2nd batch that i have made that taste sour!

[biggben]

Ok not too long ago i made a brown ale that wound up tasting horribly sour after bottling. i thought that this might be due to a racking cane that might have been not properly cleaned. the whole batched tasted great at first and then after a few weeks it wound up smelling like vomit and tasting sour. well i changed the bottling bucket except for the tap and the racking cane. made an amber ale and it tasted great a few days ago and now it taste like the brown did when it first started going sour. i clean everything soak in iodophor for ten mins and then use starsan. my question is what the heck is causing my infections. the last beer that i brewed that turned out was a strawbeery wheat. everything since is sour. anyone no what is going on?

 

[jdauria]

Do you rinse between the iodophor and the Starsan? Neither needs to be rinsed or causes an off-flavor, but I wonder if the you are not rinsing between the two, if the two chemicals are causing some kind of reaction?

The other issue and "sour" being the key is an infection, possibly a lactobacillus bug? You may want to replace all tubing you use and soak everything else in bleach. When you made the strawberry wheat did you use real strawberries? If so, maybe picked up an infection from them?

 

[TopherM]

I was thinking the strawberries too. Did you use fresh strawberries, and did you follow any process to sanitize them first? Fresh fruits and veggies are notorious for carrying a bit of wild yeast along with them, so you really need to boil and puree them before you use them to kill off that wild yeast. Wild yeast also has a way of staying alive John Travolta style in the fermenting bucket between batches.

 

[biggben]

Wouldn't the iodophor kill the lactobacillus? if not then i think that is the problem.

 

[TopherM]

Iodophor would kill the lactobacillus, but not if it was harbored in scratches in a platic fermenter, nooks and crannies of a ball valve, spigot, plate chiller, etc.. It's easy to miss those hard to reach spots.

 

[biggben]

Yeah i am thinking that it probably came from the spigot. i am buying a new one. got a new bucket too for bottling in the mean time i am drinking 6 gallons of amber ale.