it is now. Plus the bottles are not evenly sour. I think somehow the brew got contaminated with wild yeast or bacteria at some point. I think the culprit here is either the StarSan solution that I have been recycling for the past few batches or the ice (made from tap water in a sanitized contained) I used to cool down the wort rapidly. Generally I top off the StarSan solution with a little more concentrated fresh solution to make sure that the solution stays foamy. But I have not checked the pH of the solution. I do see some weird reddish stuff at the bottom of the bucked containing the StarSan. Wonder what it is.

What is a good way to ensure that my next batch is not contaminated ? I will be throwing away the StarSan that I have now and make a new solution. But what is the best way to ensure that the stuff like the buckets, siphon, bottles etc are not contaminated ?

Thanks in advance!

Anby

 

[mongoose33]

You may have made ice in sanitized containers, but was the water sterile? Was it chlorinated?

Are you sure your bottles were clean, not just sanitized?

Difference from bottle to bottle sounds like a bottle cleanliness issue to me.

 

[Sansnom]

I left a bottle of starsan and beer mixed together out in the open for about a week. It was probably 50/50 starsan and beer. I went to throw it out and decided to sniff it, expecting it to smell horrible. Amazingly, it smelled like stale beer. When I poured it out, there must have been a dozen fruit flies in it.

I guess the moral of the story is, it’s hard to grow bugs in starsan, even if it’s watered down with beer!

 

[AnbyG]

You may have made ice in sanitized containers, but was the water sterile? Was it chlorinated?

Are you sure your bottles were clean, not just sanitized?

Difference from bottle to bottle sounds like a bottle cleanliness issue to me.

I am not 100% sure if the water was sterile. I use tap water and I have not had any issue in the past. If the water was contaminated then the scale of contamination would have been much worse, I doubt there would have been much conversion to alcohol.

What do you mean by if the bottles were clean ? I am not sure what is the difference. I washed the bottles with hot water 3-4 times before rinsing in StarSan. I think that should take care of it right ?

I left a bottle of starsan and beer mixed together out in the open for about a week. It was probably 50/50 starsan and beer. I went to throw it out and decided to sniff it, expecting it to smell horrible. Amazingly, it smelled like stale beer. When I poured it out, there must have been a dozen fruit flies in it.

I guess the moral of the story is, it’s hard to grow bugs in starsan, even if it’s watered down with beer!

And what was the concentration of the StarSan solution before mixing in beer ? 1 oz in 5 gallons ?

 

[Sansnom]

And what was the concentration of the StarSan solution before mixing in beer ? 1 oz in 5 gallons ?

Yep. Standard mixing rate with distilled water.

 

[AnbyG]

Yep. Standard mixing rate with distilled water.

That is the minimum concentration I use as well. In fact, my solution mught be a little more concentrated than that. I made sure I washed everything in the StarSan solution and still it got contaminated. Wonder if the contact time was not enough.

 

[Sansnom]

That is the minimum concentration I use as well. In fact, my solution mught be a little more concentrated than that. I made sure I washed everything in the StarSan solution and still it got contaminated. Wonder if the contact time was not enough.

Just a thought:

If the batch tasted unintentionally sour at bottling, I think it's safe to say that the infection occurred pre-bottling. Infections tend to get worse, so it would make sense that it's worse now than when you bottled it. I'm not sure why you would have some bottles more sour than others. What kind of bottles? Did you use a bottle brush to clean them? How did you prime?

If your fermentor is a cheap bucket, you might want to consider throwing it out and getting a new one. I make a gallon worth of starsan with distilled water, that usually lasts me 3 to 5 brew/bottling days (I don't reuse it). If you're not using distilled water and/or reusing it, you might want to consider checking the ph before using it to make sure it's still effective. Personally, I think the infection might have come from the ice, but you'll never know for sure.

Also, you might want to invest in a wort chiller to cool the wort with, or use an ice bath in a sink/tub instead of adding it directly to the wort.

