I Can't Kill my Beer

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jscherff

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Three weeks ago, I brewed a cranberry-orange wheat. When fermentation stopped, I added dried cranberries and orange zest (after soaking in vodka). As I expected, fermentation resumed for a couple days as the yeast worked its way through the sugars from the dried cranberries, then ceased again. So far, so good.

After about three days of no activity, my airlock resumed bubbling and I suspected I had an infection. Apparently, I didn't soak my adjuncts long enough. I racked off the cranberries just to make sure. The bubbles slowed down but did not stop, and a couple days later, began to pick up pace again. A thin, white layer of foam also began to form on the surface of the wort.

I have used potassium metabisulfite in the past to kill bacteria and wild yeast in other (non-beer) fermentations, so I dissolved 1/8 teaspoon in sterile water and added it to the wort (this was a 3-gallon batch, so I used half the recommended dose). Airlock activity continued. The next day and the day after that I repeated the 1/8 teaspoon k-meta treatment. Same result. Whatever's in this beer is awfully damned stubborn - the equivalent of undead bacteria or yeast zombies, I guess. At this point, it has been a little over three weeks and airlock activity continues. I would have thrown this out long ago but it still tastes pretty good (samples obtained with sterile wine thief) and I am just as stubborn as the infection.

Anyone have any suggestions on how I can win this tug of war?

P.S., I will add Danstar cask and bottle conditioning yeast at bottling to get my carbonation.
 
whats the fg its probably done guy... airlock activity doesn't mean fermentation, its probably barometric pressure changes.
 
It could be that CO2 is slowly coming out of solution. Have you taken any gravity readings throughout this? Its the only sure way to know that some sort of yeast/microbe activity is still going on.

I recently did a double honey wheat where I added a pound of honey in secondary and as suspected like you it started fermenting again. This went on a solid two weeks and even when I bottled the airlock was still slowly bubbling( about once a minute). It also developed a thin layer of foam but nothing was wrong with it.

Given all the steps you've taken over time and the fact that at this point it tastes like it should I'm guessing it's just co2 coming out of your airlock.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Home Brew mobile app
 
SG was around 1.010 when I added the cranberries, but I haven't checked since racking off them. I should have thought to do that. I'll check tonight and post results. I was hung up on the fact that activity had completely ceased for a few days and then resumed. The airlock was bubbling about 4x/minute this morning at 67F. (And I still don't understand why the k-meta hasn't killed whatever's in there, unless it's really just CO2 release - but CO2 release at 4x/minute?)
 
Sounds to me like you're good, your FG is stable so it's not fermenting anymore. I also believe that K-Meta doesn't actually kill the yeast, instead it just prevents them from producing a crap ton more yeast.
 
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