What's your experience with infections?

[DRonco]

Do they show up before fermentation gets a chance to? Do they live along side fermentation? How long until you'd now?

Thanks for your expertise

 

[Yooper]

I've had two. One was a lacto infection. The beer was fine during fermentation, but as fermentation ended the beer got cloudy and weird looking. It started turning sour, and I realized it was lactobacillus and dumped it. The other was "band aid beer", from a contaminated yeast starter. I kegged it, and hoped for the best, but ended up dumping it after a month or so.

 

[DRonco]

"band aid beer"

Haven't heard of that one. Sounds interesting

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

I've had a couple bacterial infections and a string of wild yeast infections from contaminated washed yeast. The bacterial infection wasn't too bad but the wild yeast is all band-aids and feet. Not good.

 

[ACbrewer]

I obtained a souring one from badly cleaned transfer tubing - this also made me switch from one step to idaphor. It is worth mentioning that I randomly chose idaphor over starsan. I was after a contact sanitizer.

My second (And I dumped) was I beleived caused by unsanatized orange skins in a blood orange wheat. And I dumped it. The top looked like I had it coated with marshmellows. I have a picture of it on my phone.

 

[Krovitz]

I've had one in my second batch of beer. I was using a Mr beer fermenter that I had warped with boiling wort. The cap barely fit right. I tried to dry hop and don't know if I was sanitary enough. On bottling day this beer stunk of garbage juice. The smell filled the whole kitchen. Based on HBT advice (if you can drink it, bottle it) I proceeded to choke a pint of this sh** down to convince my girlfriend we could still bottle. The taste was like sour, rancid meat. She was not convinced. I dumped the 2 gallon batch along with the Mr beer fermenter. I have been obsessive about sanitation ever since. I even clean, scrub, and sanitize the entire kitchen the morning of brew day.

 

[day_trippr]

No experience so far, and diligently striving to keep it that way.
It helps to be a Type A with an abundance of OC

Cheers!

 

[bierhaus15]

Infections are certainty more common than most homebrewers think they are and chances are you'll have one without knowing it. Many do not impact the flavor of the beer right away and it often takes months for the real symptoms to show up.

Generally speaking, if your beer develops a film or pellicle that breaks apart into smaller pieces, it is infected. Hop-oil slicks, white fuzzies, and whatever else people say is harmless stuff is most often an infection of some sort.

Worst infected beer I came across was a witbier that smelled and tasted like burning electrical cords. Yum!

 

[DRonco]

Worst infected beer I came across was a witbier that smelled and tasted like burning electrical cords. Yum!

Screams, "Drink me!"

 

[jonmohno]

Mine have seen to happen from sitting not air tight too long. Losing the co2 blanket most likely. Also I used liquid yeast vial the first time and it exploded all over in my hand and into the fermenter and I still ended up harvesting that yeast for future batches. LOng story short they were fine for months till I noticed overcarb so,they went to the fridge,almost all were ok and only dumped one bottle.The rest were still OK beer,some turned out pretty good in fact one of the batches I entered into competiton and got a 33 score on it.Im not shure if infection always has haze but that batch was crystal clear.Just overcarbonated,and one of the judges oddly remarked it was medium carbonation- when I knew it was before I entered it that I overcarbonated it.

 

[Fantastical]

I've only had one in about 60 batches. I'm pretty sure it was from fruit flies getting in my starter...

 

[twd000]

isn't there a lab that will test a sample of your brew and send you a report? I'd be interested to know if my strange foam is the early stages of an infection

 

[jonmohno]

isn't there a lab that will test a sample of your brew and send you a report? I'd be interested to know if my strange foam is the early stages of an infection

Post a picture that we can see.

 

[twd000]

Post a picture that we can see.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/eGB7jOZQUXznu0nVslYettMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink

this isn't the best picture, but you get the idea. The head separates from the underlying beer as you tilt the glass, then breaks up into individual islands. If you swirl the glass, the head reverts back to a homogenous mass. Then after letting it sit a minute, it will break up again.

This particular batch has been in the secondary since May. It does not exhibit any off flavors that I can detect. Prior batches showed the same island-ing behavior and I detected a bit of sour or acidic flavor (may have been my imagination)

All my beers are force carbed @ 15 psi @ 36 F

Also my glass would qualify as clean, but not "beer clean". I use Cascade and LemiShine in the dishwasher, so there is no food/oil residue but can't guarantee there isn't any soap residue. I wouldn't call this a head retention problem.