 

[mongoose33]

You may have made ice in sanitized containers, but was the water sterile? Was it chlorinated?

Are you sure your bottles were clean, not just sanitized?

Difference from bottle to bottle sounds like a bottle cleanliness issue to me.

I am not 100% sure if the water was sterile. I use tap water and I have not had any issue in the past. If the water was contaminated then the scale of contamination would have been much worse, I doubt there would have been much conversion to alcohol.

I used to think it would be good to use ice to cool down a batch, but i never could be comfortable with whether it would be sterile water or not.

The first guy I ever saw brew used to rinse off his santizer (bleach!) with tap water. I wondered what the chances were of either the water not being sterile, or there being stuff on the spout, or.....well, anything.

What do you mean by if the bottles were clean ? I am not sure what is the difference. I washed the bottles with hot water 3-4 times before rinsing in StarSan. I think that should take care of it right ?

You washed them with hot water? What does that mean? Did you use a cleaner? And 3-4 times? Does that mean swishing or what?

To me, a major clue is that there was a difference bottle to bottle. Hard to believe some would be infected and some not if it were the beer that was the problem.

I once got an infection in a porter I'd bottled. Gushers. Consulted my son on how to clean the bottles--he's a microbiologist. He told me to throw them away, that they may have biofilms inside and biofilms are, according to him, very difficult to clean and sanitize. So I did.

I still think that NOT having the same thing in each bottle is a sign the bottles are somehow different. Incomplete cleaning would be a cause of that.

And in case you haven't run across this, a sanitizer doesn't clean. It sanitizes, which means it will take care of bacteria on the surface of whatever is sanitized. It will not get inside dirt, where bacteria can hide, and kill the bacteria there.

 

[Dog House Brew]

And make your StarSan with distilled water. My tap water makes it useless in no time. I’m guessing it was before Your bottling. Most things are killed in seconds so I also doubt it was contact time.

 

[Grod1]

lol could you imagine breweries using distilled water for there sani buckets... i dont think so.

But what is the best way to ensure that the stuff like the buckets, siphon, bottles etc are not contaminated ?
Anby

clean everything when your done using it. clean it again when you are ready to use it. pbw/ rinse/ sani. its as simple as that no guess work.
buy a wort chiller at add it at 10 mins


brewing beer is so far away from :"sterile" its a joke. magic pbw/sani does wonders with brett/ lacto/ sacc and a handfull of other nasties but its not like it kills mold...
mold just doesn't grow well in beer so its not an issue.

to properly sterilize one bottle you should pressure cook at 15 PSI for 60 mins.
thats sterile.
rinsing with hot water and dipping in old sani does zero on a biological stand point.

 

[Dog House Brew]

Mixing and storing StarSan with tap is a crap shoot. Distilled water allows it to be mixed and stored for long periods of time. That is the point I was getting at.

 

[Dcpcooks]

I think it's possible that have two problems at the same time. You need to clean before you sanitize. Hot water rinse is not cleaning it's rinsing.

You mention that the beer was slightly sour at bottling time. That's indicative of an issue post boil. If it were me I'd review your process flow a bit.

How are you making the ice? It's possible the ice maker or tray has some possible contamination. Did you boil the water then make ice?

Are you on a well or is it city water with some chlorine? Well water can present challenges with pathogens.

What's your cleaning agent? Oxy clean or PBW are very effective cleaners.

Do you mill grain? In the same place as your ferment? Lacto is on grain and will sour wort if allowed to. It could also drift and settle into/ on your gear.

It's possible you got an infection at any point after the boil.

It's possible your bottles were dirty and that is a cause for some to be worse than others. PBW and star San can fix that.


Good luck! You'll figure it out

 

[balrog]

Definitely you need to wash bottles, not just rinse.

And if the batch smelled sour, but not as sour, at bottling, that sounds like you had something going on prior to bottling.

If you have anything in StarSan solution, it's just so much better to dump it and mix up new than have the question of whether it's a problem. And using tap water for StarSan can be fine, but hard water will make StarSan cloudy, even tho it might be still fine sanitizer. pH of < 3 is the typically stated metric for StarSan being effective. But if it's dirty I'd dump it.

