Dead mouse in the mash tun.

I got back from a week long vacation this past Sunday. The garage has stunk since I came back and figured I must have thrown some sort of food in the garbage can in the garage. So last night I pulled the bag and took it out with the rest of the trash but this morning before work it still stunk as bad as ever. This afternoon I stoped by the LHBS and got my Oktoberfest Ale (Yeah, I wanted to make a Lager back in March but my daughter being born and all that pretty much killed those plans) recipe to brew this coming weekend while the wife and daughter are gone to my MiL’s house.

I set the bucket of grain on the counter next to the Mash Tun and it smells worse than ever and I looked inside the Mash Tun and there was a dead mouse in there. I picked it up, opened the garage door and dumped the dead mouse in the neighbors cow pasture (country life is good for home brewing). I then cleaned it with Oxyclean and it still stunk so I’m now letting it soak with Oxclean, will this get the smell out?

I do have traps in the garage for mice so I don’t understand why they head for the mash tun over the traps...

 

Bleach the hell out of it. But don't get paranoid. Get it clean and get at least almost all of the smell out and brew away. Rinse it very well though.

 

How much bleach do I need?

 

Don't bleach if your mash tun is stainless. It can cause corrosion

 

Plastic cooler.

 

I'd hit with with a sanitizer soak in addition to cleaner soak(s) until it stops smelling like death.

Bleach no-rinse sanitizer: well-ventilated area, 5 gal water, add 1 oz bleach, stir, add 1oz white vinegar, stir.

 

And after all that, get a cat.

 

There's no problem sanitizing stainless steel with bleach as long as one doesn't leave the bleach mixture in the kettle for longer than needed, and then rinses thoroughly.
And I would definitely go totally nuclear with the bleach if I found a dead animal in my brew gear! Yuckers!

Cheers!

 

burn it

 

Yeah - cremate the little bugger and have a nice memorial service

 

I would NEVER recommend bleach in a stainless kettle...…


Unless I found a dead mouse in it.
Bleach the begeezes out of it. Bleach kills on contact. No need to let it sit, corroding away...
A couple of minutes is good.
Then rinse the begeezes out of it.

 

I’m on the OCD side of the fence and if it was just a HD 10 gallon cooler, sorry but I’m putting that in the recycle bin, chalking it up to lesson learned and buying a new $40 cooler. And next time when going on vacay, put the lid on.

 

Does that mean you get a free case of moose head?? It did in Strange Brew...lol

 

Just noticed the OP has plastic cooler. I was talking stainless.
I'd be inclined to agree with WBB then.
Invest in a new cooler...…...

 

Dead mouse Oktoberfest ? Has a ring to it eh? Fill cooler with water , cup of bleach , let it soak a few hours. It'll be good.

 

Could have left it in there and made a batch of traditional scrumpy cider. It’s now listed as folklore but probably has a bit of truth, as a traditional method for scrumpy cider is to “hang a leg of mutton or a side of beef in the fermenting vat to boost the nutrient levels. The meat broke down slowly in the acid juice, releasing soluble amino nitrogen which the yeast could use for growth. The supposed requirement of a few dead rats in every vat is a more colourful manifestation of the same idea.”

 

Others have already mentioned bleach, oxiclean, Starsans. But the smell will still linger. Let it bake outside uncovered in direct sunlight for a day. The smell as well as most discolored stains will be gone.

It took the red stains and kimchi smell out of a 5gal white bucket. Also removed marinara stains from tupperware and sour milk smell from the wifes coffee cup in the car science experiments.

 

How much bleach do you have?

 

Seriously... Don't get all carried away. Overkill will just ruin your clothes and make your eyes burn.
2 oz. bleach per 5 gallons. And make sure it's non-scented bleach.

 

Trash it. HDPE is porous. Not worth the risk.

 

I second the sunlight approach. Then maybe some starsan for good measure.

