God help my first batch

[Beerisnom]

Finished kegging my first batch of beer. Even after my OCD driven cleaning and sterilization and attention to sanitation throughout the whole process, there was a rainbow-like streak on the surface of the beer in the keg. Going out on a limb and stating that that is bad.

Then, when I turned on the gas, my regulator hissed, seemingly from the switch on the bottom right above where the hose fits on. It kept hissing until I jiggled it around until it stopped.

So I'm guessing I have a contaminated batch with a gas leak.

Starting off strong.

 

[Onkel_Udo]

Rainbow = oil on water (normally) so it could be one of your ingredients...what is the recipe because dry hopping in particular can have this effect

For the hissing, tighten the hose clamp or add a small zip tie very, very tight

Most importantly...Relax

 

[SnakeRidge]

Was there a lot of hops in the recipe? They can leave a little oil slick on top. Don't know about the gas leak though, I'm a bottler. You can spray down the regulator with some starsan to see if it's still leaking (if it bubbles up, it's leaking)

 

[LandoLincoln]

That rainbow-like streak might have been some residual sanitizer that you used to sanitize the kegs. What kind of sanitizer do you use?

 

[wildactbrewer]

I don't keg so I wouldn't know about the hissing problem. However, I have had some of my more hop forward beers have a slight sheen on them. Or if there were things like vanilla, coffee, or cocoa beans in the recipe...that could do it too.

I wouldn't consider an oil slick as an "infection," might affect head retention but that's about it, assuming it's not from an unnatural source.

 

[Beerisnom]

The recipe itself was pretty simple - a Montana Brown with just three oz. of hops (no dry hopping).

I use B-Brite to sanitize. I still have a bag left over from my bottling days and plan to graduate to Starsan like everyone on here. I did what I thought was a good job of rinsing after I was finished - maybe I missed some.

 

[LandoLincoln]

Use your B-Brite to clean. Get some Star San to sanitize.

Any sanitizer that needs to be rinsed is not an ideal sanitizer in my opinion.