Worms in the bung

Hi,

Brand new to the forums and brand new to brewing beer. First I bought the Brewers Best Beast kit and was told that's all I needed to get started. I decided to do a hefe kit because I figured it would be hard to screw up. Sanitized everything, brewed the beer and placed it in the carboy,'bung and airlock. This was 5 gallons of beer in a 5 gallon carboy.

Here's the reason for the title thread and my question. So after the first 24 hours I'm guessing it was yeast blew out of the top of the airlock and had lava'd down the side of the carboy. I figured it was fine, cleaned up the carboy, took out the bung and airlock quickly and sanitized them off, and placed them back into the carboy. Didnt have the same issue again but noticed a collection at the top of the carboy, and it seemed to be hardening instead of foamy like I see in a lot of other fermentation pictures.

Well I went to bottle today after a week and noticed a huge stench coming from the room my carboy was in. I went to remove the airlock first and almost threw up from the smell. When I looked in the bung there about 5, 2-3cm worms crawling around in the bung (2 of which fell into the beer). I immediately tossed the beer out and sanitized the heck out of literally everything. I'm a clean person with a clean home, and tried to sanitized literally everything.


My question is, how in the heck did that happen?

I really want to brew a batch but am completely lost as to why it happened and I'm afraid of blowing another $30-40 on a month of tossing out beer.

I've checked around to find a similar issue and it seems like I might be the first to create something so nasty.

Hopefully someone has the best answer

 

What do you put it your air lock to keep things out? Vodka? Starsan solution?

 

What are you using to sanitize? Must be more to it. Worms come from something laying eggs not bacteria.

 

Was using iosan originally to clean everything, but the instructions said to put regular water in the air lock. I feel like an idiot but jumped right into brewing using only the instructions the beer kit provided. I couldn't really find a good YouTube channel to learn the best way to do this.

It was strange, the worms werent in the airlock, they were on the inside of the bung between it and the airlock

 

That's really freaky. I've never heard of anything laying eggs around beer. I really don't think that you're going to see repeat occurrences of this kind of thing if you just heed some advice that I'm about to give you.

Okay, so in the future...

5 gallon fermentors are NOT to be used to ferment 5 gallon batches of beer. You need some decent headspace for the krausen to fill up. Some beers need more space than others. Hefes are pretty vigorous fermenters, so yeah, you really could have used a nice 6.5 gallon carboy for this batch of beer. 6 gallon buckets work good too. It's a sin for beginner kits to be sold with 5 gallon carboys in them. That's just evil for the kit companies to do such a thing.

Blowoff tubes are your friend. Do some video searching on homebrew blowoff tubes and use them for the first week of fermentation.

 

Possible scenario:
The hardening ring around the carboy was the remains of the krausen dropping.
The stench was yeast going bad underneath or in the area of the carboy.
You got a good dose of carbon dioxide when you removed the carboy bung.

Wort has alcohol. The larva could have been removed with a sanitized spoon. The beer may still have been hard to drink though, if it wasn't the wort with the stench, given all the circumstances and mental image of larva.

Don't give up switch to Starsan for sanitizing, filling the airlock, and removing bad mental images.

 

Thanks! That's good advice. I listened to the home brew store 2 minutes away from me and I think that was a serious bad call. I'll have to check for more in San Antonio.

I sanitized the crap out of everything but my girlfriend and I (we wanted to do this together, how cool is that?) decided to do the brewing in the garage because of the propane burner was extremely hot. Maybe this could have be the reason?

I guess my next questions are, where do you sanitize and store the clean equipment while you wait to brew? Where is the safest to brew? And where is the safest to ferment?

I'm shocked something managed to get into the bung to lay eggs... I can't imagine it.

 

Did you take any pictures? Could help identify what happened

 

When I saw the worms my first reaction was to freak out and dump it out. Sorry lol.

 

The reason it happened was not because you brewed in the garage. The only place to use a propane burner is in the garage, at the open door for ventilation, or outdoors.

Think of your brewing equipment the same as kitchen utensils. Store them in a clean dry environment. Inside the house is best if you have the room. The equipment can also be stored in plastic buckets in the garage after they have been cleaned and dried.

It is not necessary to sanitize the equipment after brewing. It is nearly impossible to store the equipment in a sanitary condition. Sanitize as you prep for using the equipment. I use Starsan. It is an effective sanitizer as long as the equipment remains wetted with the solution.

The garage is fine for brewing. You would want to minimize disturbances to keep airborne particulates to a minimum.

Any reasonably clean and dry area is good for fermenting. The main consideration is an area where you can control the temperature of the wort during active fermentation. I guess control of egg laying insects is important also.

