Time to worry?

[TheMattTrain]

I've been brewing for a little over a year now and I've got plenty of batches under my belt. I started out with all grain and have never done extract. I have a friend who works at a major brewery in the area who offered to get me some hops. The hops he brought me are whole leaf and I've only used them twice. Once, back in September I made a "Harvest Ale" that got infected. I'm not sure what type. It never showed any visible signs of infection. I only knew when I tasted it for the first time.

I decided that I could give the whole leaf another try and went ahead and made an IIPA a week ago. I used a yeast cake from an IPA I made last month and it took off in 45 minutes. I had a neighbor help me with holding my funnel and strainer so I could pick up my kettle to dump the beer in. I normally use my ball valve, but the hops were blocking the valve. Neighbor had accidentally touched the side of a bucket we were using to hold the used hops with the strainer. I dunked it in Star San and continued. I probably should have cleaned it and soaked it in Star San again, but I didn't think of that at the time.

I was hoping that the quick and highly active fermentation would take care of any infections. The beer was supposed to end up around 10.5%. It smelled great while I had my blowoff tube on it. I took off the blowoff and put on a 3-piece air lock and it's been sitting ever since. I went to check on it the other day, no visible signs of infection, but the airlock was bubbling pretty good again. I smelled my air lock, as many of us do, and to my surprise, it smelled a little sour.

So long story short... I'm worried it's infected. This thing had 12oz of leaf hops in it and I was planning on dry hopping with 3oz of pellets, but I don't want to waste the hops to an infected batch and I don't want to infect any equipment. Outside of any visible signs, how can I tell if it's infected without tasting it?

 

[Sailingeric]

The acid in hops generally keep them safe from infection for dry hopping.

 

[mkyl428]

Time to worry?

Nope RDWHAHB

 

[flars]

Take a SG reading in two weeks, that will be your first taste. Check for FG a few days later, second taste for comparison. You won't be dry hopping until fermentation is complete anyway. If the beer did get infected, some signs of the infection should be showing up by then.
Did you pitch on the entire yeast cake form the previous beer? Different aromas can be produced from an over pitch.

 

[TheMattTrain]

I'm not concerned about infecting the batch with dry hops when it's time to do that. I'm worried that it's infected already. There seems to be a correlation between my first and only infected batch and this one (if it is infected) and that correlation is the leaf hops. I don't know if it's something with pouring the beer out the top of the kettle or if I just had bad luck on two batches with the same type of ingredient.

But mostly I'm just worried that this batch got infected. It's a big 'ol beer and I want to drink it! Hoping someone has some advice on how to check on an infection without potentially infecting my equipment.

 

[TheMattTrain]

Take a SG reading in two weeks, that will be your first taste. Check for FG a few days later, second taste for comparison. You won't be dry hopping until fermentation is complete anyway. If the beer did get infected, some signs of the infection should be showing up by then.
Did you pitch on the entire yeast cake form the previous beer? Different aromas can be produced from an over pitch.

Yeah, I used the entire cake. I figured that with such a big beer it wouldn't be an issue. I've used a cake (same yeast style) on an equally large beer not long ago and had no issues.

I know I'm not going to dry hop until fermentation is done, but like I said, I'm trying not to infect any more equipment than I need to. SWMBO has me on a budget and I'm hoping to avoid tossing my thief or siphon. Don't care about tubing.


....could I use tubing and plug the end like a straw to extract some beer for a taste?

 

[flars]

A short piece of tubing to make a siphon would work. You can use your mouth to start it since the beer will siphon out, and not get back into the fermentor, if you pull it immediately.