Another thought -- check your bottling bucket spigot. Take it apart. All the way apart. It's a great place to grow things.

But wash your bottles, dude. With PBW and a brush. You can't sanitize what isn't clean.

 

[Sansnom]

lol could you imagine breweries using distilled water for there sani buckets... i dont think so.

Probably true, but it's a matter of scale. A gallon of distilled or RO water is less than a dollar. It makes for a more stable solution. At the homebrewing scale, it makes sense. Most homebrewers are well aware of the difference between sanitizing and sterlizing. 99% of homebrewers aren't shooting for sterilisation of their equipment, their goal is to get it sanitized enough to prevent obvious infection.

I think people put too much trust in Starsan, but I guess it works for them. Personally, I soak my buckets and post boil equipment with a bleach solution after 3 or 4 uses. Bleach is a far more effective sanitizer than Starsan, but it's nowhere near as conveinent to use. I still use bleach as a first step to sanitize my bottles.

It's no secret that Starsan has questionable effectiveness against mold and other fungi like yeast. When I started brewing, I used bleach as my main sanitizer and used preboiled water to rinse it. It did the job. A few months after I switched to Starsan, I started to have issues with one of my buckets. Every batch I did in it was over-attenuating and had an off-flavour. The issue was resolved after soaking it with some diluted bleach. I think there was something growing in it that Starsan wasn't killing.

 

[Premnasbiaculeatus]

My advice FWIW, it to avoid reusing starsan if you can, and only mix up enough to use in one sitting. If you have to re-use it get yourself some litmus strips and test it before each use if the PH is above 3 dont use it. From your sour yogurt description it sounds like your bottles got infected to different degrees by a lactobacillus sp. Which thrive in a ph range of 3-4 and will still grow with moderate vigor in PH ranges o 2-3.

 

[mongoose33]

My advice FWIW, it to avoid reusing starsan if you can, and only mix up enough to use in one sitting. If you have to re-use it get yourself some litmus strips and test it before each use if the PH is above 3 dont use it. From your sour yogurt description it sounds like your bottles got infected to different degrees by a lactobacillus sp. Which thrive in a ph range of 3-4 and will still grow with moderate vigor in PH ranges o 2-3.

I think it's a little more robust than that. I keep a 5-gal bucket of star-san ready to dunk parts, to pour into the fermenter to slosh it around and sanitize that (and dump back into the bucket), I'll rinse off the silicone hose I use on my ball valve and toss it in the star-san bucket for a bit.

I agree that at some point Star-San will lose its effectiveness. To test this I took a sample from a bucket whose Star-San I'd been using for 2 or 3 brews. Lots of stuff rinsed off in it.

Here's a pic below of what the pH was. I'm not quite as concerned as to the "freshness" of Star-San as I was, but when the bucket gets to be about 2/3 full, I figure it's time to make a fresh bucket of star san.

And FWIW: Being more careful with it than I am is not a sin. It's still going to work, and work well.

 

[balrog]

While StarSan has always been good for me, there is definitely a lot it does and does not do. Seen on another site, paraphrased for brevity: StarSan is bacteriacide, not fungicide, that is true. You have to use the halogenic (iodophor or bleach) to be more broadly antimicrobial, or even paraacetic acid (vinegar and hydrogegn peroxide)

credit S. cerevisiae, mabrungaurd

 

[AnbyG]

Just a thought:

If the batch tasted unintentionally sour at bottling, I think it's safe to say that the infection occurred pre-bottling. Infections tend to get worse, so it would make sense that it's worse now than when you bottled it. I'm not sure why you would have some bottles more sour than others. What kind of bottles? Did you use a bottle brush to clean them? How did you prime?

