Looking for insight on what went wrong

[mobrewdude]

Hey All!
I'm about 8 brews into the hobby now and had my first 'off' batch. This was one of the first I purchased (but just brewed it a few weeks ago) as an extract kit with steeping grains. It was Midwest's Apple Ale kit.
The short of it is, it starts off with a 6 lb pilsen LME base and uses a small amount of brown sugar (1lb) as additional fermentables, everything was in the boil, nothing but the yeast added after. I chose the Wyeast option and it was shipped with the Wyeast Cider (#4766) smack-pack. The apple flavoring gets added at bottling and I never got to that step so that's not a factor in the equation.
Brew went fine and I used the same thorough sanitization schedule as always. All top-up water had been pre-boiled and no 'oops' moments along the way.
Once I put the wort in the primary, and stirred in the yeast, I always siphon off about 8 oz and place it in a sanitized beer bottle that I only cover with foil, I set this near the primary in my converted freezer-fermentation chamber. I use this for rough gravity readings along the way so I don't have to get back into the primary and risk infection.
OG was 1.048 and fermentation kicked right off without much lag, everything looked normal so I let it be. About a week into it I checked the gravity of the beer in the bottle and it was 1.030. This was a little slower than I had experienced with other brews but it was also a different yeast so I still didn't give it much thought. I checked it again at another week and it had the same reading. The beer in the bottle had an off smell to it but I'm not really sure how to describe it. It didn't really smell like beer and was somewhat sharp, but not anything like vinegar either, appearance was still perfectly normal. Since I had a foil cap on the bottle, I assumed it had been infected with something but still wasn't worried about the fermenter so I just dumped the bottle but left the fermenter alone. Fast-forward to now (week 3-1/2). The primary still had very small bubbles rising to the surface but the beer was clear and no other indication of ongoing major fermentation. I decided to rack it to a secondary (which I can bottle from, if needed) and get another gravity reading. I noticed the beer had the same smell I had noticed from the sample in the bottle and the gravity reading was again 1.030, so in short, it had been at this reading for 2-1/2 weeks, at least. The beer had no visible sign of infection so I gave the beer a taste and it was horribly sour.

I've already dumped the batch because I wasn't going to be able to leave the batch in for months just to see how it turns out (I need the space for other brews) and I'm not of the sour-beer camp.

My question is this though, any ideas on what may have happened? It almost seems like it had to be something during the boil or shortly after since both the primary and the satellite (beer bottle) fermenter had the same result. Could the LME have been already sour? Was this an appropriate yeast for that base? Fermentation was strong in the beginning and I can’t imagine anything else took over then, but something obviously happed right in the middle of it when it hit the 1.030 mark. I'm not worried about this batch, I just don't want to repeat the mistake if I made it.

Any thoughts are appreciated

 

[mobrewdude]

I guess I should add that temps were under control the whole time, wort temp was approximately 65 degrees throughout the entire process. Also I went straight from kettle to fermenter so no tubing between.

 

[phenry]

Cider yeast for beer? This is entirely speculation on my part, but wouldn't cider yeast be better suited to fermenting simple sugars rather than maltose? That could explain your poor attenuation and possibly sour taste. Hopefully someone with more experience than me with this chimes in.

 

[mobrewdude]

I'm not really sure, that was the recommended and provided yeast in the kit but certainly one of the reasons I ask. The kit instructions gave two options, one was to do a 4 gallon boil including all of the exact same ingredients but adding a gallon of fresh cider at 1 week into the secondary. The other option was the 5 gallon boil that I did and instructions to add the apple extract at bottling. Both use the same yeast but my guess was that the cider yeast was selected for the kit in case someone chose option 1. The one thing than makes me wonder is this yeast lists a low flocculation however I had huge coagulations of yeast and trub in the bottom of the primary. I'll admit I haven't used anything that is a high floc. yeast yet so I don't know exactly what i'm looking at but it did at least make me wonder.

 

[mobrewdude]

Since this beer I've had 2 more batches with similar results as above although final gravities on the latter two were closer to the expected FG. Oddly, I've had good beers follow sour beers out of the same fermenter, and using the same equipment. I use the same rigorous sanitization schedule every time. If it wasn't for the good beers between the bad ones I'd be completely frustrated but tossing one out of every 4 brews isn't going to be acceptable either, I really need to figure this out.

