phenol bomb - inaugural use of fermenter

[philipCT]

I have two beers fermenting that are both suffering from the same ailment: very strong rubber/band-aid odors and flavor. This is my first for band-aid and I almost lost it when I smelled it - couldn't have imagined what a band-aid odor was before but now I will never forget it. If you haven't smelled it - it's not what band-aids smell like now - it's how band-aids used to smell in the 70's - like rubber if you ask me.

As I work through thinking about what the cause should be I'm pretty sure I've identified the problem, but I'd like to get some input...

Here are the basics. Each brew was the same in these regards:

-10 gallon batch
-pitched a substantial starter (so this is not an under-pitching issue)
-both aerated with an aquarium pump & inline filter that I've used many times before with good success
-both fermenters were pitched at 68F and went immediately into a fermentation temp ctl box with a dual-zone digital temperature controller (so ferm temp is not an issue - the temps were perfect and perfectly consistent)
-both fermenting in new stainless conicals that, in retrospect, were probably not properly cleaned (and this is the issue I suspect most)

I've got 12 other batches behind me with never an infection problem. If anything, I overuse PBW to insure all vessels involved are clean. Previously I've only ever used glass carboys, washed with PBW, capped after drying, and then sanitized shortly before pitching.

In this case, because the conicals were new, I washed them with TSP, and then washed with sanitizer to passivate them. This is where I lost the thread. I should have then washed with PBW and cold rinsed, but didn't. My next step was to sanitize them again on brewday.

Is it possible that TSP residue was still in the tank, and caused this off-odor? This is not a subtle off-odor - it gets in your nose immediately and sticks there.

I guess it's possible that the TSP didn't really clean the tanks sufficiently and the infection is a bug. But this would have to be the same bug in both tanks, because the infection is identical.

I guess it's possible that the inline air filter has gotten contaminated, but it's been stored properly in a humidity controlled environment and shows no sign of contamination.

Any ideas?

 

[Yooper]

There are generally two causes of that "Band-Aid" flavor. One is chlorine in the brewing water, and the other is infection.

I had an infected yeast starter (apparently, as I split the batch in half and one half was fine) and I got a Band-aid bomb that was so bad I couldn't drink it.

Chlorine in the brewing water will also cause a very similar aroma and flavor, so that's something to check in your situation. It's easy to treat- one campden tablet per 20 gallons of brewing water before using it- and it will get rid of chloramine which is used by many municipalities as well as standard chlorine.

 

[cernst151]

I could swear I've read about Bret & Sacch yeasts eating Phenols. I've never heard of someone using them to rescue a band-aid beer but it might be worth trying. Throw in a nice healthy dose of lambic yeast and give them time to eat up the nasties. Other than that I don't know of any way of getting rid of that smell and flavor.

 

[helibrewer]

I do all my cleaning with an Oxiclean/TSP blend and it rinses pretty easily, then a shot of StarSan to neutralize any cleaner left behind. I don't think it's your cleaning regiment...I would suspect your water.

 

[philipCT]

We'll, I'm 100% certain I put campden in all my brewing water. But I know I forgot in one of the starters. This doesn't explain both batches going south in the exact same hideous manner.

My next question is how do I know when to dump it? I've never smelled something this bad from any of my beers, so it seems unlikely it's going to get any better.

It does seem like an infection because the trub dump I did was totally foamy in a creepy, bacteria kinda way. And it reeked the same way the beer does.

 

[philosofool]

This sounds like bacteria to me. Note that if there's TSP residue in the tank, it could rapidly denature some starsan because star san is acid based sanitizer and TSP is a strong base: the combo gets your a salt and not a sanitizer. So you might have killed the acidity of starsan if there was some TSP in your fermenter when you went to hit is with santizer.

To be one the safe side, knock out all the possible problems.

1. I would repeat the cleaning with a double concentrated TSP solution (my TSP box has instructions for two concentration levels, depending on task. By "double concentrated," I mean the strong version of these.) Get in there, wearing goggles and scrub it. (TSP is caustic, but not bad that you can't get it on your skin, but rubber gloves are your friend here.) Make sure you break down any valves and similar parts, soaking them in TSP and scrubbing what surfaces on them you can.

2. Rinse the TSP solution off thoroughly with warm water.

3. Soak everything with double starsan or not double idophor, then drain and air dry. Now you have a clean fermenter that just needs sanitizer on brew day.

 

[philipCT]

Sound advice. I'm going to do exactly that, and in addition, I think I'll only brew a five gallon batch until I get this sorted out.

Thanks, all, for the input. This is a low moment. The work of two long brew days literally down the drain.

 

[philipCT]

Just a follow up on this. Yesterday evening, I'm going crazy and just about to start dumping this beer, and I decide to take samples up to SWMBO for a second opinion. She says, smells like hops. I tell her to smell the bandaid/rubber. She says she doesn't and that it smells good. She tastes it and says it's good. I think I'm going crazy.

So today, I draw samples of everything and take it up to my LHBS, Maltose Express. I ask Mark to taste it for me. He smells and tastes samples from all four fermenters representing 30 gallons of beer and pronounces it all good, and the IPA quite good. No off aromas or flavor sand certainly no hint of infection.

So I can't explain what happened. Something set me off and I just couldn't Smell the goodness, which I usually always can and that's part of this brewing process I really enjoy - smelling the interim products of the process.

Lesson: get a damned second opinion because you could just be temporarily (of course) all screwed up.

But anyway, all's well the ends well. The villagers rejoice. There is no fungus among us and there will be wonderful beer!

 

[chickypad]

I don't understand, does it taste good to you now? Going from undrinkable to good in a few days seems fast. Some people are definitely more sensitive to phenolics IME, me being one of them.

 

[philipCT]

Now it tastes okay to me. I can still smell the band aid if I try, but now I can smell the beer. I really can't explain what happened except to say that I was perhaps really anxious, maybe temporarily psychotic, about the first batches from the brand new electric brewery that I had been putting together for eight months.