BeerBorg

For several batches now, I've been battling an infection situation that has me puzzled, and would appreciate any insights that the Borg might have.

Here's what's been happening:

Fermentation seems healthy and ordinary. Attenuation is where it should be.
Beer tastes good going into bottles (I don't keg, I bottle-carb w/ priming sugar.)
First couple of weeks after carbing, the beer still tastes good.
After several weeks in the bottle, things go south. Slow gushers (pop the top and the sediment at the bottom "comes to life"), body is over-attenuated, taste is tart/acidic. Basically, a lost batch.

I assumed that the issue was introduced at bottling time, so over the course of these batches, I have swapped out every piece of equipment I use for bottling -- bucket & lid, spigot, siphon, tubing, bottling wand, got some new bottles and scrubbed/boiled all the rest. Yet the problem persists. And that has me stumped!

So now I'm wondering, is it possible that the infection is occurring further upstream?

Is it possible to have an infection as early as brew day, but which is "crowded out" by a healthy ferment and bottle carbing, and only kicks in after the good guys have finished their priming duties?

The only other thing I can come up with is an environmental situation. A while back, I used to bottle in the kitchen and now I bottle in a finished basement; perhaps there's more nasties floating around down there. But I made that switch a while back, and I've had good batches since I moved to the basement, so it's not a black-and-white situation, either.

I don't think it's process-related. If anything, my sanitation practices are even better than they used to be, due to trying to resolve these problems.

Any thoughts on how/when this might be playing out, and where I should look next to resolve it?

Thanks in advance!

I was fortunate enough to resolve all of my gusher problems by simply scrubbing the inside of the bottle necks using a bottle brush and StarSan. It seems when naturally carbonating the beer it left a tell tale ring around the bottle necks. Of course I also use a water jet to blast the insides of the bottles and give them a good scrubbing too, but in the end concentrating on the necks too is what resolved my gusher issue.

Quick Question. What are you fermenting in? Plastic bucket, Mr. Beer Keg, Carboy? It is possible the infection is there. It is possible the infection is occurring on brew day but chances are the infection is in the fermenter or caused during bottling. If the infection is hitting during brew day than it would be at the cool down period. I have found though that most contaminations early on from brew day can be saved by the fermentation which can kill early contamination by a healthy fermentation. Check/Scrub down what ever your using for cooling down and possible replace any tubing you use to transfer from boil kettle to fermenter.

If your fermenter is plastic than it is possible there are some scratches that are harboring bacteria which is causing the infection. Although it could be happening during bottling it find it unlikely since you changed all that equipment to new stuff. By chance it is occurring during bottling maybe it has to do with the bottle priming method. Maybe try batch priming instead?

Those are my thoughts. Maybe someone else might have a few more.

For the off flavors I have found this,
http://www.morebeer.com/themes/morewine ... flavor.pdf
You say attentuation is where it should be, but is it actually finished fermenting? Is the gravity reading stable? Over priming miscalculation?

I don't know, but I have had the same problem. Even more puzzling, some batches have it, others not. And I've suffered it in bottles and kegs.
I have some theories: Long ago, I had success sanitizing my bottles by spraying the inside. Then I went to dunking. While bottling batches that were mostly kegged, or half and half kegged and bottled, I went back to spraying. No good, slow infections resulted. I went back to dunking and rolling under Starsan. How does this apply to kegging? Well, I sanitize my auto-siphon by putting it into a pot of Starsan and pumping it. I further pour some down the top. But the whole barrel of the pump and the whole length of the bottling wand are not submerged. I previously sprayed those parts extensively, but I no longer believe in spray. I now wipe the parts that don't fit with a paper towel soaked in Starsan. I hope this solves the problem.
I never uncover my beer in my basement, which is old, unfinished, and full of contaminants.

Crazy Climber wrote: Is it possible to have an infection as early as brew day, but which is "crowded out" by a healthy ferment and bottle carbing, and only kicks in after the good guys have finished their priming duties?

This is very much possible. It happens when you have cool wort with the lid off the pot and bugs floating around in your air. So during or after chilling. It will be a low level infection most likely, but it can happen there.

Beer infecting bugs don't "crawl up" into things. They just can't do that. But the can float in a breeze in the air and fall into things.

It's how I get my summer house brett infections. That stuff has infested my duct work and floats around in my air when their is any kind of breeze (IE my AC is on) and easily gets into anything. It might also come from or get reinforced by wild brett on all the apple and pear and peach trees that grow in my neighborhood.

