One Carboy Fine, One Carboy Cloudy After Dry Hopping

[LoudounBrew]

For the second straight brew, one of my carboys turned very cloudy while the other looked fine after dry hopping. (I do 10-gallon batches.)

Can't figure it out. Both carboys are filled with beer that's done fermenting and has cleared up. I add hops from the same bag. Hops do their thing and cause a bit of cloudiness and minor airlock activity for a couple of days in one carboy and then thing clear up again. Beer tastes fine. In the other carboy, the beer starts to turn very cloudy and airlock activity is definitely more than minor - though not full on fermentation - and then things never clear up and airlock activity slows to a trickle but continues for a week or more. In the last batch, I had to toss the one very cloudy carboy because the beer tasted bad - though not horrible. On this batch, we'll see. I'm going to taste it tonight.

What's going on? I can see this happening once. Maybe a bit of dust just happened to get into the carboy when I opened it to put in the hops. But to happen twice in a row. That's weird.

 

[ThreeSheetsBrewing]

Assumimg you're dry hopping in primary, are you using plastic or glass? Id start with a good scrub down if using glass and possibly discard if using plastic. Is carboy closer to a heat source, window etc?

 

[stonecutter2]

Sounds like some kind of infection, based on you saying the beer on the last batch tasted "bad." The fact that it's been that carboy having a problem for two batches makes me suspect that carboy needs thorough scrubbing/cleaning, or replacement.

You could try hitting it with a powerful dose of oxyclean.

Glass or plastic carboy?

 

[LoudounBrew]

Thanks. Like a dumb ass, I forgot to mark the carboy last time where the beer went bad. This time, I'm going to just toss the plastic carboy.

But I still find it odd that the infection(s) seems to happen when I dry hop. The beer tasted fine after fermentation and then went down hill after dry hopping. Wouldn't the infection happen right away?

 

[agrazela]

Where are you getting your hops from?

Maybe a stretch, but if you're using somebody's home-grown hops or some poorly packed hops or somesuch, perhaps there's some mold on some of them? Like at the top of the bag and only the first dry hop dose gets the funk?

 

[LoudounBrew]

Interesting. These are hops that I bought in bulk and then froze. I've had them for awhile and there were times that they were left at room temp for a couple of days. Actually, both times it was the carboy that I put the hops in first that went bad.

I also used the same hops for both batches.

If that's the cause, you're the Sherlock Holmes of Homebrewtalk!