Another infection, help!!!!!

[YellowDogBrewingCompany]

I moved my most recent batch to the kegs last night.

It seems there is a pretty bad infection. The beer has a very "sour" taste to it. It tastes like a sour ale. I may be dumping out my second batch of beer.
The goal was to produce a very basic pale ale.

I regard my sanitation process as being very thorough and can't imagine my sanitation process being the reason for an infection.

I have a few thoughts as to why this could have happened.

1. My carboys are infected and are not cleanable. My carboys are 3 years old. Could there be some reason that a glass carboy can get an infection and not be cleanable?

2. As I inspected my rig last night for any potential problems I noticed that the arms (the pieces on the inside of my kettle that the water or wort flow through) in my hot liquor tank and brew kettle have RUSTED. Can this rust affect my beer? Could there be any chemical reaction from the rust getting into the beer during fermentation that could cause this to happen?

3. The CFWC is infected and cannot be cleaned. On the brew day I flushed the CFWC backwards and forwards with boiling water. After that I submerged the CFWC in an iodipher mixture for at least an hour. I am hesitant to assume that the CFWC was not clean after this process but who knows!

I am really upset by all this. It has been a few months since I have had a good batch of beer and am getting extremely frustrated. Any help you may be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.

 

[TipsyDragon]

what color was the iodipher solution when you used it? if its clear its no longer active.

 

[Wellshooter]

Are you reusing yeast?

 

[YellowDogBrewingCompany]

The Iodipher mixture was a dark brown.
I make the iodipher fresh each brew day.

To your point I use the orange carboy cover with a blow off tube going into a growler of iodipher made that day. I do not touch the growler for the duration of fermentation.

Does anyone change their iodipher solution during the fermentation process?

 

[YellowDogBrewingCompany]

Are you reusing yeast?

Negative, I always use one packet per carboy of the safale US-05.

 

[android]

did you see any visible sign of infection (a pellicle or something atop the beer before transfering?) i mean, if you just kegged it, i'd at least let it sit for a few weeks to try it out again and see if anything changes before dumping it. old carboys, especially glass, shouldn't cause any problems. you might want to use some PBW or oxyclean to give everything a thorough cleaning and then sanitize again just to be safe before your next brew. as for the rust, i would definitely get that taken care of, it can lead to a metallic taste in your beer, which could be what you're tasting (it doesn't seem like you're 100% sure if it's actually sour or not...), but not all that likely. i've done a brew with rust on my heating elements and didn't have any ill effects on the final product (i'll be resolving that issue before the next batch however, i don't want to take more chances).

 

[Beernip]

Do you use any plastic tubing to move the wort from your BK to your carboy? Rack to a secondary?

 

[samc]

Write down and/or post your entire brew day process. That helps you and HBT readers pick apart any areas of concern. Piecemeal analysis might skip the thing that infects!

 

[YellowDogBrewingCompany]

Do you use any plastic tubing to move the wort from your BK to your carboy? Rack to a secondary?

I do use plastic tubing to move from BK to carboy.

 

[Wayne1]

The Iodipher mixture was a dark brown.
I make the iodipher fresh each brew day.

Your description of dark brown for your sanitizer sounds like you are using far too much.

The suggested use of an iodophor is 12.5 ppm for no rinse.

25 ppm or greater requires a rinse. If you are rinsing after saintizing, you are recontaminating your equipment.

If you are going to continue to use iodophor, you should get some test strips verify the concentration.

 

[Beernip]

I do use plastic tubing to move from BK to carboy.

I would toss all plastic that had come in contact with the infected brew.

 

[Homercidal]

I would toss all plastic that had come in contact with the infected brew.

+1 The price of replacing that plastic stuff is probably small compared to losing just one batch of beer to infection.

 

[YellowDogBrewingCompany]

Everyone,

Thanks for all the responses!!! Your help is greatly appreciated.

Here are the immediate steps I am going to take to solve the problem.

1. Use Sani Clean Not Iodipher
2. Replace all Plastic.
3. Sanitize CFWC. (New Methods)
4. Use Oxyclean to clean my carboys.

With all this info I do have a few question.

3. My bro-in-law is a Phd Chemist and brewer. He suggested that I boil my CFWC like he boils his immersion chiller. Has anyone ever tried this? Can anyone think of anything that would hurt the CFWC if I tried this? Of course I would boil it in a different pot than the wort.

4. I purchased a bucket of oxyclean yesterday. How many scoops should I put in each carboy to be effective?

Again, I want to say thank you to everyone who is offering some help in getting this corrected. I am planning on brewing this Saturday. I will post some info on how it goes.

 

[Cliff897]

clean your plastic with Alcohol if you don't plan on tossing it. Methyl is a smaller molecule than Ethyl.

Alcohol is a relatively small molecule (compared to some sanitizers) and gets into places where others don't.
Ozone is also a small molecule and gets in smaller places.

Molecule size is not merely a function of how many components make up the molecule but also how they attach to each other.

Heat any welds in suspect metal vessels with a propane torch. You don't need to make it glow or discolor it just get it to about 300 F.


Switching to Star San is a good idea.

