Every batch I make is sour

[Toxxyc]

Out of interest, your granular sanitizer, how long do you store it for? Most of those "oxygen cleaners", once mixed, specially with warm water, stops "sanitizing" after something like 15 minutes. The hydrogen peroxide it releases is gassed off and it does not sanitize at all anymore. It's actually the hydrogen peroxide that releases oxygen (which is why it's called "oxyclean" or "oxygen cleaner" and names like that, because of the release of oxygen) which does the actual sanitizing and cleaning, and once the oxygen is out, it's useless.

 

[Birrofilo]

The instructions for the kit said between 5-7 days in the fermenter, and I read an article that said you should get the beer off the yeast cake as quick as possible.
Hence my change to 1 week ferment.

There's so many contrary opinions!

To be sure, I'm not at risk of infection if I leave it in the fermenter for another week after it's fermented am I ?

The instructions on the kit are not written by the brewing department but by the marketing department. Marketing department says homebrewing must be easy, otherwise people is discouraged. If you put too many instructions, caveats and precautions in it, people will run away from the kit screaming.

Don't pay attention to the instruction if you want the best quality your kit can give.

Don't use sugar, use dry malt extract (DME).
Don't count days, use a hydrometer or a refractometer and evaluate the advancing of the fermentation. The fermentation is completed when the density remains stable for 3 days.
Then, let the beer sit on the yeast for a few more days. It will clean because the yeast will begin using some substances as food which they initially discarded as not tasty enough (or actually which they vomited).

It's certainly not unheard of in my homebrewing experience to bottle after 1 months from preparation. Fermentations can have a "long tail".

After you bottle, wait a couple weeks for a proper carbonation at ambient temperature before putting the bottles in some cooler place (or colder).

Then leave the bottles undisturbed in the cooler place for a few weeks. The tastes will blend nicely. When the beer is green, I have a strange sensation of separation, as if the bitter in the beer doesn't make love with the sweetness in the beer.

Two-three months after the cooking is the normal and proper delay before enjoying your beer IMHO. Much less than that, and the beer is "green".

 

[Sundy]

The instructions on the kit are not written by the brewing department but by the marketing department. Marketing department says homebrewing must be easy, otherwise people is discouraged. If you put too many instructions, caveats and precautions in it, people will run away from the kit screaming.

Don't pay attention to the instruction if you want the best quality your kit can give.

Don't use sugar, use dry malt extract (DME).
Don't count days, use a hydrometer or a refractometer and evaluate the advancing of the fermentation. The fermentation is completed when the density remains stable for 3 days.
Then, let the beer sit on the yeast for a few more days. It will clean because the yeast will begin using some substances as food which they initially discarded as not tasty enough (or actually which they vomited).

It's certainly not unheard of in my homebrewing experience to bottle after 1 months from preparation. Fermentations can have a "long tail".

After you bottle, wait a couple weeks for a proper carbonation at ambient temperature before putting the bottles in some cooler place (or colder).

Then leave the bottles undisturbed in the cooler place for a few weeks. The tastes will blend nicely. When the beer is green, I have a strange sensation of separation, as if the bitter in the beer doesn't make love with the sweetness in the beer.

Two-three months after the cooking is the normal and proper delay before enjoying your beer IMHO. Much less than that, and the beer is "green".

What he said. I always have trouble leaving the beer long enough to age properly. I want to drink it.

 

[bwible]

lol, i was just saying in another thread. "if anyone ask me about sour beer, i'd tell them to not bother with sanitizing"....

I ALWAYS get sour beer when i sanitize. so i just pasturize with 180f water.....

I use Star San religiously and none of my beers are sour. I do rinse the foam completely out. I have read where some people think Star San oxygenates their beer - I also have not run into that.

For bottles I soak in PBW for at least an hour then rinse and transfer to soak in Star San again for at least 15 min. I use 2 old 8 gallon plastic pail wine fermenters for this. I sanitize bottle caps in a small container of Star San too - just scoop a little out. Bottle filler and tubing also has to be soaked and santizied. If you are using a bottling bucket with a plastic faucet, be sure to run some sanitizer through that too. Any syphon cane and tubing used too. And any spoon you stir with.

I always thought the other way - tell the guys who actually want to make cloudy, sour and lactic beers to just forget about cleaning or sanitizing anything.

 

[bracconiere]

I always thought the other way - tell the guys who actually want to make cloudy, sour and lactic beers to just forget about cleaning or sanitizing anything.

yeah, i'd agree. but what ever my natural funk is, it tastes alright to me. like beer probiotics, and if i do anything more then pasturize, i have to rebuild the biome...