 

I personally wouldn’t use it again. Those coolers retain smells pretty well. I would pull all the hardware and bo it or put it in a steamer basket then replace the cooler.

Lord knows why that thing died in the first place. Poison, starvation, hantavirus it’s not worth it to me.

 

If it was stainless then you can clean it and go. If you realized what was in commercial beer you would never drink it again. Plastic is a little tougher. If you found fairly fresh kill then PBW for 3 cycles of 24 hour soaks (190 degree start) along with a double concentrated sanitizer soak would do the trick. Old decomposition on plastic is a no go.

 

There's probably more mouse poop in the grain than you want to know.As others have said bleach soak, oxy clean soak then star sans soak

 

For bleach, check the label. Not all of it is meant for sanitation. Good old fasion cheap chlorine bleach, and follow the instructions for sanitation.

 

You will not get the smell out as it kind of sinks into the plastic on a molecular level and slowly gets out from there, back into the air, or worse, back into the beer. But nothing you could fix with soaking or similar.

If you are into slight notes of rotten mouse in your beer, desinfect it and brew with it.

Otherwise, toss it.

 

Just brew a Bud/Coors Light clone in the stinky mash tun; The watery beer will have some more flavor/aroma and maybe the smell in the cooler will go away.

 

This is one of the reasons that I always store my mash tun and fermentation buckets upside down. It also cuts down on the amount of crap that falls into it from our very dusty basement.

 

Problem is, unless you lodo, that dead mouse aroma will quickly fade away from your brews.

 

Definitely meant for the funeral pyre. Invest in the new cooler.

Think of how long the mouse was in there trapped and scratching at the plastic siding. No doubt you’ll have bacterial problems from the scratches. It’d be like trying to wash off a used paper napkin so you can use it again. It’s already ruined.

 

It's the mash tun, not the fermentor

 

I’m OCD like that. Working in an actual brewery changes ones perspective on how “clean” something needs to be. Dead animal in plastic. Sorry, not using it anymore. No professional brewer would. It doesn’t matter the piece of equipment. It’s made of plastic - its porous and harbors bacteria no matter how well you soak it to kill anything, especially if there’s scratches. Mice are one of the most disease ridden mammals in the world and it’s decomposing in your equipment? Get rid of it. If not for sanitation, at least peace of mind.

 

Personally, I'd scrub it down with dish soap / sponge, then do the bleach / star-san route.

 

if you only you knew how many critter parts were already in grain...

 

I would clean it with quat (https://www.fleetfarm.com/detail/stearns-steramine-disinfectant-sanitizer/0000000094519), or fill with cold water and bleach and a touch of vinegar and let it soak (the vinegar releases free chlorine, so do it in a well ventilated area), then dry it in the sun. It will probably still stink a little. Not much if any of that will leach into your beer, and I don't think any of that will still be there after the boil. But I'd still brew something robust the first time or two, not a delicate pilsner.

 

how much exactly is a "begeezes" and why is it the kettle to begin with? Baaaahhhaaaaaaaaa

I just love that word! its just fun to say! Begeezes...LOL

Cheers
jay

 

Just wanted to reiterate this point. Unless I just don't understand anything, this is a pre-boil vessel and typically holding liquid at relatively high temps. There are zero concerns here. FFS, with proper cleaning, there are zero concerns to serve potable water through this vessel.

@ismellweird made award winning cupcake stout through a septic tank back up in his kato kalin brewery. A dead mouse is of negligible concern. You probably get more dead-mouse off flavors from your grain than from your mash-tun.

Now, if we were talking about a fermenter, toss that fücker, but this is not the case.

 

That happened to me with my first cooler mash tun. I threw it in a bonfire and went electric.

 

It's a little more that zero. There's no real sanitation issue (preboil sanitation is overrated), but the plastic smells like death (literally) and he doesn't want that smell in the beer. I don't think the smell, even if it does leech into the wort, will survive boiling and fermenting -- but I don't know that for sure.