If the counter flow chiller is all metal, it should tolerate boiling just fine just fine. Take out and replace rubber hose coupling gaskets.
Run a cleanser like OxiClean Free or TSP through it and then maybe run Alcohol through it.

when you boil it, make sure the thing is filled with fluid; Air spaces will insulate from the heat.

 

[Wayne1]

BOILING IS NOT CLEANING!!!

You need to remove soils from the inside of your CFC. Running boiling water through it or soaking it will not completely remove the soils. You need to pump warm (120 F - 140F) Oxyclean (1 scoop per gallon) through the CFC in a loop. Look at the discharge. It will probably turn a darker color. Allow the darker color discharge to go down the drain. Continue to recirculate through the CFC for at least 10 minutes.

Rinse the CFC with warm water. Repeat the above step with Sani-clean. Do not rinse after Sani-clean.

Cleaning and sanitizing are TWO steps. No sanitizer can work with soils present. First thing to do is remove the soil. That is cleaning. Then comes sanitizing.

 

[YellowDogBrewingCompany]

BOILING IS NOT CLEANING!!!

You need to remove soils from the inside of your CFC. Running boiling water through it or soaking it will not completely remove the soils. You need to pump warm (120 F - 140F) Oxyclean (1 scoop per gallon) through the CFC in a loop. Look at the discharge. It will probably turn a darker color. Allow the darker color discharge to go down the drain. Continue to recirculate through the CFC for at least 10 minutes.

Rinse the CFC with warm water. Repeat the above step with Sani-clean. Do not rinse after Sani-clean.

Cleaning and sanitizing are TWO steps. No sanitizer can work with soils present. First thing to do is remove the soil. That is cleaning. Then comes sanitizing.

Again, I appreciate everyone's feedback.

My normal process for cleaning the CFWC is to run 160 degree water forward and then backward for 10 minutes each. Then to soak it in iodipher for an hour for sanitation.

My new process will be run 160 degree water [B]with oxyclean (1 scoop per five gallons)[/B] forward and then backward for 10 minutes each. Then to soak it in Saniclean for an hour for sanitation.

Essentially the only differences I am making is adding oxyclean to my cleaning procedure and changing my sanitation solution from Iodipher to Saniclean.

Do you think these changes will make the difference needed to eliminate the infection?

 

[MattHollingsworth]

+1 on replacing the plastic tubing.

 

[shroomzofdoom]

I say replace tubing and plastic, also replace anything rusty. Rust is very porous and would be difficult to sanitize. Do you have any brew buddies? Can you try borrowing an IC and isolating the CFWC as the issue? How about borrowing a keg from someone and isolating the issue to your keg?

It's like an engineering problem, the first thing you need to do is start isolating variables---start with what's cheap or what you can borrow.

Best of luck

 

[jmo88]

?My normal process for cleaning the CFWC is to run 160 degree water forward and then backward for 10 minutes each. Then to soak it in iodipher for an hour for sanitation.

That might have something to do with funky flavors. If your iodophor was dark brown (too high ppm) and hou let it sit for an hour, that's overkill and could be affecting the flavor. No rinse iodophor 12ppm takes 2 minutes and starsan is nearly instantaneous.

 

[MattHollingsworth]

That might have something to do with funky flavors. If your iodophor was dark brown (too high ppm) and hou let it sit for an hour, that's overkill and could be affecting the flavor. No rinse iodophor 12ppm takes 2 minutes and starsan is nearly instantaneous.

From George Fix's book "An Analysis of Brewing Techniques", page 114:

It is not uncommon to see contact times of two minutes recommended for iodophors. Practical brewing experience shows that this is inadequate, especially with selected spore-forming yeast (Ibid.). We found that the D-values in table 4.3 are adequate for a wide range of bacteria and yeasts.

His table recommends 15 minutes contact for 12.5 ppm (no rinse concentration) and 9 minutes for 25 ppm.

I don't think he was saying his diluted iodophor was dark brown, I think he meant that his pure iodophor is dark brown, as it should be. If it's no longer got that color, it's an indication that it's no longer good for use.

 

[MattHollingsworth]

Again, I appreciate everyone's feedback.

My normal process for cleaning the CFWC is to run 160 degree water forward and then backward for 10 minutes each. Then to soak it in iodipher for an hour for sanitation.

My new process will be run 160 degree water [B]with oxyclean (1 scoop per five gallons)[/B] forward and then backward for 10 minutes each. Then to soak it in Saniclean for an hour for sanitation.

Essentially the only differences I am making is adding oxyclean to my cleaning procedure and changing my sanitation solution from Iodipher to Saniclean.

Do you think these changes will make the difference needed to eliminate the infection?

There's nothing wrong with using iodophor for sanitizing. I've been using it forever and it works great. You need to *clean* everything first before sanitizing. And if you live in a hard water area, you may need to use vinegar after cleaning too. I use our local oxy to clean first, then use vinegar to remove any hard water deposits (and any oxy buildup, which I get), *then* sanitize. If you're using a CFWC, then you REALLY need to clean that and get rid of all the plastic tubing for that.