If your fermentor is a cheap bucket, you might want to consider throwing it out and getting a new one. I make a gallon worth of starsan with distilled water, that usually lasts me 3 to 5 brew/bottling days (I don't reuse it). If you're not using distilled water and/or reusing it, you might want to consider checking the ph before using it to make sure it's still effective. Personally, I think the infection might have come from the ice, but you'll never know for sure.

Also, you might want to invest in a wort chiller to cool the wort with, or use an ice bath in a sink/tub instead of adding it directly to the wort.

I primed by dissolving the sugar in boiling water for 15 minutes. I did not use a bottle brush to clean the bottles. Maybe I should start doing so.

I used to think it would be good to use ice to cool down a batch, but i never could be comfortable with whether it would be sterile water or not.

The first guy I ever saw brew used to rinse off his santizer (bleach!) with tap water. I wondered what the chances were of either the water not being sterile, or there being stuff on the spout, or.....well, anything.



You washed them with hot water? What does that mean? Did you use a cleaner? And 3-4 times? Does that mean swishing or what?

To me, a major clue is that there was a difference bottle to bottle. Hard to believe some would be infected and some not if it were the beer that was the problem.

I once got an infection in a porter I'd bottled. Gushers. Consulted my son on how to clean the bottles--he's a microbiologist. He told me to throw them away, that they may have biofilms inside and biofilms are, according to him, very difficult to clean and sanitize. So I did.

I still think that NOT having the same thing in each bottle is a sign the bottles are somehow different. Incomplete cleaning would be a cause of that.

And in case you haven't run across this, a sanitizer doesn't clean. It sanitizes, which means it will take care of bacteria on the surface of whatever is sanitized. It will not get inside dirt, where bacteria can hide, and kill the bacteria there.

Yep Swishing is what I did. Multiple times. What is a good way to clean used bottles ? I am thinking of wiping the surface of my bucket and all with a brush or anything that scrubs the solid surface without scratching it before making the next batch of StarSan.

And make your StarSan with distilled water. My tap water makes it useless in no time. I’m guessing it was before Your bottling. Most things are killed in seconds so I also doubt it was contact time.

Where do you get distilled water from ?

lol could you imagine breweries using distilled water for there sani buckets... i dont think so.


clean everything when your done using it. clean it again when you are ready to use it. pbw/ rinse/ sani. its as simple as that no guess work.
buy a wort chiller at add it at 10 mins


brewing beer is so far away from :"sterile" its a joke. magic pbw/sani does wonders with brett/ lacto/ sacc and a handfull of other nasties but its not like it kills mold...
mold just doesn't grow well in beer so its not an issue.

to properly sterilize one bottle you should pressure cook at 15 PSI for 60 mins.
thats sterile.
rinsing with hot water and dipping in old sani does zero on a biological stand point.

I agree with you. I think breweries just use water filtered through a .22 micron filter like in biological labs. Autoclaving at home is out of question.

Mixing and storing StarSan with tap is a crap shoot. Distilled water allows it to be mixed and stored for long periods of time. That is the point I was getting at.

Where do you get distilled water ?

I think it's possible that have two problems at the same time. You need to clean before you sanitize. Hot water rinse is not cleaning it's rinsing.

You mention that the beer was slightly sour at bottling time. That's indicative of an issue post boil. If it were me I'd review your process flow a bit.

How are you making the ice? It's possible the ice maker or tray has some possible contamination. Did you boil the water then make ice?

Are you on a well or is it city water with some chlorine? Well water can present challenges with pathogens.

What's your cleaning agent? Oxy clean or PBW are very effective cleaners.

Do you mill grain? In the same place as your ferment? Lacto is on grain and will sour wort if allowed to. It could also drift and settle into/ on your gear.

It's possible you got an infection at any point after the boil.

It's possible your bottles were dirty and that is a cause for some to be worse than others. PBW and star San can fix that.


Good luck! You'll figure it out

Thanks. But what are Oxy clean or PBW ? I got the grains milled from the local brew store. I boiled everything for 60 minutes before putting it in the plastic bucket.

Definitely you need to wash bottles, not just rinse.

