Infection trouble-shooting help

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drunami

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Ok. So I'm a moderately experienced home brewer (~50 batches in). These days I tend to get results I'm very happy with with one exception -- recently I've had a string of bottle infections. I was hoping to give some details about where I am in my troubleshooting process because I'm not sure what to do next.
1. I all grain BIAB, occasionally switching to partial mash if I'm doing something high gravity. I ferment in 7gal plastic buckets (ropak) which I renewed last month.
2. All my tubing and my bottling wand was replaced last fall.
3. On bottling day, everything gets rinsed and sanitized with star san. I always clean everything when I'm done, so it all gets put away clean, but I don't PBW again at the beginning of a new session.
4. My bottles get sprayed out with a bottle sprayer and sanitized with a pump-action sprayer of star san, dried on a bottle tree.
5. I either carbonate with little sugar drops or with dextrose. When I do dextrose, I boil it in 1/2 a cup of water for a few seconds then dump it into my bottling bucket and start racking directly onto the hot solution.
6. My bottle infections aren't constant (it's not every batch) but recently they've been more frequent (1/4 rather than say 1/12), which is what prompted my string of rubber/plastic replacement.

What am I missing? What else should I try?

The only thing I can think of is that I frequently use older star san for sanitizing my bottles. Whenever I fill a fermenter with starsan, I save a gallon of it in a 1gal ropak bucket I have just bc its handy to have around. Everything I've read says it should last ages. I keep it covered, and I empty it and change it out every brew day (which is usually every weekend or every other weekend) so it's never that old anyway.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
#4 caught my attention when you said you let the bottles "dry" on a bottle tree. I always put beer in the bottles before Starsan dries. Otherwise, it sounds like you do things pretty much the same as me.
 
By "dry" I mean that I put them on the bottling tree and then when I'm done sanitizing them all I start bottling. They're probably not dry per se, but the bottling tree does aim the necks down, so I doubt anything falls in there.
 
If only some bottles are exhibiting infection symptoms, the root cause of the problem is most likely to be found inside the bottles.
Star San is not a cleaner, and you cannot sanitize something that is not clean...

Cheers!
 
+1 to Brownalemikie. I always read it needs to be wet. Of course, in reading a bit just now, the Starsan site says to let it dry for homebrew use but to use it wet for other applications. I have always used it wet.

Also on #5, you need to boil for 10 minutes whatever you are putting into your beer for carbonation. That's a must. I boil up my sugar water, stick it in the fridge on an ice pack for about 15 minutes then carefully add to the empty but sanitized (and still wet) bucket to avoid O2. Then add the beer, creating a whirlpool with the tubing as it racks from the carboy,

FWIW I use my dishwasher for sanitizing my bottles as it has a feature to do so and have never used Starsan on my bottles. If you do this though, make sure you are NOT using detergent, Jet Dry or any other kind of rinsing agent or else you'll never get a head on your beer to stick around very long. Just plain hot water. My wife hates that we don't use Jet Dry but I tell her that I never know when I will be using it to sanitize the bottles! She understands. Heh.

If you suspect you may have some kind of infection in your bottles (you reuse them, right?), I would bake them carefully in the oven. Look around for instructions on how to do that without turning them into glass shards. Cooling is the key, slowly cooling. I have a batch of bottles I am most likely going to do this to before I bottle my Westy clone. They were chunky when I got them because they had old beer in them, yum. Spent an afternoon cleaning them and soaking in bleach but I just don't know so heat will be the medium I use to ensure complete sterilization.

Starsan should be fresh when you use it and the pH needs to be below 3.0 in order for it to be effective. It should be clear but can work when cloudy. I looked around for an article I read a few years back on the stuff but couldn't find it. They guy did an effectiveness experiment on it and had some really great data.

Basically if you mix it up and store in the fridge at 40F or below, it's good for a while, but I cannot recall how long. I swap out the contents of my spray bottle in the fridge every couple weeks. I just mix it up as I go, a QT at a time. 1.5ml per quart in a spray bottle with 2 minutes of contact time. That QT handles everything I need to sanitize on brew day just fine with enough left over that I pour 1/2 down the sink. Go to your local pharmacy and ask for a children's medicine dosing syringe. They will probably give you one free. 1.5mls will give you over 150 batches of Starsan from 8oz container. I've had the same bottle of Starsan for around 2 years now.

