Infection from a spunding valve or dirty blow off line?

[haeffnkr]

Short summary

Can a dirty blow off tube (and or spunding valve) hold enough nasties that they can travel by AIR up hoses and down into a fermenter and foul a batch of beer?


Long Version ---

Hello All,
I have been chasing a wang/sour/sulfur/cider like infection for months and can not seem to stop it.
In my light lagers, that dont hide any flaws, It is really noticable.
I just made a Munich Helles and American lager and they have a cider/acid wang to them, that I want to stop.

I use RO/DI water with a bit of Acid Malt and Calcium Chloride in my beers.
I have made 20 or so batches before I switched to Keg for fermenters and did not have this infection issue with the carboys.

Bottom line is that I recently made 48 gallons of beer in 4 batches, 3 batches fermented in separate 1/2 barrel Sanke kegs and 1 batch split into 2 carboys.
All the sanke keg batches have the infection and the carboy batch does not.
All 4 batches were made with new 1st run yeast, I tasted the starter beer from 2 of them and they tasted great with no signs/tastes of infection. I dont think the yeast was tainted before it was pitched is what I am saying.

The glass carboys were clean and starsan sanitized and used air locks with starsan in them, fermented and racked into cornys like usual, no infection, it was a Kolsch that I made several times it will be great.

The kegs were cleaned with a heavy solution of PBW, 8 gallons heated to boil dumped in the keg, keg sealed up and I rolled it around and left the solution in the keg for days, a week on some of them.
I dumped out the PBW, rinsed good, looked for any crud left with a lighted inspection mirror, none found.
I rolled a gallon starsan around in them drained and filled with wort and then put on my TC setup.

The TC sanke fermenter setup is shown in the pics below.
I just bought these setups and it was the first time using them, before I was just using the standard sanke spear and modified sanke keg coupler with the same liquid and gas hoses.
I bought these TC setups thinking the coupler/spear was the infection problem... but it is not or at least is not the whole problem....as I have the infection with the new hardware.

All liquid side hoses were soaked in starsan and was put together with starsan sprayed everywhere, it was the first run with these hoses.

On the gas/blow off side I used a new hose that goes from cam lock to QD to QD to hose to spunding valve.
I did this so I can take off the gas side/clean and re use spunding valve when I pressure fill the corny kegs.
I dont have a good way clean the spunding valve assembly and have not pulled off it all apart to clean/sanitize this valve/hose assembly. I dont see any gunk in the hose though.

I was thinking though, maybe incorrectly, that no nasties would go airborne, up the mess of hoses and back down into the fermenter... is that wrong?

So the problem with my infection seems to be the keg fermenter or gas/blow off side/spunding valve assembly.

I will make a batch of beer soon and split into a carboy and a keg with a stopper/air lock to try and isolate the issue.

In the mean time, anyone have an opinion on what I am doing wrong?

thanks for your help
Kevin

Pics of my setups

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-...4Ax2rjIt8xk/w1580-h889-no/20140701_234518.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-...oL1S_xwL5qg/w1580-h889-no/20140702_000103.jpg

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-.../fonXwUhVU28/w500-h889-no/20140724_225801.jpg

 

[Spellman]

I too have recently made the switch to sanke fermenting a few months ago. I was really liking the process until I started tasting some of my beers. I haven't really skimped on any sanitation that I can think of, but I am having numerous infected batches. I did notice that a few of the kegs appear to have some pitting in them, makes me wonder what some of those big companies do to them in the cleaning process. That could be one of my possible infection points. To clean I pressure wash the insides, then pump pbw through them. I have been using saniclean and running it through a pump into an inverted keg for about 5 min with the correct dosage. This is about the only time I have ever used that instead of starsan. I would think that would be fine as others have used it as a sanitizer successfully. I'm using one of the orange carboy caps on mine with airlock, then add a ss cane and push beer out with co2. I would think your setup should be fine, there is always positive pressure coming out of the spunding valve. It has been very aggravating to say the least. I had done maybe 60 batches before making the switch, and had 1 or maybe 2 batches go bad. Now I just flip a coin and that seems to be my odds. Makes you not want to brew. Going forward I'm going to keep better notes on what was fermented in what and hopefully I can pinpoint the problem. I would like to keep using them if possible, as they work very well with my fermentation jackets.

 

[haeffnkr]

Since I made this post and like you, wanted to give up...I made 2 batches of beer... each was split into a sanke and a carboy with a stopper/bubbler on the sanke and of course carboy.

Both batches tasted the same as I could tell.

So it appears that without a doubt my infection was coming from the spunding valve assembly.

You did not mention in your post about boiling water in your keg cleaning process?
I have found that a lighted inspection mirror is a must... and rolling around some PBW in the keg and even soaking the keg in PBW will not clean them.

Put in a strong solution of PBW with boiling water and seal it up.. then roll it around for a few days.... that will get it clean.

I dont have time for all of that...but it works... Boiling is the only true solution to get the kegs cleaned that I have found.

this is my new solution -

good luck
haeffnkr

 

[Spellman]

Spending days cleaning is not an option for me either. I'm all electric, but I may try dumping some boiling water in just to see if I can "pasteurize" the inside. Maybe boil some water while I'm mashing (I knew I built a 50a panel for a reason!) and see how that goes. I should mention that most the batches that were going bad were ones that I was rekegging in other sankes, which as much as I tried to fully clean and sanitize the spear assembly, there are a lot of nooks and crannies! I have tried the mirror thing, but couldn't see jack with it, maybe it was just the mirror I had. If I shine a strong flashlight in and put my chin just inside the handle ring, close one eye, I could see a little past 2/3 of the way up and past where the krausen line was. I would then still pump pbw through them for about an hour. I'm fairly certain that they were clean when I got done. I never really used pbw with glass carboys, I would always rinse them real well when done, then carboy brush them several times, followed by another good rinse. Never had a problem. I think I may also try to tc with a blank on top and swish around some starsan instead of the saniclean with a pump. Maybe if I treat it like a carboy it will act more like one. Tired of going from awesome beers I'm really proud of to beers I would rather pour down the drain than drink, let alone let anyone else try.

 

[haeffnkr]

Ah yes...I forgot about the valve/spear assembly.
I was using the orginal sanke spear assembly also and getting that all clean was a mystery, I was getting lacto infections.

Then I gave up on the sanke spear and used all stainless, much simpler sanke keg tri clamp kits but with a spunding valve on the gas side, and still had lacto infections.

Cleaning what you can not see it hard, for me at least.

good luck
haeffnkr