 

[daksin]

That looks pretty darn normal to me.

Anyway, my experience with infections is that if you're good with sanitation, it's just a bit of bad luck. I could guess my only infection was from leaving the lid off a bit long while taking a gravity reading, but even that's pretty unlikely. Just a bit of bad luck, and no infected batches since (knock on wood- six batches fermenting as we speak).

 

[Nightshade]

I had a big one earlier this year that was due to grain that had gotten stuck in the heat exchange. Didn't show up until well into fermentation and cost me about 12bbl of beer.

Ended up tearing down the heat exchange and hand cleaning every plate then reassembling...not a fun job but it solved the issue.

 

[ReaderRabbit]

I had one this summer. Was cooling the wort by putting it in an ice bath and accidentally dropped an ice cube in the wort. I quickly fished it out with a sanitized whisk and hoped for the best but when I racked it to secondary (so I could reuse the yeast cake) I realized it was sour. Just to keep the flavor steady, I boiled, cooled and added some brown sugar to increase the alcohol and, hopefully, kill the lacto. It tasted okay when I bottled it but I haven't had the nerve to open any bottles yet.

 

[daksin]

I had one this summer. Was cooling the wort by putting it in an ice bath and accidentally dropped an ice cube in the wort. I quickly fished it out with a sanitized whisk and hoped for the best but when I racked it to secondary (so I could reuse the yeast cake) I realized it was sour. Just to keep the flavor steady, I boiled, cooled and added some brown sugar to increase the alcohol and, hopefully, kill the lacto. It tasted okay when I bottled it but I haven't had the nerve to open any bottles yet.

What are you, chicken, McFly?

Open one!!!

 

[ReaderRabbit]

I'm going to do that tonight, actually. I've mostly been putting it off but its a wheat ale so I shouldn't let it sit for long.

Ironically, when I went to get a bottle to put in the fridge I noticed that half of the pumpkin ale I bottled this weekend seem to be infected. They have a thick layer of foam on top. The other half are fine but I wish I could remember what I might have done differently with the infected bottles. Good thing one of the infected bottles is the small bottle I used for the "remainder" ale that's too much for tasting but not enough for the liter bottles I use, so I'll be able to taste it once that pellicle drops.

 

[freeflydude]

I've got a Belgian white that's been in primary for 8 days and still bubbling. I think it's got an infection but hope I'm wrong. Still got a lot of foam built up on top too. Has anyone else had similar problems? I guess I'll just wait it out and see what happens.

 

[DRonco]

What makes you think it's infected? Sometimes it takes a while for those Belgians to fully attenuate. What yeast did you use?

 

[freeflydude]

I used WLP400. My starter had some foam bubbling out on top when it was in the fridge but I attributed it to delayed cooling after putting it in the fridge. 8 days fermentation just seems like a very long fermentation so I was wondering if some bacteria got in there and caused it to continue fermenting. Day 9 still some minor action and bubbling at a rate of about 1 bubble every 15-20 seconds. The foam actually looks alright so I'm still hoping for good results. If everything is good then I have to say that this yeast is freaking strong and stubborn! They just want to keep working which is just fine by me. I'm just going to let it sit for awhile and let it do its thing. If its good or bad there's nothing more I can do now.

 

[iambeer]

So far my only infection was in a gallon batch test that was most likely going to be awful anyway. I had made fresh almond milk and low gravity DME beer. I'm pretty sure the problem was the krausen wetting the cap and allowing elements to get back in. I've been careful about keeping the cap dry on the outside since then and I've had no other problems. I bottled the beer anyway but they got lost when I moved. I was not thrilled about opening them anyway, honestly.

 

[Darkness]

My advice is if you EVER DO A SOUR BREW KEEP IT AWAY FROM EVERY OTHER BREW LIKE IN A DIFFERENT BUILDING!!!! Ever since I did a few sours it is like Brett and Lacto are in the freaking air. I get it in about every three batches after transfer. Then I will clean like mad make sure I wash and sanitize everything really good 5 to 8 batches fine then here it comes if only I didn't love Sours.

 

[huntingohio]

While not an infedtion I am constantly plauged by fruit flys. They seem to set in every 2-3 weeks.
It has alot to do with my house being in proxitmity to alot of berries crabapples and choke cheeries, compounded by having a field thats fertilized with manure 4-5 times a yera 20 paces from my door.