franknbrews
Member
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2015
- Messages
- 19
- Reaction score
- 1
Hi All,
I joined this forum to get some feedback about my home brewing. I've been brewing extract beers for almost 3 years with great success, that is, until the recent round of sours.
Sour #1 - Porter
Cracked into the first bottle and it was sour, kind of the vinegar variety but not terribly bad. The color is totally off, very light brown even though it should be nice and black. The carbonation never took, even after months in the bottles. I pour them into the glass and they are dead flat.
Actions taken: I blamed the bottling equipment and replaced it all.
Sour #2 - Brown Ale
Same symptoms of the Porter, but this time I noticed it in the secondary carboy, before bottling. So much for the bottling equipment hypothesis. The problem is in the glass carboys themselves! (or something that touches the beer before they go into those carboys).
Actions taken: all plastic stuff tossed and replaced, glass carboys soaked in bleach and rinsed many rounds with boiled/sanitized water.
Sour #3 - Bourbon Stout
This time I'm using BRAND NEW glass carboys and brand new everything else. Still sour. The old carboys that were rinsed with bleach were employed for a beer at a brew club far away from my infected home. The beer made at the club turned out just fine.
What can I conclude now? I'm running out of suspects for these infections, but here they are:
-Wort immersion chiller, I drop it in the boil 15 minutes before flame out and I dip it in starsan before that.
-Tap water. My detachable faucet head has a plastic piece on it and I pour tap water directly into the carboy before I dump in the 3+ gallons of wort. This faucet could be causing my problems, or maybe the water itself?
-Closet. My closet is full of clothes and extra blankets, not too far from where my beer sits to ferment. Is this closet a breeding ground for wild sour yeast?
Thanks for reading!
I joined this forum to get some feedback about my home brewing. I've been brewing extract beers for almost 3 years with great success, that is, until the recent round of sours.
Sour #1 - Porter
Cracked into the first bottle and it was sour, kind of the vinegar variety but not terribly bad. The color is totally off, very light brown even though it should be nice and black. The carbonation never took, even after months in the bottles. I pour them into the glass and they are dead flat.
Actions taken: I blamed the bottling equipment and replaced it all.
Sour #2 - Brown Ale
Same symptoms of the Porter, but this time I noticed it in the secondary carboy, before bottling. So much for the bottling equipment hypothesis. The problem is in the glass carboys themselves! (or something that touches the beer before they go into those carboys).
Actions taken: all plastic stuff tossed and replaced, glass carboys soaked in bleach and rinsed many rounds with boiled/sanitized water.
Sour #3 - Bourbon Stout
This time I'm using BRAND NEW glass carboys and brand new everything else. Still sour. The old carboys that were rinsed with bleach were employed for a beer at a brew club far away from my infected home. The beer made at the club turned out just fine.
What can I conclude now? I'm running out of suspects for these infections, but here they are:
-Wort immersion chiller, I drop it in the boil 15 minutes before flame out and I dip it in starsan before that.
-Tap water. My detachable faucet head has a plastic piece on it and I pour tap water directly into the carboy before I dump in the 3+ gallons of wort. This faucet could be causing my problems, or maybe the water itself?
-Closet. My closet is full of clothes and extra blankets, not too far from where my beer sits to ferment. Is this closet a breeding ground for wild sour yeast?
Thanks for reading!