Kegging an infected beer?

[whoaru99]

I have a batch of beer that's ready to come out of primary, but I'm pretty sure it's infected. It's starting to develop a whitish-looking film between some of the innocuous yeast rafts and other bubbles.

If I were to keg (and force carb) this beer to give it a try anyway, will I be able to disinfect that corny keg, the couplers, and other associated bit (knowing I may have to replace the beer line)?

 

[ACbrewer]

you can probably get the metal sanitized, but will have to toss the ruber parts, including O-rings and beer line, and rings in the taps.

Why would you want to risk that? If you taste it and it tastes good, then you should figure a way to pasteurize it. But I'd not keg it. I might bottle,

 

[Eh_Modern_Drunkard]

I wouldn't do it. I keep a separate keg and picnic tap for any of my sours. Otherwise you may have to replace EVERYTHING
If you have a kegerator, it's a real pain. If you just serve from a keg and picnic tap, then it's a fairly cheap and painless gamble to take.

I'm sure there will be others with more sage-like (and more helpful) advice than mine :cross:

 

[gwaugh]

Yes you can but if you want to be 100% sure I would replace the o-rings as well. An easier and faster method would be to use a carbonator cap and an empty pop bottle to try a small sample before using a keg. Of course you can always just taste the beer now and see how bad (or good) it is.

 

[Hopper5000]

Well when I do sour beers I have a specific keg and equipment that I use for it just to be safe. Kegs are theoretically easy to disinfect cuz all you have to do it replace all the o-rings and the relief valve. Basically anything that is plastic/rubber.

As far as the kegging equipment I would be wary of anything plastic that touches this beer as it could become inoculated. If you attach the C02 line and leave it the bugs in the beer could potentially spread up into the line and then you would be infecting the other beers when yo use it.

I would probably carbonate naturally in a keg and then dedicate some equipment for serving and dispensing sour/infected beers. Maybe used a specific gas ball/pin lock to just add enough pressure for serving when it gets too low (e.g. the only thing you are doing is pushing C02 in for a few seconds and then you disconnect).

I am very paranoid about this stuff so other people might think I am crazy...

 

[whoaru99]

I wouldn't do it. I keep a separate keg and picnic tap for any of my sours. Otherwise you may have to replace EVERYTHING
If you have a kegerator, it's a real pain. If you just serve from a keg and picnic tap, then it's a fairly cheap and painless gamble to take.

I'm sure there will be others with more sage-like (and more helpful) advice than mine :cross:

Yeah, I'm using just a picnic tap setup. I have four corny kegs but I don't really see having more than two going at any given time. I could dedicate one keg to suspect batches....but I'm hoping that's not a frequent occurence. It's been a long time since I had an infected batch.

 

[Eh_Modern_Drunkard]

I enjoy playing around with sours, so I have 2x the equipment for everything.
I run a 4 tap keezer but still have 4 picnic taps as well. 2 are make-shift bottling guns (one for sours/one for normal) and 2 regular picnic taps (1-sours/1-reg).
I like to be prepared for full equipment meltdowns...haha
It's also a good idea to have a separate siphon for moving sours/infected brews.

 

[Weezy]

Boiling water works great. Heat will kill it all. Take all the orings and small parts and drop then ina small pot of boiling water. if you have a big enough pot, invert the top of keg into just enough boiling water to sterilize connections. reassemble the keg and put a few gallons of boiling water in it and rotate its position every few minutes until the water cools.

Put some colored electrical tape on the infected hoses and keep then in a garbage bag or sealed bucket, outside of the brewery.

 

[whoaru99]

I ended up rocking the fermenter quite vigorously to break up what appeared to be the white stuff on the top. Figured I had not much to lose. Then I waited another ~1.5 weeks and nothing reformed on the surface.

So, I gave it a little taste and it tasted like beer. Kegged it Sunday evening, put it on 25psi, got home from a work road trip about 11:30 PM (on the 13th), readjusted pressure, poured a glass and it is just about perfect. Tastes pretty good. Craptastic Cream Ale from St. Paul Homebrewer's Club recipes.