safe to bottle

[deremer]

I have a batch that I believe has an infection in it. There is a sour taste and the air lock is still bubbling about every 5-8 seconds after 3.5 weeks in the primary. I have reached a fg of 1.012 and there is still alot of gas being produced, but I don't think it is co2 at this point. I am going to rack to a secondary and let it set for a while longer so I can free up my primary. So my question is will it be safe to bottle eventully if the sour taste clears up or will the priming sugar start the large amount of gas being produced and over pressure? I believe the infection came from a leak that occured with my imersion chiller that began to leak when cooling.

 

[BulldogBrewer]

What kind of primary are you using? If it's plastic and it is an infection you won't want to use it again.

 

[jd3]

Walk away for a week and come back. Don't touch.

What is your fermenting temp? Recipe? OG? Expected FG?

 

[deremer]

I am using a glass primary and my recipe is as follows:

10 lbs 2-row
.75 lbs briess caramel 60
60 minutes mash@ 155
fly sparge @175
60 minute boil
.5 oz summit @45
.75 oz perle @20
2 oz cascade @0
wyeast 001 that had been washed

I my OG was 1.050 and now it is sitting at 1.012 and I have kept things at 66-70 using a swamp cooler.

I would like to let it sit on the yeast cake for longer, but I also need to free up my carboy to brew this weekend because I go on call soon and will be picking up about 50 hours of overtime so brewing is out of the question.

 

[jd3]

Sometimes you just have to wait. If it is actively fermenting still then bottling is obviously not a good idea. What is the point of brewing now if this batch will be ruined?

Check the Gravity 3 days and report back.

 

[Irishpenguin13]

Right. After fermentation is done, bottle and find out for sure after 3 weeks of conditioning if its bad or not. Why waste it if theres a possibility of it being good?!

 

[LVBen]

Leave the beer for longer and go buy a bucket.

 

[RugenBrau]

Don't touch it for three weeks.

 

[slowbie]

A few thoughts:

1) The gas is most definitely CO2. It's not necessarily from active fermentation, but I am not aware of any other gas produced by any other organic process in beer. It's likely that your beer is warming up and releasing CO2 from solution.

2) How sour is it? Have you ever had a lambic/berliner weisse/American Wild? If so, how does it compare to that? Unfinished beer can have a lot of flavors that may be confused with infected sourness.

3) Is there a pellicle? If so, can you post pictures?

4) How many hydrometer readings have you taken? If you take another one a couple days later and get the same reading, it's likely that you're fine.

5) Even if it's infected, bottle bombs caused by an infection will most likely take a while to develop. If you aim for low to mid end of carbonation for the style (for example, 1.5-2.0 volumes) and have room in your fridge to fit it all, I am quite sure you could let them condition for 3 weeks and put them in the fridge. This would definitely slow down/stop the yeast and/or bacteria, preventing bottle bombs. I wouldn't recommend it per se, because it still could happen, but if it were me, this is what I would do.