And if the batch smelled sour, but not as sour, at bottling, that sounds like you had something going on prior to bottling.

If you have anything in StarSan solution, it's just so much better to dump it and mix up new than have the question of whether it's a problem. And using tap water for StarSan can be fine, but hard water will make StarSan cloudy, even tho it might be still fine sanitizer. pH of < 3 is the typically stated metric for StarSan being effective. But if it's dirty I'd dump it.

Another thought -- check your bottling bucket spigot. Take it apart. All the way apart. It's a great place to grow things.

But wash your bottles, dude. With PBW and a brush. You can't sanitize what isn't clean.

Thanks. I will wash bottles the next time. I got some pH strips from my lab today. Will check the pH of StarSan tomorrow.

Probably true, but it's a matter of scale. A gallon of distilled or RO water is less than a dollar. It makes for a more stable solution. At the homebrewing scale, it makes sense. Most homebrewers are well aware of the difference between sanitizing and sterlizing. 99% of homebrewers aren't shooting for sterilisation of their equipment, their goal is to get it sanitized enough to prevent obvious infection.

I think people put too much trust in Starsan, but I guess it works for them. Personally, I soak my buckets and post boil equipment with a bleach solution after 3 or 4 uses. Bleach is a far more effective sanitizer than Starsan, but it's nowhere near as conveinent to use. I still use bleach as a first step to sanitize my bottles.

It's no secret that Starsan has questionable effectiveness against mold and other fungi like yeast. When I started brewing, I used bleach as my main sanitizer and used preboiled water to rinse it. It did the job. A few months after I switched to Starsan, I started to have issues with one of my buckets. Every batch I did in it was over-attenuating and had an off-flavour. The issue was resolved after soaking it with some diluted bleach. I think there was something growing in it that Starsan wasn't killing.

You use bleach on your plastic buckets ? Does it not leave residue smell ?

My advice FWIW, it to avoid reusing starsan if you can, and only mix up enough to use in one sitting. If you have to re-use it get yourself some litmus strips and test it before each use if the PH is above 3 dont use it. From your sour yogurt description it sounds like your bottles got infected to different degrees by a lactobacillus sp. Which thrive in a ph range of 3-4 and will still grow with moderate vigor in PH ranges o 2-3.

Contamination by lactobacillus is a possibility. I am pretty sure that it did not happen before bottling.

I think it's a little more robust than that. I keep a 5-gal bucket of star-san ready to dunk parts, to pour into the fermenter to slosh it around and sanitize that (and dump back into the bucket), I'll rinse off the silicone hose I use on my ball valve and toss it in the star-san bucket for a bit.

I agree that at some point Star-San will lose its effectiveness. To test this I took a sample from a bucket whose Star-San I'd been using for 2 or 3 brews. Lots of stuff rinsed off in it.

Here's a pic below of what the pH was. I'm not quite as concerned as to the "freshness" of Star-San as I was, but when the bucket gets to be about 2/3 full, I figure it's time to make a fresh bucket of star san.

And FWIW: Being more careful with it than I am is not a sin. It's still going to work, and work well.

View attachment 416744

While StarSan has always been good for me, there is definitely a lot it does and does not do. Seen on another site, paraphrased for brevity: StarSan is bacteriacide, not fungicide, that is true. You have to use the halogenic (iodophor or bleach) to be more broadly antimicrobial, or even paraacetic acid (vinegar and hydrogegn peroxide)

credit S. cerevisiae, mabrungaurd

Yep, I use StarSan to clean the fermenting bucket before putting the wort in it. Hydrogen peroxide is a good suggestion. I will get some.

 

[Sansnom]

You use bleach on your plastic buckets ? Does it not leave residue smell ?

Yep. A good rinse and then leaving it to dry for a day or two usually gets rid of the smell. Sodium hypochlorite breaks down pretty quickly, it won't leave a permanent smell. I also soak my bottling equipment every few uses. My oldest bucket is 4 years old and looks like new on the inside.

A lot of people shy away from using it, but I think it has its place.

