First keg pulls are sour and cloudy

[FranklinsBeerTower]

Hi all - I'm somewhat new to kegging my homebrew and am running into a first-time issue (for me) with my latest batch. I force carbed at ~22 PSI for about 36 hours, then turned down to serving pressure and pulled a pint. First pint was very cloudy and sour as hell, even though the beer was crystal clear (and not sour tasting) in the fermenter and in the hydrometer when I checked for FG.

I don't think it's an issue related to line cleanliness because I'm using a brand new beer line (just changed before this batch). Perhaps I'm just pulling trub and/or starsan from the bottom of the keg? Will this clear up in the next few days?

I've never enountered this with other batches so any insight is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[fluketamer]

i dont think starsan sits at the bottom of the keg.

and i have never had a pour be sour from the trub. trub isnt sour its sometimes bitter or yeasty but not sour

maybe something in the tap.

unfortunately if the beer tasted and looked great in fermenter and now is sour and cloudy in the keg it sounds like it got infected .

in my experience however, it takes a fair amount of time for a beer to sour and turn cloudy especially at kegging temps did you have it warm somewhere for a while and is it possible it got infected.

 

[FranklinsBeerTower]

Nope, was never warmed up above normal fermentation temps. Then transferred to keg and went straight into kegerator for carbing and cooling.

I'm not going to pull a pint for a day or two. Will see if settling helps resolve the issue. Am hoping to serve this beer at a party in 10 days so really hope I don't have an infection!

 

[keystonehb]

I had something similar happen to me with a Pilsner I had made. Tasted great when bottling, then I bottled and refrigerated it for a few months to "lager" (this was made before I could actually correctly lager) and when I pulled the bottles out to begin drinking, same thing, cloudy and sour. So that being said it unfortunatly will more than likely not change. BUT that does not mean the end for your beer. You can very easily add some fruit flavoring and turn it into a fruited sour, or some sea salt and call it a gose.

 

[FranklinsBeerTower]

I had something similar happen to me with a Pilsner I had made. Tasted great when bottling, then I bottled and refrigerated it for a few months to "lager" (this was made before I could actually correctly lager) and when I pulled the bottles out to begin drinking, same thing, cloudy and sour. So that being said it unfortunatly will more than likely not change. BUT that does not mean the end for your beer. You can very easily add some fruit flavoring and turn it into a fruited sour, or some sea salt and call it a gose.

Hey, that's what makes this fun right? The "figuring it out."

By the way, I'm a huge fan of your store. You guys are super fast and reliable, I've been exclusively ordering ingredients from you for months. Thanks for the free t-shirt in the last order

 

[bailey mountain brewer]

@FranklinsBeerTower how do you clean and keg your beers? When I soak my kegs with pbw, once the keg is full of hot pbw water I depress the poppet on the qc so the pbw liquid squirts out the poppet filling the diptube. That way the diptube gets cleaned as well, then I rinse everything and do a starsan purge and a closed transfer.. not saying you need to do this, but you want to make sure that diptube is getting cleaned during your cleaning process. Other thoughts would be the tap itself but I'd guess your cleaning that. If it's still pouring that way after a pint or 2 I'd be concerned.

 

[mnbrewr]

Maybe pull a few more pints off and see if it gets better? I've had some beers where some yeast and sediment obviously transferred to the keg and it took 3-4 pints for it to clear out. Though I don't usually get a sour taste (just yeasty).

 

[Brewer dad]

What type of beer is it, and can you share basic recipe like malt/hops/yeast? Also how did you do your transfer, and what makes you say that there’s starsan in the keg?

36 hours is a pretty quick transformation time.

 

[FranklinsBeerTower]

What type of beer is it, and can you share basic recipe like malt/hops/yeast? Also how did you do your transfer, and what makes you say that there’s starsan in the keg?

36 hours is a pretty quick transformation time.

Brewed a british golden ale (golden promise, white wheat and dash of victory with all EKG hops and Imperial A01 yeast). I transfered from fermentation bucket to keg via auto syphon with silicone tubing, all equipment soaked in star san prior to transferring. Dumped star san from keg prior to transfering, but didn't rinse the keg (I never do) so there would have been a small amount of residual starsan left in keg as I transferred.

