Contamination Help

[y2jrock60]

I recently attempted to brew a 10 gallon batch of a Hop Ranch clone two weeks ago. The brew day went by without any problems. I split the wort into two 5 gallon fermenters and pitched equal amounts of yeast from my 5L starter. Fermentation took off quick and both attenuated down equally. However, one of the batches became contaminated. There's a huge solvent type aroma and flavor that overwhelms the beer. The other turned out terrific.

I cleaned and sanitized both fermenters like I always do. I pitched yeast into both from the same 5L flask. Both fermented in my temperature controlled fermentation chamber. The only difference is that the contaminated fermenter contained a lot of break and hop material. I used a lot of hops in the recipe and forgot to compensate for absorption and transferred a lot of material that I usually leave behind in the kettle. Could the large quantity of break and hop material have caused the batch to become contaminated? I'm going to be throwing the fermenter away, but would like to know if wort can be contaminated if it contains too much break material? That's the only difference between the two fermenters. Maybe I just got unlucky and there was a small spot in the fermenter that wasn't completely clean. It sucks that I have to dump two cases worth of beer, especially since it contained some hard to come by Azacca hops.

 

[djfriesen]

Transferred material from the kettle won't lead to contamination in and of itself. Its all been boiled, and unless you were careless postboil, everthing that went in should have been sanitary. It's way more likely that you had something in the fermenter that didn't get sanitized right.