 

[david_42]

Sour is always infection and that almost always means sanitation. Even though you've had good runs, there has to be some basic flaw in your process.

I've been through the same thing. Since I use buckets for fermenters, the solution was bleaching the buckets and rinsing with water until the smell was gone, then a no-rinse sanitizer.

 

[mobrewdude]

I'll give that another go, I bleach-bombed everything when I first got it and have been using Oxiclean after / starsan before each brew. The only thing not being chemically sanitized is my immersion chiller which I've been washing after each brew and dropping in the boil kettle 15 minutes before the end of the boil. Should I look more closely at this or give it a dip in the starsan before the boil? I was reluctant to do this because I first thought it was unnescessary and second because it's copper and I wasn't sure what the effect would be in the acidic starsan.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

To add to David's post.

You need to thoroughly disinfect EVERYTHING now. Once Lactobacillus gets into the mix, it can be hard to get rid of. I've seen people replace all there hoses for example.

Now, that said.. Where are you brewing/pitching? I used to brew/pitch/transfer in the house. I started getting mild infections. (Mine was pediococcus - leaves a thin flaky film on top - also sours but more slow acting than Lacto) and I just about went nuts trying to get rid of it.

Ended up being the air conditioning in the house! (could also happen from a forced air furnace but AC is more common). I added an air filter in the room and closed off the furnace vents.

 

[mobrewdude]

Bleach bombing everything as we speak. Fortunately, I think a lot of this will be overkill but I still don't want this to reoccur. I have a plastic autosiphon which was soaked completely in starsan before transferring the sour wort from primary to secondary and upon completion, I immediately rinsed and placed it back in the starsan. Other than the siphon, the buckets, the brew kettle, stirring spoon and immersion chiller, nothing else has had contact (except the carboy the last 2 brews are sitting in) with the bad wort. To your question, I am brewing in my kitchen, still doing full-boil extracts but the temps have been nice and I haven't had any air circulating, hot or cold, to speak of. I'll make sure to shut the air off completely during my next brew but I don't think it was running during the last two brew days (when the last 2 sours were born alongside one good brew).

I hate to toss any gear I don't have to but will replace any of it as needed. Will starsan or bleach kill lacto if it is able to contact it or am I fighing a losing battle if that's what I have?

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Yes, they will kill lacto.

How clean are your carboys? Soak in water with 5 scoops of oxyclean over night. (half that usually works but might as well go overkill right now).

Sanitizers may soanitize but they do not clean. If there is any crud in the carboy then the sanitzer may only be getting at bacteria on the surface of said crud.


Keep in mind that oxyclean is a base and chlorine bleach is an acid.. so rinse well.

Usually these infections are due to a small thing that is being missed some how. Usually either something odd like circulating air or more likely a face palm moment.

Try a dry yeast next time. Could be a problem with your yeast or starter.

 

[mobrewdude]

They look spotless. I've been dumping 1 scoop (the large kind out of the bigger package) of oxiclean in each after a brew and letting them sit overnight, then rinsing well and storing once they dry. I'm using the large buckets (I think 7.5 gallon) as my primarys and doing the same cleaning with them. No visible scratches, flaws or lingering crud in any of them. Ironically, I have 5 different primarys and 3 carboys for secondarys. My first sour beer I used one of the carboys as a primary and after cleaning it, have had great beers out of since. Because I'm a little OCD, I numbered the buckets and the two that contain sour beers right now have been turning out great beers in the past as well. I guess it would be too easy to have one turning out all the bad beer so I could just throw it away.

On the starter: I would suspect it had more to do with that except I used a single large starter divided 3 ways on my last brews, 2 sour, one great. I capped the individual jars with a sanitized lid right before pitching and sanitized then dried the exterior of the jar one last time. I then swirled the yeast into suspension and pitched as I needed them. Would starsan be sufficent to sanitize an otherwise clean mason jar for the starter or should I do something more drastic? I'll still take your advice and try a dry yeast on the next run in an effort to eliminate that variable.

