Things are getting Funky and I hate it!!

[AndMan3030]

I've been brewing for about ten years now and have not had many problems with sanitation or contaminated batches... Until now.

I recently have had a few batches go bad on me. Dumping 10 gallon batches down the drain is the worst! This first happened to me with a couple of Lagers this spring. I chalked that up to sitting at cold temps for extended periods of time in my corny kegs, thinking there must have been something in the kegs... cleaned them thoroughly and moved on.

Last week I brewed another 10 gallon batch, splitting it into two fermenters. I used a vial of British Ale Yeast, one vial in each. the next day one was bubbling away and the other was not. The one bubbling away made a nice layer of Krausen, the other did not. Today the Krausen has subsided, and the other has started to show the signs of contamination. those bubbles on the surface that look like they are covered in dust. I popped off the air lock and smelled inside the carboy. Yuck!

I'm over this!! do I need to destroy all my equipment? Has anyone went through a period where they were having issues with contamination on consecutive batches? what should I do!?

 

[Homercidal]

If you use plastic in your process you may not find it easy to clear up any infection. The short answer is, "Replace all your plastic brewing equipment."

But of course some things are easier to clean than others. A combination of mechanical cleaning, chemical cleaning, and powerful sanitizing might save a bucket or something, but most of that is pretty cheap and IMO not worth the hassle.

If you use glass or SS for fermenting, etc. then it's probably worth it to go nuts on cleaning and sanitizing. If you CAN heat sterilize your SS stuff, then do it! If you have a fancy plastic conical, then I think it's worth it to go nuts on it and see if you can fix it.

But when it comes down to it, that tubing, autopsiphon, plastic spigots, buckets, etc. are not expensive enough to mess with IMO.

Beyond that, you may be handling your beer post boil kettle close to where you crunched your grain and you got some airborne stuff in the one carboy. Maybe you need to switch sanitizers for a while?

I think one of the most commonly forgotten places that need cleaning is the spigot on a bottling bucket. You really need to make sure you take that sucker apart and clean and sanitize before putting back together. Same with any spigot or hard to reach area.

I have found that a bottle cleaning device that attaches to a drill and when you spin it, it causes these felt flaps to wipe the inside of your bottle. They make a carboy sized version and it works very nicely.

 

[Homercidal]

If you use plastic in your process you may not find it easy to clear up any infection. The short answer is, "Replace all your plastic brewing equipment."

But of course some things are easier to clean than others. A combination of mechanical cleaning, chemical cleaning, and powerful sanitizing might save a bucket or something, but most of that is pretty cheap and IMO not worth the hassle.

If you use glass or SS for fermenting, etc. then it's probably worth it to go nuts on cleaning and sanitizing. If you CAN heat sterilize your SS stuff, then do it! If you have a fancy plastic conical, then I think it's worth it to go nuts on it and see if you can fix it.

But when it comes down to it, that tubing, autopsiphon, plastic spigots, buckets, etc. are not expensive enough to mess with IMO.

Beyond that, you may be handling your beer post boil kettle close to where you crunched your grain and you got some airborne stuff in the one carboy. Maybe you need to switch sanitizers for a while?

I think one of the most commonly forgotten places that need cleaning is the spigot on a bottling bucket. You really need to make sure you take that sucker apart and clean and sanitize before putting back together. Same with any spigot or hard to reach area.

I have found that a bottle cleaning device that attaches to a drill and when you spin it, it causes these felt flaps to wipe the inside of your bottle. They make a carboy sized version and it works very nicely.

 

[dmcman73]

Glass or plastic carboy's? How do you transfer from BK to fermenter? Immersion chiller or plate/CV?

I've heard people having infection issues when using a plastic fermenter that had scratches inside of it. Also, old silicone hoses that could harbor some nasties in it.

 

[bbohanon]

Dealt with this myself recently..mine I believe was introduced by my new plate chiller (or at least this is where I tracked it down to) that I have since ditched and gone back to using my IM chiller.

The key is to replace and aggressively attack everything the infected beer has come into contact with or it will never leave and most likely get worse.

- Replace everything you use made of plastic. Buckets, siphons, hoses, spigots, etc. Trying to clean an infection out of plastic with bleach bombs is not worth the time to do that amount of work only to risk it not being 100% gone. Just replace it all. Others will disagree, but my time is worth more than trying to waste a day bleach bombing and rinsing 2 $8 buckets and $20 worth of hoses and a siphon.

- For Kegs, use boiling water with Oxyclean in the kegs followed with a hot water rinse and Star San sanitizing flush. Boil the posts and poppets, replace the o-rings as well.