Knock on wood - 10 years, Lord knows how many batches, probably at least 150 if my estimations are correct, and not one infection. I might have just jinxed myself though...:mad:
 
Are you sanitizing the bottle tree?
Can you make any linkage between the infections and the type of priming (sugar drops or dextrose)?
 
You don't mention bottling bucket. Have you taken apart the spigot and cleaned/sanitized?
Remove and take apart the spigot, drop the pieces into a container of sanitizer and sanitize each time before putting back together before bottling and see if that makes a difference.
 
+1^ Definitely take the spigot apart and clean. You might even want to replace it to be safe. This is a common breeding ground for bugs. And disassemble and clean you bottling wand, too. Also, if every bottle in a batch is infected, it's most likely not a bottle-specific issue. It's a fermenter or bottling bucket issue.

You don't mention what kind of infection. However, if you're getting gushers and it smells like vinegar, it's acetobacter. I learned the hard way that fruit flies carry aceto. While racking to your bottling bucket and during bottling keep a cover on everything. Fruit flies love beer and it only takes one to infect your entire bottling bucket.
 
Some quick replies:

1. Bottling buckets got a replacement recently (I use my fermentation buckets) and spigots get disassembled and cleaned every time they get used.
2. The bottles, like everything else in my system, get put away clean.
3. These infections seem to be batch-wide. They're gushers I guess... I've never had them actually "gush" but they basically never stop releasing bubbles so matter how long they've been open.
4. When making my sugar solution, the water gets above 150° for way long enough to pasteurize the liquid. I don't think boiling it for 10 minutes would change much. Though...
5. All the batches that have gotten infected recently were carbed with a dextrose solution, not drops.
6. I used to sanitize with my dishwasher back at my old place and always had terrible results. Maybe that thing didn't get hot enough? Anyway, I don't have a dishwasher in my current apt, so no go there...

Thanks so much for all the feedback. My wife and I are bottling 2 batches today. I'm probably going to try not re-using the star san and maybe doing a second cleaning of the bottles before sanitizing them and see where that gets me.
 
One question: you mention that you're getting mini gushers. How does the beer itself taste? Sour, sweet, astringent? Sounds to me like you don't have an infection issue, but an over carbing issue. Find a good carbonation calculator and compare that to what you've been using.
 
If the infection is always batch wide, but not every batch, that points to a problem with those batches, and much less to the bottles. I can see a few individual bottles not being clean enough getting infected, but this is much wider.

Disassembling bucket spigots:
Do you separate the two 3/4" main barrels of the spigot body that rotate into one another? You need to soak them in very hot water for 30 seconds to a minute to be able to push them apart. The small crevice in between is a bug trap.

The rubber spigot washer/seal needs a boil in some PBW from time to time.

Personally, I don't like those spigots on fermentors. Do you use the spigot to transfer beer to your bottling bucket? If so, how do you clean them at that point?

If your bottles are cleaned with a bottle brush and hot PBW, Oxiclean, or washing soda, rinsed well (jet bottle washer) and allowed to drain and dry thoroughly, then put away covered, a rinse with Starsan (minimum wet contact time 30 secs to 1 min) right before you bottle should suffice.

Clean and sanitize that tree!

When during bottling the bottles dry, especially the lip, they are not sanitary anymore. Dip them upside down into the starsan bucket, to re-wet, and sanitize the lip right before filling.

Are you sure the beer is done, fermented out when bottling? As @seatazzz said, how's that beer tasting?

Review your process carefully, there must be something you're missing.
 
I don't think it's an overcarbing issue. The beer has a noticeable spiciness that it shouldn't, which increases over time while the malt character of the given beer decreases. The spiciness reminds me a bit of the zing you get from saison yeast. It's a character I've noticed across all the beers I've had issue with even though they are very diverse styles (as far ranging as a dark winter ale to a pilsner).

Also, I use the name carb calculator all the time, so if its calculations were off, that wouldn't explain the 3/4 of my batches that are completely successful.
 
IslandLizard said:
Disassembling bucket spigots:
Do you separate the two 3/4" main barrels of the spigot body that rotate into one another? You need to soak them in very hot water for 30 seconds to a minute to be able to push them apart. The small crevice in between is a bug trap.
Click to expand...