 

[Jdaught]

I seem to remember reading not to put your copper in starsan. I soak my immersion chiller in white distilled vinegar for about 15 min before every brew. Everything else i scrub clean and soak in starsan. Knock on wood, I haven't had any infections or bad batches as of yet.

 

[mobrewdude]

I may give that a try, I'm really hung up on this possibly being the cause of the infection but have no particular reason or justification as to why. Do you dilute the vinegar at all or soak it full strength?

 

[Jdaught]

I use it full strength and rebottle the vinegar for future uses afterward. Copper comes out super clean and shiny.

 

[mobrewdude]

Mine usually looks the same, I guess from the ph of the wort, but I'll definitely give it a try!

 

[mobrewdude]

As a final question:

I've now scrubbed (with oxiclean solution) and double-bleach bombed (2 hour contact with bleach/water solution followed by a 5 minute contact with 5 gal water & 1 Tbsp bleach with 1 Tbsp vinegar added) everything that has been exposed to the possibly (likely) infected wort.

Everything looks great, there are no residual smells and I'm fairly confident that I couldn't get these things any cleaner so now it either worked or it didn't.

Instead of wasting expensive LME/DME and more importantly, time, is there anything else I could do a quick ferment on to see if I crushed the bugs? Would Lacto show up in a fermenting sugar-water solution? If not, how about a very light wort (thinking maybe 1 lb of left-over DME for a 5 gallon batch) without hopping to give it a trial run?

 

[mobrewdude]

Just a quick update, I'm now 3 batches into good beer. I didn't determine the exact cause but I have a decent idea. As detailed above, I super-cleaned everything, I even purchased a new no-scratch sponge and gave all the buckets a wipe-down with star-san. While doing this I noticed that all my buckets have a molding line near the bottom, I used the no-scratch scrubby side of the sponge along that line just in case there was something hiding there. I scrubbed the immersion chiller with the same no-scratch scrubby and immediately rinsed it, just in case there was something old on it. I don't think either of these were the cause since the chiller is heated during the boil and both my sample bottle and the contents in the buckets both went sour on previous batches (meaning the sample had very limited exposure to the bucket and the bucket was sanitized anyway). At the suggestion made by Denny in one of the replies, I considered airborn baddies. I have 2 floor vents in the kitchen where I brew. In the last 3 batches, I used duct-tape and taped over the vents a few hours before my brew and left them taped-over until the wort was in the bucket, topped and fitted with an airlock. All 3 beers finished fermenting out this week and all are great!! It may be too early to say this thing is whipped but at least I've got a few cases of beer to help figure it out if it isn't!

Much thanks for all the help and replies!

 

[daksin]

Glad to hear you got it under control. I'd be pretty surprised if this problem came back, considering how paranoid it makes most people. Good luck!

 

[mobrewdude]

Paranoid I will never be but perplexed I was! Either way, I ordered new buckets just in case it was from those and I'll give the chiller a better wipe-down each time although it was doubtfully from that. I WILL, however, continue to tape over the vents in the kitchen of this house until I have a dedicated brew shed at my next domicile. In most things I view problems as a challenge to a solution but in brewing.... bad beer just isn't cool! Still very thankful to all for the help!

 

[FastEddie212]

Just curious but were you using your secondary each time? You mentioned you can bottle from it making me think the could be a built in spigot. They can be terribly hard to sanitize and might have been an issue.

 

[mobrewdude]

I do secondary some beers but they were already sour before they would have been racked, the times it happened they started off great, beer started fermenting normal, smelled great for the first several days (sniffing the satellite bottle, not lifting the lid on the primary) and then somewhere around day 3-5 they took a turn and started to smell more sharp. All 3 continued to bubble the airlock however one stopped fermenting further and remained at 1.030, the other 2 pretty much fermented out to the expected FG.

Anyway, I got off topic but I don't have the buckets or carboys with spigots, just the bottling bucket but none of these sour beers ever made it that far.

One of the beers that went sour was a Pumpkin Ale, now that I have 3 good batches under my belt, I'm going to try that one again, I was really excited to try it and pretty bummed when it went south.

Thanks again to all for the help! It's nice to be back in beer!