 

[mongoose33]

PBW: Powdered Brewery Wash.

You get distilled water at the grocery store.

Swishing bottles is not cleaning them. Run them through the dishwasher (that's what I do), or soak them for an hour in PBW solution, then rinse well. Then just before you bottle sanitize them with Star-San.

 

[Anon111]

Another thought -- check your bottling bucket spigot. Take it apart. All the way apart. It's a great place to grow things.

Very much this. "but I flush it with sanitiser" is NOT cleaning. Take it apart, rinse it, brush it, run it through the dishwasher at 70º, store sanitised and reassemble just before use.

 

[Brownalemikie]

A 32 oz bottle of Starsan costs $27 on Amazon so it costs less than a buck each brew day. I use fresh Starsan every brew day.

Also, I've used my bottles (156) at least 15 times each and have NEVER washed them. I simply rinse with warm water immediately after pouring beer into a glass......fill bottle half full with water, then shake with thumb on top, then pour out water. Do it two times. Then I store bottles until bottling day.

On bottling day, I mix 3 gallons of warm tap water with 1 oz of Starsan. My PH is always below 3. Then I submerse each bottle in Starsan, then put them upside down in my bottle tray. Then fill with beer and cap bottle. Wait 3 weeks. Then drink excellent beer

Never had any problems in over 80 batches.

 

[mabrungard]

Starsan is good stuff, but its not great stuff. You can easily leave yourself open to 'other' infections if starsan is your only sanitizing medium. As mentioned above, starsan doesn't kill everything. This is especially true with respect to mold and wild yeast. I still use starsan, but its my secondary sanitizer. Iodophor is my primary sanitizer since it has a broader killing ability, which includes mold.

Live with the stain (iodophor).

 

[AnbyG]

PBW: Powdered Brewery Wash.

You get distilled water at the grocery store.

Swishing bottles is not cleaning them. Run them through the dishwasher (that's what I do), or soak them for an hour in PBW solution, then rinse well. Then just before you bottle sanitize them with Star-San.

Just purchased some PBW. Thanks! What conc do you use it at ?

Very much this. "but I flush it with sanitiser" is NOT cleaning. Take it apart, rinse it, brush it, run it through the dishwasher at 70º, store sanitised and reassemble just before use.

I rinse the bottles immediately once I drink a beer, then rinse it three times, then rinse it again before bottling, run it through dishwasher (the longer mode that runs for like 5 hours), then rinse with StarSan. I think the brushing with PBW is the missing step.

A 32 oz bottle of Starsan costs $27 on Amazon so it costs less than a buck each brew day. I use fresh Starsan every brew day.

Also, I've used my bottles (156) at least 15 times each and have NEVER washed them. I simply rinse with warm water immediately after pouring beer into a glass......fill bottle half full with water, then shake with thumb on top, then pour out water. Do it two times. Then I store bottles until bottling day.

On bottling day, I mix 3 gallons of warm tap water with 1 oz of Starsan. My PH is always below 3. Then I submerse each bottle in Starsan, then put them upside down in my bottle tray. Then fill with beer and cap bottle. Wait 3 weeks. Then drink excellent beer

Never had any problems in over 80 batches.

I will never again reuse StarSan! Lesson learnt the hard way!

Starsan is good stuff, but its not great stuff. You can easily leave yourself open to 'other' infections if starsan is your only sanitizing medium. As mentioned above, starsan doesn't kill everything. This is especially true with respect to mold and wild yeast. I still use starsan, but its my secondary sanitizer. Iodophor is my primary sanitizer since it has a broader killing ability, which includes mold.

Live with the stain (iodophor).

I will use iodophor of bleach to clean the buckets before the next time I use it.

 

[Anon111]

Or it could just be bad luck. Incidental.

 

[AnbyG]

Or it could just be bad luck. Incidental.

Yesterday I had a bottle from that batch and it has no yoghurt like taste or flavor whatsoever. Cleaning of the bottle is the issue most likely.