Read through the stickies in the Beginners Beer Brewing Forum. Compare information there with the recipe you received from the homebrew shop.

Brewing does get fairly simple when emphasis is placed on sanitation, yeast pitching rates, and controlling the fermentation temperature.

 

Did they look like this


I'm going to guess they were fruit fly larva, as they are the only real house insect I know of that are attracted to co2, it's how they find rotting fruit. Maybe your lid wasn't sealed properly and they flew in and laid eggs.

 

Looked kind of like that. Might be right. Probably didnt push the airlock in deep enough.

 

Did you take a good look at the stuff in the kit? Sometimes bugs are in stuff like corn, oatmeal, wheat....

I found a lady bug in an oreo once... And a worm in a pizza pop....

 

I'm new so I don't know much about what could of caused this within your brewing process but my first question is was your equipment brand new? And if so did you clean in thoroughly before you sanitized? And how did you sanitize? Equipment of any sort gets sooo many contaminants through shipping. Doesn't matter if you ordered it online or of you picked it up in store. My first thought is does starsan kill larvea? Especially if it's not on there long enough. Could it be possible this was there prior to you brewing? I'm interested in this...


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

My guess is fruit fly larva. The things love beer. When you had your blow off, you probably didn't get it cleaned up well enough, this gave the flies something to lay eggs in. It doesn't take much for them to try to get going. I had a friend stash a beer glass on a shelf, but behind a picture on my shelf in the basement. When I found it two weeks later, he had left just enough beer in there for them to try to get going. The larva never hatched because everything dried up before they had a chance, but none the less, it showed how little it takes for them to try to get going.

 

For what it's worth I just brewed a Heffe also. I didn't get the worms but it did blow the bung off my carboy and ooze foam all over the place, and I was using a 6.5 gallon carboy. I'm probably going to start using a blow off tube. I've been brewing for about a year and I've never had anything like that happen before. I saw some of the others already post about the hard brown stuff. That's just the dried out krausen. As for the worms. I can't imagine how they could have contaminated your beer. You'd think if the eggs were in the dried extract they would have been killed in the boil. Odd

 

I have no clue about the worms. But I can say that some styles, especially when fermented on the warmer side, can really ferment fast and hard. Since I've started controlling my fermentation temps better I have rarely needed to worry about a blow-off tube. I suggest hitting the yeast manufacturer's website to find out the yeast's optimum temp range, and target the lower end of it (Wort temp, not ambient air temp. Fermenting wort will generate several degrees of heat, believe it or not.)

 

As a side note, this title for this forum topic is the best ever. I know because I have a deep appreciation for bathroom humor.

 

I almost named it Worms in my bung, but believed it would say the wrong thing.

 

It's happened before. This guy pulled maggots out of his fermented beer.

Yellow/white creepy crawly things in my beer!

 

I think tht most have it right, prolly fruit flies....

Also, remember that cleaning and sanitizing are 2 different processes. When you are finished brewing clean everything, by clean I mean remove all the residue, dirt, scum, break, and such, dry and store.

Before you brew wash and sanitize meaning, ensure that all your gear is clean, then apply an agent that will ensure that the micoscopic nasties are dead as well.

Hope your next brew goes better, dont give up, and dont dump before you taste....lol

Tim

 

I've only done 5 batches. 4 extract, 1 all grain. I use a fermentation chamber, and usually ferment at 62*. I have still needed a blow off tube twice.
Tom

 

I had a krausen overflow on my pumpkin ale and thought I got everything cleaned up however a few days into fermentation I found 3 dead fruit flies in air lock and immediately searched the forum and found this was not a big deal as the air lock did what it was designed to do...

However, I went to take a hydrometer reading and between the airlock and outside of the bung in the little circle "valley" I found a clump of drying krausen or yeast and it had larvae (don't wanna use the term maggotsfofor something that close to my beer) I immediately cleaned and sanitized the bung and airlock

I couldn't see any down in the beer and the beer stilled just smelled like beer to me....should I dump it? I even drank the hydrometer sample and it tasted fine...I just wanna make sure its still safe to consume

 

It's safe to drink for sure. I'd just keep an eye on it. And maybe don't say "worms in the bung" out loud to anyone.

 

*delete*

 

Clean and sanitize the 6.5 gal plastic bucket, use this for primary fermentation. The 5 gal carboy that is in your kit is used for secondary fermentation. I have the same kit. You got a 6.5 gal fermentation bucket, a 6.5 gal botteling bucket with spigot, a 5 gal boil kettle, a auto siphon, siphon hose and shutoff clamp, and many more items. Always use the fermentation bucket for primary.