tekknoschtev
Well-Known Member
I'm going to try NOT making this like every other infection thread I've read, because it seems to get asked quite often.
Long story short: Brewed October 23th and it sat in primary for 3 weeks. About a week before secondary, I sliced and scraped the vanilla beans and soaked them in 80 proof vodka. Before secondary, the beer smelled exquisite. After sitting on vanilla beans in secondary it smelled great with a nice sweet vanilla aroma, but I put off bottling it a few days because I was waiting for my kegging supplies to arrive. Sometime between this past Thursday and Friday, my beer developed the white frosty stringy layer. I'm not debating whether or not this was an infection, because even if it was the consensus seems to be that it should still be bottled/kegged and tried before dumping it.
At any rate, the smell in secondary was no longer that of sweet vanilla, but it wasn't quite "bad" per se. I figured what the heck, I'll give it a go. My supplies arrived today and I kegged it. While kegging, it smelled ALMOST how it was supposed to, but after force carbonating it and dispensing a small amount, it definitely has a bite of sorts to it (perhaps this is the "sour" taste I've read about).
At any rate, here are my questions:
1. Because the signs of infection appeared seemingly overnight, if I had kegged or bottled a day prior, would I have been fine? Or, is this a case of the symptom being indicative of something else that had been in progress for longer?
2. Assuming as the beer gets colder (seems to hide bad/strong flavors for me at least), it becomes drinkable, is there any reason not to drink it? I'm thinking more along the lines of medically, would it be dangerous to do so? I'm not in a hurry to get the keg cleaned out, because I still have three empty ones I have to fill before it becomes a burden so I plan on giving it some time (as I've read here).
Theories about what may have happened:
1. The morning after we put the beer into primary, I woke up to a destroyed airlock on the other side of my brew closet. This is no small feat. Unfortunately, as with everything, rushing is bad, and i was in a rush to get to work so I didn't have time to clean everything up so I grabbed a new rubber stopper and air lock, put some water in and ran off to work.
I came home after work, to another case of the air lock on the ground. I knew in the morning that I needed to put a blow off tube on, but I didn't have time. I put the blow off tube on and all was well.
2. Poor sanitizing procedures for the wine thief and hydrometer I used to check the gravity. I'm not sure if this is it, but I know I sanitized it more by dipping/rinsing where as for brewing everything kind of soaks in a bucket of sanitizing water. For what its worth, my home brew shop calls the stuff "Solo" which I believe is One Step - at least it looks like the One Step I used a few years ago. Definitely going to be fixing this for my next brew
Long story short: Brewed October 23th and it sat in primary for 3 weeks. About a week before secondary, I sliced and scraped the vanilla beans and soaked them in 80 proof vodka. Before secondary, the beer smelled exquisite. After sitting on vanilla beans in secondary it smelled great with a nice sweet vanilla aroma, but I put off bottling it a few days because I was waiting for my kegging supplies to arrive. Sometime between this past Thursday and Friday, my beer developed the white frosty stringy layer. I'm not debating whether or not this was an infection, because even if it was the consensus seems to be that it should still be bottled/kegged and tried before dumping it.
At any rate, the smell in secondary was no longer that of sweet vanilla, but it wasn't quite "bad" per se. I figured what the heck, I'll give it a go. My supplies arrived today and I kegged it. While kegging, it smelled ALMOST how it was supposed to, but after force carbonating it and dispensing a small amount, it definitely has a bite of sorts to it (perhaps this is the "sour" taste I've read about).
At any rate, here are my questions:
1. Because the signs of infection appeared seemingly overnight, if I had kegged or bottled a day prior, would I have been fine? Or, is this a case of the symptom being indicative of something else that had been in progress for longer?
2. Assuming as the beer gets colder (seems to hide bad/strong flavors for me at least), it becomes drinkable, is there any reason not to drink it? I'm thinking more along the lines of medically, would it be dangerous to do so? I'm not in a hurry to get the keg cleaned out, because I still have three empty ones I have to fill before it becomes a burden so I plan on giving it some time (as I've read here).
Theories about what may have happened:
1. The morning after we put the beer into primary, I woke up to a destroyed airlock on the other side of my brew closet. This is no small feat. Unfortunately, as with everything, rushing is bad, and i was in a rush to get to work so I didn't have time to clean everything up so I grabbed a new rubber stopper and air lock, put some water in and ran off to work.
I came home after work, to another case of the air lock on the ground. I knew in the morning that I needed to put a blow off tube on, but I didn't have time. I put the blow off tube on and all was well.
2. Poor sanitizing procedures for the wine thief and hydrometer I used to check the gravity. I'm not sure if this is it, but I know I sanitized it more by dipping/rinsing where as for brewing everything kind of soaks in a bucket of sanitizing water. For what its worth, my home brew shop calls the stuff "Solo" which I believe is One Step - at least it looks like the One Step I used a few years ago. Definitely going to be fixing this for my next brew