 

[day_trippr]

You probably know a standard Star San solution has almost no character, other than a slight tang Folks have consumed beer that had a quart or more of Star San solution mixed in the fermentor, typically due to cold-crash suck-back...

Cheers!

 

[Brewer dad]

Well I was going to say for me personally EKG especially late additions need a little time to mellow out vs other hops, but not from being sour. it sounds like your first sample was fine. My bet is you are on to something with the trub/hops/yeast back in suspension.

It sounds like you’re pretty good about sanitizing so give it some time and see if it improves. If it does that’s probably your answer.

 

[Bobby_M]

The beer goes into the keg, then gets cooled down. The fine particulates that were floating in the beer now start crashing down to the bottom of the keg and when you pull that first pint you get the sediment "concentrate" and that tastes bad. You may get a couple pints like that until you eject out all the sediment from the bottom. It will clean up, just be patient.

 

[FranklinsBeerTower]

I think we can officially declare this batch a goner. I've pulled off several pints (~7-8), all of which remain cloudy as ever with a noticeable tartness.

So now, I'm curious as to whether there are any additional/heightened cleaning steps that ya'll take when trying to get past an infected batch, other than multiple rounds of PBW with hot water followed by long, repeated StarSan rounds?

 

[day_trippr]

A multi-pronged attack might ensure this was a one-time deal: disassemble the posts and drop the bits inside the keg, swish a 200ppm bleach solution for 5 minutes followed by a thorough rinsing before then using Star San. Be sure to run some sanitizer through the long dip tube as well...

Cheers!

 

[mac_1103]

I'm curious as to whether there are any additional/heightened cleaning steps that ya'll take when trying to get past an infected batch...

I would suggest multiple rounds with different sanitizers - bleach, iodafor, starsan. Maybe even throw in a quaternary ammonium disinfectant round for good measure.

 

[Brewer dad]

So it’s your beer but if you’re not hurting to free up a keg I’d encourage you to give it a little longer. You first posted about this last Thursday and at least from my experience I found it can take at least a week or two sometimes for things to start to mellow out. All things depending of course, but once it starts to change it can be fairly rapid. I experienced an English pale recently that I thought for sure was infected due to solvent flavor but given time came out nicely.

In addition to what’s been mentioned I like to boil things that can be boiled especially if they’re small nooks and crannies.

 

[Broken Crow]

Reading through this thread, I'm gonna guess your motivation for moving to kegging was focused on being able to pour yourself a cold one anytime without mucking about with bottles. If that's the case then on the one hand: Congrats on setting up a working kegerator! On the other hand; I suspect you may have overlooked the greatest boon kegging gear has to offer the homebrewer in terms of the final quality of your beer and sanitation: O2-free closed transfers. Given that you're using a bucket fermenter, I'd recommend getting a sealable lid (if you don't have one) and adding a gas bulkhead https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/bulkheadblg.htm to the lid and a spigot https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/spigotsmall.htm to the side. I'm assuming here that since you're currently using an auto-siphon, that this will equip you to do closed gravity-transfers...you just need to add a gas-return line from your cleaned/sanitized/purged and still sealed keg. IF you have a truly sealable lid for you bucket that can hold a few psi pressure, you could just add a bulkhead set with a floating diptube https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/balllockbulk_floatingdiptube.htm but from what I've seen on here, about 4 in 5 brewers who try to use pressure with a bucket tend to fail, while the spigot/gravity method is proven.
If you're not overly attached to the bucket, maybe now's the time to upgrade your fermenter to something like a fermonster (to which you can use a floating diptube and pressure: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...lete-closed-transfer-system-for-cheap.680992/ ) or a fermzilla which is made expressly for closed pressure-transfers https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/fermzillaallrounder79.htm or any of the pricier SS options.
Just my 2-cents. Best of luck.

 

[FranklinsBeerTower]

So it’s your beer but if you’re not hurting to free up a keg I’d encourage you to give it a little longer. You first posted about this last Thursday and at least from my experience I found it can take at least a week or two sometimes for things to start to mellow out. All things depending of course, but once it starts to change it can be fairly rapid. I experienced an English pale recently that I thought for sure was infected due to solvent flavor but given time came out nicely.

In addition to what’s been mentioned I like to boil things that can be boiled especially if they’re small nooks and crannies.

