My roommate and I have been getting into homebrewing this past year and we've had a few successes, but now they're starting to turn into failures and we're not sure why.
Our first two batches of beer turned out fine. One was quite good, and the other was at least drinkable. Then we did two more batches at once, one of which was good, the other had become infected somehow. We chalked it up to an anomaly and brewed two new batches. Both infected. We're very confused at this point because we're doing everything the same and somehow they're getting infected.
I figured that maybe we had gotten lax with our cleaning, so we did one more, and we were SUPER careful about cleaning everything really well. We were going to bottle today, but alas, this batch was infected as well... I could actually see mold or something growing on the sides of the fermenter where it had risen. All but one of the infections occurred in the primary fermenter. The exception may have been infected there as well, but we might not have noticed it until later.
So I'm at a loss to explain this. My roommate thinks we're leaving the beer in the primary for too long... this last batch was in there for a month. Could that be a problem? Also, I don't think the primary is air tight either... would that make a difference? We did have 3 successful batches with the same equipment earlier...
Our first two batches of beer turned out fine. One was quite good, and the other was at least drinkable. Then we did two more batches at once, one of which was good, the other had become infected somehow. We chalked it up to an anomaly and brewed two new batches. Both infected. We're very confused at this point because we're doing everything the same and somehow they're getting infected.
I figured that maybe we had gotten lax with our cleaning, so we did one more, and we were SUPER careful about cleaning everything really well. We were going to bottle today, but alas, this batch was infected as well... I could actually see mold or something growing on the sides of the fermenter where it had risen. All but one of the infections occurred in the primary fermenter. The exception may have been infected there as well, but we might not have noticed it until later.
So I'm at a loss to explain this. My roommate thinks we're leaving the beer in the primary for too long... this last batch was in there for a month. Could that be a problem? Also, I don't think the primary is air tight either... would that make a difference? We did have 3 successful batches with the same equipment earlier...