 

[JimC]

Is your water high mineral content? Extract beers are best brewed with soft/ro water since all the minerals are in the extract already. High mineral levels can come off as sour.

 

[bruce_the_loon]

Nobody has asked so far. How do you bottle? Do you sanitize the bottling wand or siphon you use to get the beer into the bottle. Are you using a bottling bucket and, if so, have you stripped the faucet to pieces as critters hide inside.

 

[Comradesour]

Out of interest, your granular sanitizer, how long do you store it for?

I wasn't storing it at all. With a clean fermenter, when I was ready to brew, I'd mix it up and sanitise everything just before, leave 10-15 mins then chuck the liquid out and start adding ingredients.

I've switched to starsan after the recommendations from this thread though, and I heard you can reuse that.

Is your water high mineral content? Extract beers are best brewed with soft/ro water since all the minerals are in the extract already. High mineral levels can come off as sour.

Never even thought about the mineral content of the water. Is the best bet just to get bottled water?

Nobody has asked so far. How do you bottle? Do you sanitize the bottling wand or siphon you use to get the beer into the bottle. Are you using a bottling bucket and, if so, have you stripped the faucet to pieces as critters hide inside.

I'm bottling straight from the fermenter, with a short tube attached to the a bottling wand. Both of which I strip and sanitize thoroughly before use. Would you recommend transferring from the fermenter to a bucket?
I was just adding dry sugar straight from the packet to each individual bottle though. Next time I bottle I'll boil the sugar and add the sugar liquid to each bottle.

I did notice the sourness in the beer when tasting from the fermenter before bottling, so I don't think its the bottling that's caused it.

 

[Toxxyc]

Yeah StarSan can be reused many times. I use it until it becomes physically dirty and then I dump it. It'll probably last even longer now that I'm going kegging though.

 

[Bigdaddyale]

Check underneath the lid gasket on your fermentor- I fought an infection for almost a year before I pulled out the rubber gasket and found nasties living in there

 

[bruce_the_loon]

I'm bottling straight from the fermenter, with a short tube attached to the a bottling wand. Both of which I strip and sanitize thoroughly before use. Would you recommend transferring from the fermenter to a bucket?
I was just adding dry sugar straight from the packet to each individual bottle though. Next time I bottle I'll boil the sugar and add the sugar liquid to each bottle.

I did notice the sourness in the beer when tasting from the fermenter before bottling, so I don't think its the bottling that's caused it.

No need to move to a bottling bucket if you are happy with the bottling from the fermenter. It becomes another source for oxygenation and infection.

 

[Birrofilo]

Never even thought about the mineral content of the water. Is the best bet just to get bottled water?

For a pre-hopped kit the salts are usually all contained in the liquid malt extract (LME). You could, in fact, use reverse-osmosis water, which you will find for little in supermarkets and such. The labels normally says that's not for human consumption. The common experience suggests it is fine.

If you want to drink something that the label says you can drink then you can use bottled water but, again, you should go for water which is a low fixed residue, ideally an "oligomineral water", i.e. less than 200 mg/l of fixed residue. You find the datum on the label.

A further precaution against infection would be to boil for 5 minutes (everything if you can, I mean put all the water in the pot if you can) so that you sanitize everything properly. If your pot is not large enough, then boil for 5 minutes the content of the pot, and make the final dilution in the fermenter with bottled water which you opened on the moment. Bottled water is "microbiologically pure" and should present no problem if added to your wort immediately after you open the bottle (don't use a bottle which you opened yesterday). That's not the case with tap water, tap water should always be boiled during beer preparation for at least a few minutes. Also, if you dilute your wort in the fermenter with tap water you might taste the chlorine.

 

[Diechipmunk]

brewNYC - I understand what you are saying, but have you read about Hopped Malt Extract lately? I was surprised as hell to read something recently (I think from Coopers) and they specifically said, "don't boil it". I was researching for a friend who wanted to make a Canadian blonde and I knew there was one you could do 'from the can,' or as a Kit and Kilo. I think Comradesour just needs to bleach bomb everything. My humble opinion.

I just brewed my first batch in years from a DME kit. The instructions in my kit say do not add DME to the boiling kettle. The steam will clump the DME in the bag. The instruction is remove the kettle from the burner and let the boil settle down, mix in the DME then return to the burner to boil for an hour. It could be that the instructions in your kit aren't quite as clear?