- For bottles, make sure you are soaking your bottles in hot OxyFree/PBW to get nasties out of the bottom, then a dishwasher cycle on sanitize with some OxyFree will sterilize those puppies up good. I also do a pre-fill bottle dunk in Star San just for good measure before I start filling them with good beer.

Also clean your BK valve as this is the first stop the beer makes where it is at risk for an infection if you chill with an IM. I have been disassembling and boiling my valve in my BK after 5 batches and I also wash and flush the BK/valve with boiling hot water/OxyFree and rinse with hot water and then a Star San rinse once I pitch my yeast.

Infections suck and I have been taking my brewhouse cleanliness much more serious these days since I eliminated my intruder as you are 100% right in that having to dump great beer that you worked hard to make is no fun.

Good luck!

 

[AndMan3030]

I have been fermenting in Glass Carboys, I have several of them. My first hunch is my plate chiller. I flush and back flush over and over til it runs clear. BUT, the last time I went to use it, it was foaming out of both the beer in AND the beer out. There was for sure some nasties in there. I flushed it out, then recirculated boiling wort through it for about 10 minutes. I figured that would do it. Also, its only infected one carboy.

Another fault was not using a yeast starter. I pitched one vial directly to each batch. no starter.

What is the best way to fully sanitize a plate chiller if it is a suspect?

Thanks everyone!

 

[Spellman]

Infections suck, had a string of them last year. I think I tracked mine down to some deposits on my sanke keg fermentors that where one there when I got them. Plenty of scrubbing with a "keg carboy brush" that I made finally got them sparkling clean and problem has subsided. Do you have a pump? I always recirculate the last 15 min of boil through my cfc to sterilize it and my tubing before transfer. I've always heard plate chillers get full of gunk and thats kinda just how they are.

 

[dryboroughbrewing]

Recirculating hot caustic will burn pretty much anything organic out of your plate chiller. Do be careful though if you are not familiar with caustic, as it is nasty nasty stuff.

 

[Hoppity]

I put my plate chiller filled with starsan on a cookie sheet in a 450 degree oven for an hour.

 

[MannyEdwards]

I don't know what to do about plastic. With glass and stainless steel, boiling or hours (days?) of direct sunlight will sterilize it.

 

[AndMan3030]

I'm thinking of baking it for an hour or so then flushing with Star San.. I do have pumps, 2 of them. I normally circulate wort through them (chiller and hoses) for the last 15 minutes as well. I am leaning towards selling my plate chiller and going back to an immersion chiller. I'd like to have a whirlpool immersion chiller setup. I have the pumps needed and it seems like less of a hassle when it comes to clogs and keeping it clean.

Thoughts on this change?

 

[dmcman73]

I'm thinking of baking it for an hour or so then flushing with Star San.. I do have pumps, 2 of them. I normally circulate wort through them (chiller and hoses) for the last 15 minutes as well. I am leaning towards selling my plate chiller and going back to an immersion chiller. I'd like to have a whirlpool immersion chiller setup. I have the pumps needed and it seems like less of a hassle when it comes to clogs and keeping it clean.

Thoughts on this change?

Running starsan through it will not clean it nor will it sanitize it if there is any lodged material in your chiller.

After a brew session with my cfc chiller, I clean my kettles then fill the BK with hot water and PBW just enough to cover the elements and bring it to a slight boil. I'll then circulate, at the pumps full flow rate, that hot PBW water through the cfc in reverse and just let it do that for 10 minutes while I finish cleaning. I'll then dump it and fill it with clean water, again just enough to cover the element and bring that to a slight boil and run that (without PBW) in the same way I run my wort through it to flush it. Once done, I usually follow up with another flush with cool water just to rinse out any PBW from it.

By cleaning it this way as soon as your done brewing, you don't give any of the material that may be in there a chance to dry up or harden in the coils.

 

[bbohanon]

The lack of ever being able to completely know if the plate chiller is clean or not was what caused me to abandon it.
I baked it, backflushed it, ran boiling hot wort through it before chilling(which only put chiller gunk into my brewpot if any dislodged during that recirc which I did not want happening either), did everything I could think of doing to keep it clean from brew day to brew day and it still caused an infection in my brew house.


Some folks have good luck with them. I am not one of those folks. It was just too much work to "hope" its clean and too high risk to the beer without being able to know pretty close to 100% that it is clean.

I went back to an IM and have not regretted seeing the plate chiller gather dust.
The IM I went to for my 10 gallon batches was this one. Its extremely dirt cheap, 1/2 inch copper tubing, has an inner coil as well and chills wort quickly. I recirc ice water in a cooler using a small el-cheapo pond pump through this bad boy to chill my batches..takes about 20-30 mins to chill to pitching temps.

http://www.brewinternational.com/1-2-inch-double-twin-coil-copper-immersion-coil-50-feet/