Help with contamination!

[airsick]

Pretty pissed... I have brewed 2 five gallon batches after not brewing for like 5 years (my son took all of my equipment to college). BOTH batches look and taste good, but have developed same bacteria in the bottles after a couple of weeks. NOTE: I kegged a gallon and a half of each batch in 1.5 gallon torpedos and force carbonated without issue (I think)... drank it without seeing any issues.

1- cleaned bottles well with pbw
2- sanitized with starsan
3- used old irish moss (5 years or more old)


wtf? obviously, I will now boil the bottles and soak them in pbw and use starsan again AND replace the irish moss with new whirfloc tabs.

Anyone seen this this crap before???

 

[divrack]

Looks wierd. I'm a bit confused when you finger Irish Moss... (Sorry that sounded weird) I assume you used it in the boil and it went in the keg as much as in the bottles so I don't see why that would be a problem. Obviously if you bottles with it that would be a contender since it's basically dried seaweed.
Have you tasted it? Checked carb levels of bottles?
Could have been an infection from gunk in bottles but I'd doubt it would be in all of them...

You didn't put Irish Moss in the bottling bucket did you??

 

[whiskeyjack]

Sure that's not the yeast from bottling? Op is kind of confusing. Specially with the Irish moss as already mentioned.

 

[divrack]

Looking at the first pic more closely it doesn't look like either yeast or Moss. Looks more like the kind of skins from aceto but too much for having formed post filling... It's it possible there was some kind of growth that the cleaning only loosened?
How long have they been sitting.
I'd carefully open one outside and see what's going on.

 

[airsick]

The Irish Moss was added with 15 minutes left in the boil. I knew it was old, but I just really never thought twice about it.

I agree, looking back that can it be eliminated (although I will replace it with whirlfloc going fwd) as it didn't show up in the kegs. ALSO, it is 100% different volumes of contamination in each bottle. So now I'm fairly convinced the bottles were dirtyish. I appreciate all of your support! I will boil all of my bottles, pdw soak everything and continue with starsan. I have 5 gallons to bottle in a couple of days. Just a bummer because I don't ever remember cleaning this much 5 years and always had clear before. Maybe that's why I gave it up last time?