The Mother of All Infections

[Paddy]

Hi guys,

Was wondering if anyone could shed some light here.  Brewing for nearly 3 years and not a single infection then all of a sudden BOOOOM!!! Nagasaki style! AG STDs all over the place.

It all started back in May.  We ordered in a 10Gal Igloo cooler for mash ton conversion.  We were like kids at Christmas as you can imagine. 

We decided to break her in with a stout, aiming for a higher FG as the previous one lacked body.

We got amazing efficiency with the new mash ton and sparge process but fast forward about a month and we had 60 odd bottles of vinegar.

Okay we were gutted to say the least.  But hey there's always next time!  Right?  Wrong!!!!!

Steeped everything in bleach for a day to burn any critters into oblivion!  Put on an AG mild.  A month later...more vinegar.  Aaaaaaah.  If I still had hair on my head it would have been pulled out completely.

So we took a step back and thought "right must be the fermentation buckets".  I had 2 kits in the cupboard.  Experimentation time!  We fired one in an "infected" FV and another in an FV borrowed from a friend that we knew was not infected.  We even did this at a different house on the other side of the city - just in case.  Two weeks later....you guessed it...two FV's full of vinegar.  Seriously considered opening a pickling plant at this stage.

Experiment number two.  Purchased all new equipment and put on a kit just off the shelf at Lakeland.  Two weeks later Vinegar.  I was still bald on top so I was reduced to pulling hair out of other areas.

Then I thought, and this still sounds as absurd as the first time I said it, "what if something is wrong with our Starsan?"

So last week we put on another AG.  All the same gear but not using Starsan this time.  So far so good.  All I can say is What the Hell!?!?!?!?!

Though saying that it is early days.  We might have another batch of vinegar on our hands this time next week.

Apologies for the extensive, and in some places needlessly extended, narrative.

Just a note that we are very careful and thorough when it comes to sanitation every time we brew. 

This ever happened to anyone else?

[Bazza]

Hi Paddy,

That's well bad luck.

Quick question. Do you check the brews during fermentation i.e. sneak a peek about a week or so in?

I had a spate of infections early last year, about 3 or 4. They ended up with that horrible sour cider-y taste that only got worse over time to the point that the last couple went straight down the drain from the FV as opposed to being subjected to the total waste of time of bottling or kegging.

These brews were all different styles and used different yeasts but a couple of things I found common to them all:

1) A while milky skin on top of the brew after a week (symptoms of a pellicle infection, or so I've read).  This would eventually drop to the bottom of the FV after a few more days, giving the impression after 2 weeks that the brew was fine, but one sniff was enough to know that all was definitely not fine. I didn't check all the brews after a week but I'll bet my mortgage that they all got that milky skin at some point, as the end result was always the same.

2) It only happened with washed yeast. New packet or liquid yeast seemed strong enough to overpower the infection, possibly due to higher cell count and less lag at the start.

3) They all happened in the same FV i.e. a 33L SS pot with lid on top. This was not airtight but I did have the lid clamped on with bungee cord and it was kept in my brew fridge.
I also noticed that this FV had some of scratches on one part of the inside, near the bottom, where it felt like someone had went round it with a wire brush (I bought it new from a Homebrew supplier). Those scratches could have been an ideal hideout for nasties.

I agonised over the above for a long time. In the end I stopped using the SS pot as an FV and got a glass carboy and all brews are now airlocked. This seems to have solved the problem.

That said, however, I have since done 2 or 3 brews with a plastic bucket and un-airlocked lid (never again with the SS pot) and these have turned out okay too. Difference was, I did these in the the bedroom wardrobe as opposed to the garage where all other brews are done. I would have thought nothing of this had I not left a drip tray with about 1/2 a pint of 'slops' in it sitting open in the garage and in a matter of a couple of days this beer had the same milky film on it as the infected brews, and smelled the same. The brews from whence the slops came stayed fine.

Okay, to sum up all the above waffling, I was pretty convinced at one time that the infections were purely down to scratches in my FV but I've since wondered is it down to the environment i.e. more nasties floating around in the garage compared to inside the house.

Where do you do all your brewing? Does all your fermenting happen in the one place? Are your brews airlocked? Do you use new yeast for every brew? How long do you reuse your Starsan for? Do you regularly measure the PH of the Starsan to make sure it's still effective?

Don't know if any of the above is useful to you but might give you some food for thought.

Anyway, you have my sympathies and hopefully the current one works out.

Cheers,

-Barry

R

[mr hoppy]

What's your water like? Is it hard or soft. Does it make your starsan go cloudy?