Not sure that I follow that description. Maybe we have different spigot designs (are there more than one?) or I just don't know what you're talking about. BUT, I talk literally every piece of my spigots apart when I clean them, which I do with a PBW soak, rinse, then star san.

As for timing, the beers are done. That' something I'm sure of. My best guess is that it's some sort of methodological oversight which isn't bad enough to ruin every batch, but isn't tight enough to prevent infection 100% of the time.
 
drunami said:
Not sure that I follow that description. Maybe we have different spigot designs (are there more than one?) or I just don't know what you're talking about. BUT, I talk literally every piece of my spigots apart when I clean them, which I do with a PBW soak, rinse, then star san.

As for timing, the beers are done. That' something I'm sure of. My best guess is that it's some sort of methodological oversight which isn't bad enough to ruin every batch, but isn't tight enough to prevent infection 100% of the time.
Click to expand...

All plastic bucket spigots I've seen are built the same. The part of the spigot that has the little tappy rotates inside another part that has the nut. Those 2 pieces only come apart after softening in hot water, then pushing the part with the tappy out with the back of a screwdriver or dowel or something.

When taken apart there are 5 pieces, the nut, the rubber seal, the little (red?) tap valve, the outer body with the threads, and the inner body where the tap valve slides in.

After cleaning, sanitize and assemble wet.
 
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Another place where bugs can hide is inside your kettle valve. Take it apart completely, and clean well. You may find some black tarry deposit in there. It doesn't get hot enough to kill what's in there. It doesn't explain why some batches come out unscathed, but it would transfer an infection to a whole batch.
 
drunami said:
I don't think it's an overcarbing issue. The beer has a noticeable spiciness that it shouldn't, which increases over time while the malt character of the given beer decreases. The spiciness reminds me a bit of the zing you get from saison yeast. It's a character I've noticed across all the beers I've had issue with even though they are very diverse styles (as far ranging as a dark winter ale to a pilsner).

Also, I use the name carb calculator all the time, so if its calculations were off, that wouldn't explain the 3/4 of my batches that are completely successful.
Click to expand...

Have you done any saisons lately? If so, what yeast did you use?
 
I brewed a saison about 8 months ago. Used wyeast 3724. Doubt that's an issue though, since I've changed all the plastic/rubber since then and have had plenty of fine batches in the meantime as well.
 
The drama continues! My co-brewer/wife and I have split three bottles from the recent batch that inspired starting this post this evening and all of them were fine! That is to say:

1. They were very different from the first few I opened. They don't foam constantly, the head dissipates over time, and they don't have that sharp/spicy whatever it is that I can't quite describe.
2. Maybe this was just a bottle-to-bottle issue? I have had whole batches get this issue in the past, but this time it seems to be more localized.
3. I suppose in this case there's a small chance that the beer just needed a bit more age (it is a pilsener). That hasn't been true with previous batches, which have gotten increasingly more gusher-y as time went on, but maybe it was for this batch?

I drastically re-upped my sanitation regime for the two batches I just bottled, so we'll see how that goes.

and yes, I always sanitize my bottle caps.

Thanks again for all the trouble-shooting ideas! It's super helpful to have people question every little thing you do when trying to find a flaw in your method. :)
 
one note on star san. it lasts a whole lot longer if you make it with RO or distilled water.

depending on your TDS levels in your water supply, the star san will be neutralized slowly or more quickly.
 
SanPancho said:
one note on star san. it lasts a whole lot longer if you make it with RO or distilled water.

depending on your TDS levels in your water supply, the star san will be neutralized slowly or more quickly.
Click to expand...

Yes, RO or distilled is best. I wouldn't make a gallon to have sit around at a time. I make a small amount of StarSan solution that goes into a standard spray bottle. On bottling or brew days I make a StarSan solution to sanitize anything, but I dump it after that. If your StarSan solution is cloudy, it's no good anymore. It must be clear.

Sounds like you use PBW, but I would give ALL of your equipment a good scrub with PBW. I wonder too if the issue is with your bottles? I'm assuming they're clean, but after drinking a beer make sure to rinse them with hot water thoroughly, get out any gunk. Then on bottling day I use a bottle vinator and hit it with some StarSan and onto the bottling tree. That has worked for me, but YRMV. Good luck! Infected beer SUCKS.
 
Do you use a plate chiller or counter-flow chiller? That is a huge culprit for infections. If it's an immersion chiller that's a different story. If it's bottle-to-bottle and not batch-to-batch that's also different that's even harder to narrow down.
 
