Tracking down the infection

[coldbeerisgood]

Hi,

I'm about 3 years into brewing. After a solid year of knocking out good brews, I was feeling pretty good about my process. Now I've had off flavours in 3 of my last four carboys. It tastes like a wild yeast.

The first was an ESB. I was planning on pitching the Whitbread strain, but it looked inactive on the stir plate, so I waited overnight before pitching hoping for some activity. I didn't trust it, so I pitched US-04 into one of the two carboys. I assumed that waiting overnight was the problem, but then...

I brewed a pale ale split between the Conan strain and Brett (Sach) Trois. The Brett came out great, but the Conan has a hint of the same off flavour. Arrgghh!

Here are the things I can think of that could be the problem:
-I pressure can my starter jar a week or two in advance and keep it covered with tin foil
-clean my carboys in advance and cover the top with tinfoil. Then on brew day I just sanitize. Maybe I should rinse again.
-2 of the 3 that went off were not pitched at high krausen.
-these were all fermented warm - around 69 degrees.
-I added dry hops from an unsanitized glass


More likely it's something I haven't thought of.

Any thoughts?

 

[ncbrewer]

- I don't think cleaning carboys in advance is a problem at all.
- Not pitched at high kraeusen: did they have a long lag time?
- I don't see 69 degrees as an infection/contamination problem

Maybe handling grains close to the post boil operations caused contamination.

Good luck.

 

[coldbeerisgood]

- I don't think cleaning carboys in advance is a problem at all.
- Not pitched at high kraeusen: did they have a long lag time?
- I don't see 69 degrees as an infection/contamination problem

Maybe handling grains close to the post boil operations caused contamination.

Good luck.

Thanks. The lag times were reasonable, maybe 16-24 hours. I do leave my kettle uncovered when I chill, but I thought that was pretty standard.

 

[ncbrewer]

Yes, I think chilling with the lid off is pretty common - not really sure.

Once you get an infection, it tends to be really persistent. I had one once, and even bleaching the fermenter bucket didn't get rid of it. I replaced the fermenter, tubing, etc. From what I've read, glass carboys can be bleached rather than replaced. And I didn't replace the bottling bucket, reasoning that the infection didn't stay in it long enough to have "dug in".