Brewing in the summer can be dodgy. I got an infection last year that was and i know others had issues as well. I've always used Lidl W5 on everything since and had no problems (to date - touch wood).

A white skin sounds like film (wild) yeast to me - definite pellicile territory. Not had that with beer, but with cider it seems that the best thing is to rack from under it and hit the brew with some campden tablets.

[hassettbrew]

What is Lidl W5

[Bubbles]

It's a cleaning product - like Oxi.

[Paddy]

Thanks for the come back guys.

On the cloudy Starsan question.  I normally use Tesco bottled water as I find the starsan doesn't go cloudy in this but it does with my tap water if I have to use it.  With the Tesco water I would use it for a few months.  I dump the tap water stuff as soon as it goes cloudy but usually only make enough of this for what I need on the day.

I don't measure the pH of the Starsan.  I ordered my pH meter from Chine a year ago and I'm still waiting on it.  Hence why we dump it fairly early and only make a little at a time.

We kind of suspected the Starsan bottle (the one the concentrated stuff comes in) as the lid wouldn't thread properly and there was a build up of crystallised muck around it.  But even still that doesn't make sense to me.  For nasties to survive in that would be like us to survive in a vat of Fluoric acid.

It's really funny you should say that Bazza because the current opinion is that it is also the environment in our case.

Initially I thought that unlikely because the FV's are always air-locked (with Vodka/Gin in the bong just in case) but now we are not so sure.  Reason being that we fermented all the ones that failed so far at my friend's house in South Belfast.  He mentioned the possibility of there being something in his house ages ago and I pushed it aside but since then I have started to wonder and your comment has made me even more suspicious.

The current batch is fermenting at my house for that reason.  So far it has still been good though I haven't smelt it in two days.

We do check the fermentation every few days.  I didn't notice any milky layer but then again I easily could have missed that.  What we did notice though was some of the sediment clung to the edges of the FV during most of the  fermentation.

The infected stuff wasn't so much cider as it was pure vinegar.  And I mean it wasn't far from being as acrid as a bottle of malt vinegar.

Now I love a good splash o' the old acid on my chips but I couldn't drink a glass of it.  I tried!

What's more every brew had a really strong fermentation, but I am wondering was this the yeast and wild yeast or bacteria competing over resources?

None of the infected batches were made with washed yeast.  All straight from packets.  An 04, a Muntons and the generic crap that came with the 3 kits.

Still a bit of a head scratcher but looks like we may be onto something.  Good to know we aint the only ones!


It is mega disheartening to have one brew flop.  5 is just short of soul destroying!

Again thanks for the comments.  I guess we have to wait on this one finishing before proceeding with anything else.

[sub82]

Paddy - that is brutal! We had one infection over the summer - a centennial IPA turned into a TCP Hefeweizen! I believe it was because we'd become too reliant on starsan, using it as the sole sanitiser. Since then we use a combination of miltons and starsan (soak in miltons then rinse and give a spray with starsan) and, so far, haven't had a problem. It'll be interesting to see how your latest batch turns out.

[Paddy]

Thanks for the tip man.  Sounds like we need to start shaking it up a bit with the steriliser too.  Beer still looks okay.  Fingers crossed for bottling next week!

[Bazza]

Fingers crossed indeed, Paddy.

To second what Chris said, Starsan is not a cleaner as such and is meant to be used as a sanitiser on top of whatever cleaning product you use. Don't think it was ever meant be used on its own.

I swear by Lidl Oxi powder these days. Cheap as chips and just scares the dirt away. A follow-up with Starsan after rinsing the Oxi and it's as clean as a priest's sock.

-Barry

[Paddy]

lol

Thanks Bazza.

I have to say with the exception of bleaching after we got the infections we would only use Starsan - so guilty as charged.

I'll grab some Lidl Oxi next time I'm there.  Though I'm a bit worried about my gear being as clean as a priest's sock, especially if it's father McKenzie's socks.  I hear those even have holes in them!

[Paddy]

Just a quick update on this.  We actually eliminated Starsan from bottling and used Milton and rinsed really well (I know this isn't ideal as a chlorine based product etc...).  Seems to have done the trick as this beer has turned into one of the better ones.  Will use a combo of Starsan and Oxi in the next brew.  My faith in homebrewing has officially been restored

[Bazza]

Great news, Paddy. Glad you're finally out the other end of that nightmare.

Time to celebrate with a wee Friday drink

-Barry

[johnrm]

Interesting to see the mention of dependency in Strahan. I'm chasing a recurring infection even though I know I've sanitised everything.