Thanks - I definitely don't plan on dumping it until I need the keg, so I'll continue to check it every few days. That being said, I haven't been given any reasons to be optimistic based on the pours I'm seeing.

 

[FranklinsBeerTower]

Reading through this thread, I'm gonna guess your motivation for moving to kegging was focused on being able to pour yourself a cold one anytime without mucking about with bottles. If that's the case then on the one hand: Congrats on setting up a working kegerator! On the other hand; I suspect you may have overlooked the greatest boon kegging gear has to offer the homebrewer in terms of the final quality of your beer and sanitation: O2-free closed transfers. Given that you're using a bucket fermenter, I'd recommend getting a sealable lid (if you don't have one) and adding a gas bulkhead https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/bulkheadblg.htm to the lid and a spigot https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/spigotsmall.htm to the side. I'm assuming here that since you're currently using an auto-siphon, that this will equip you to do closed gravity-transfers...you just need to add a gas-return line from your cleaned/sanitized/purged and still sealed keg. IF you have a truly sealable lid for you bucket that can hold a few psi pressure, you could just add a bulkhead set with a floating diptube https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/balllockbulk_floatingdiptube.htm but from what I've seen on here, about 4 in 5 brewers who try to use pressure with a bucket tend to fail, while the spigot/gravity method is proven.
If you're not overly attached to the bucket, maybe now's the time to upgrade your fermenter to something like a fermonster (to which you can use a floating diptube and pressure: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...lete-closed-transfer-system-for-cheap.680992/ ) or a fermzilla which is made expressly for closed pressure-transfers https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/fermzillaallrounder79.htm or any of the pricier SS options.
Just my 2-cents. Best of luck.

This is super helpful, and I definitely have plans on upgrading my fermentation game. I was more or less out of the hobby for ~11 years while living in a tiny Brooklyn apartment, so step 1 last year was buying a new brewing set up after I moved out to the burbs. I'm going to check out the links you provided!

 

[JohnDBrewer]

Did anyone else taste the beer?

 

[FranklinsBeerTower]

Did anyone else taste the beer?

No, didn't want to blind any guests

 

[Slim M]

Maybe a dumb question but what yeast did you use and what was your attenuation or what was your original gravity and final gravity? The beer might not have finished And you still have a lot of yeast and suspension.

 

[FranklinsBeerTower]

Maybe a dumb question but what yeast did you use and what was your attenuation or what was your original gravity and final gravity? The beer might not have finished And you still have a lot of yeast and suspension.

Imperial A01 house, and I had hit FG by the time of kegging (1.010). Really don't think it kept fermenting but I suppose it's not impossible! Time will tell.

 

[Snuffy]

Toss some raspberry flavoring in it and you could put it up on the board at most of the brewpubs I've visited lately.

 

[JohnDBrewer]

You really need to get someone else's opinion, by letting them taste it. Join a homebrew club or let other experienced folks taste it without tainting/telling them your concern or what you precieve.

 

[FranklinsBeerTower]

You really need to get someone else's opinion, by letting them taste it. Join a homebrew club or let other experienced folks taste it without tainting/telling them your concern or what you precieve.

That's sound advice. Thanks John!

 

[JohnDBrewer]

Like a lot of us in homebrewing, we are our own worst critics. We are much harder on our own creations and once you get something in your head about a precieved issue, you just can't shake it. Just one more variable to consider/eliminate.

 

[Snuffy]

Like a lot of us in homebrewing, we are our own worst critics. We are much harder on our own creations and once you get something in your head about a precieved issue, you just can't shake it. Just one more variable to consider/eliminate.

I have some neighbors that have expressed interest in trying my brew and I'm happy to share - but now I need to brew something I know will be outstanding and then give it time to mature. So I'm like 3 months out cause I'm not totally happy with my current batch. It's fine for me, but once again I've toyed with the recipe and it's a bit left of style IMO. They would probably never know the difference - but I do.

 

[keystonehb]

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you feel it was some sort of infection, keep an eye on all your plastic equipment as depending on where in the process the problem actually occurred (such as transferring from primary to keg) plastic items may need to be replaced in order to stop it from becoming an issue. Whats nice about the silicon tubing you mentioned you use is that you can boil that to effectively kill anything that might be going on in there