I also want to address a few tips mentioned earlier. If you boil something for a few minutes, it's sanitized. Look at a simple pasteurization temp schedule, funkies can't last in boiling liquid for more than 1 second. Hot side is rarely the issue, it's always cold side, so look at your chilling techniques and everything that happens when the wort/beer is "cold" (or room temp). I also wouldn't suspect that the older star-san has "gone bad". Star-san is mostly phosphoric acid, it sanitizes with acidity. One previous comment is correct in that sanitizer does not clean. Cleaners (PBW or caustic) clean, sanitizers (star san, saniclean or peracetic acid) sanitize. The acidity doesn't magically go away, it can still kill bacteria. Also, letting the sanitizer dry in your case is probably not the main culprit, as the time between drying and filling is not really long enough for airborne bacteria to propogate and make any kind of impact.

A lot of homebrew issues can also go back to oxidation and not infection. The entire racking, transfer and bottling process can introduce oxygen which can produce sharp and unpleasant flavors. These are not necessarily infections. A true infection will taste like a dead rats *******. I have had bad infections, I know. You can also usually diagnose an infection during fermentation because the batch will look like it has nasty bacteria growing it, not the usual krausen.

I've kind of gone on a soapbox here, sorry about that, hopefully this helped!
 
I never get infections and I actively try. That's not exactly true because my lack of sanitation means that my "native" ferments almost always get infected by some commercial strain that I've used in the past- they never get funky unless I leave my unchilled kettle outside for days.
A quick aside about cleaning vs. sanitation- sodium percarbonate (oxyclean) is an alkaline detergent AND hydrogen peroxide which is a sanitizer.
I think your problem is caused by one of two things:
1: you are missing some basic critical step of sanitation that we wouldn't realize unless we saw the process because your description seems like more than adequate sanitation.
2: (more likely) you have inconsistencies because you are a home brewer using hobbyist tools. Breweries spend millions of dollars ensuring consistency for a reason- it's hard. You don't have a QA department, you don't use steam sanitized Goodyear nutriflex hoses, you only have two hands so you don't bottle fast enough to prevent oxidation, the list goes on and on. Consider it character unless it makes the beer undrinkable. Free yourself from the tyranny of the unclean who propagate fake news of their failures to convince good brewers that infection is imminent.
 
If the infection are produced by Lactobacilus or Pedioccocus (excessive gas production and very acid beer) they come in the malt. Say, if you grind your malt ( or manipulate your malt) do it in different place an change your clothes before you star wort boiling and handling.
 
LABs also come on your nose and hands so be sure to cut those off before you start. Don't eat yogurt, cabbage, wine, or milk for at least a month before you brew. If you live in the same state as a kombucha producer you're totally screwed. Burn off any facial hair if you've ever tasted a sour beer. THIS IS NOT A BURN UNIT OR MICROCHIP MANUFACTURING!
 
dacross said:
If the infection are produced by Lactobacilus or Pedioccocus (excessive gas production and very acid beer) they come in the malt. Say, if you grind your malt ( or manipulate your malt) do it in different place an change your clothes before you star wort boiling and handling.
Click to expand...

This is not a bad suggestion by any means, if you have excess grain dust around it can potentially lead to lactobacillus infections. Generally, that's not a concern on the hot side because you're boiling everything. Your mash is basically lacobacillus bath because it's present in the grains, (which is why sour mashes are even a thing that exists). Your saccrification and immediate boil nukes all the lacto present in the grain. Even with kettle sours you have to introduce a significant lacto cell count to start souring the wort in a reasonable amount of time, way more than would be floating around the brew house from your grain mill.
 
My infections, so far at least, have all been post-fermentation. The beers finish out normally, no pellicles, etc. the flat samples taste fine. Whatever I'm getting (sounds to me like it's probably acetobacter) is coming in during bottling. At least I'm confident about that part!
 
drunami said:
My infections, so far at least, have all been post-fermentation. The beers finish out normally, no pellicles, etc. the flat samples taste fine. Whatever I'm getting (sounds to me like it's probably acetobacter) is coming in during bottling. At least I'm confident about that part!
Click to expand...
Are fruit flys present?
 
There have been fruit flies in my apartment in the past. None at the moment. They're much more of a summer/fall thing in NYC.
 

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