They have little involvement in the initial fermentation, because I pitch a lot of good yeast, and really don't build up enough critical mass to start doing anything in the fermentation until a week or so in. If I was to taste a sample then I'd notice a bit of pinapple flavor.

Because I semi-open ferment (lid on but not tight, so it free vents) enough oxygen starts to touch the surface at around 10-14 days in for me to see a pellicle form. One of the reasons I semi-open ferment is so I can see this happen. Sometimes my lawnmower beer Belgians and Saisons are actually fully attenuated at 4-7 days, but leave them in for 2 weeks just so I know if it happened. I can't get an infection because of this - the bugs can't crawl up under the lid - but signs of infection become more visible sooner.

If I was using a "normal" yeast I then would wait until 3 weeks to bottle to let the Brett chew on it some more, and then prime with less sugar then normal (say 2.5g per 740ML or even 1L), and let the brett just do it's thing in the bottle. I could let it sit for 3+ months in the fermenter, then prime normally, but we are talking that many months because the Brett is sloooooow. I have no problems doing what I said here though, for the same reason. If at around 4 months in the bottle it starts to seem like it's going to overcarb I chuck it in the fridge, but this doesn't normally happen since I reduced priming levels.

If I am using something that attenuates like crazy, say a Saison yeast, and I've already hit stupid numbers like 1.003 or whatever, I'll just bottle it at 2 weeks with normal priming amounts. Because I know in this case there is very little for the Brett left to eat and it's not going to overcarb.

So how do I try to avoid this?

What has worked the best for me if I truly want to avoid it, is to throw a tight fitting lid on the pot during the last 5 minutes of the boil. And then *leave it on*. Cool down in an ice bath in the sink. This is OK for small batches. Or don't even bother cooling and do a no-chill overnight with the lid on (I just stick the pot in my oven - turned off of course - and shut the door and walk away, as oven most sterile area in my house)). Then put into fermenter the next day.

If I use my chiller with the lid off in the summer, I get 3x the number of Brett infections.

There is always still a chance, since somehow I have to get the wort out of my pot and into my fermenter, but this lowers the chance a lot, since the cool wort is exposed for a lot less time. I turn off my AC about 30 minutes before I'm going to transfer it, which helps too.

I don't have the problems in the winter. Only the summer. I might still get brett in there in the winter, but the stuff I have doesn't seem to like it 64 or lower degrees very much, so it falls asleep/flocs out and doesn't do anything if it's that cool.

Another thing to remember is sanitizing with StartSan or OneStep is not instantaneous. I find that if I rush a little too much I can get something that either causes a gusher or an off taste. StarSan take 20-30 seconds, OneStep takes about a minute. I just use lots, get it all over and never put anything in that hasn't soaked a minute or so or ever leave the lid off cooled wort. I use mostly OneStep, and I have pretty good luck if I take my time.

Thank goodness I don't have Mashani's house germs to deal with. I'd just quit.

Also, I had the same thing Screwy mentioned. If you bottle condition, then watch out for the faint ring at the top. I use a soft bottle brush to make sure I don't scratch the inside of the PET bottle (germs love to hide there) and get the neck clean.

Monty

Not knowing what you are using for equipment, but I think it's time for a bleach bomb on everything you use. I bleach my bottling bucket every 3 or 4 batches. Just do a lot of rinsing after and sanitize as usual. I think bleach can get nasties that starsan, onestep and other sanitizers cant. I've never had a bad infection [knock on wood] but have had similar what you have back when I used LBK's, for a few batches then bleached the hell out of them and all was good, and still have them same LBK's now and use them once and a while..............Just my thoughts on this.

monsteroyd wrote: Thank goodness I don't have Mashani's house germs to deal with. I'd just quit.

Thankfully my house Brett makes beer I like, and at least in low level infection amounts doesn't so radically change the beer that I get annoyed. Only little bits of pinapple and funk. Which is not a bad thing in most of my summer Belgians and Saisons. And when Brett C it's a seasonal strain from Wyeast they sell it for something stupid like $15 a pack, so I look at it as a bonus LOL.

Mash, start selling wet rags wiped on your walls as Rare Boutique Strain.
I expect 10% of the profits.

John Sand wrote:Mash, start selling wet rags wiped on your walls as Rare Boutique Strain.
I expect 10% of the profits.

I've been considering getting one of the culturing kits and seeing what I can make with them. Besides the Brett C I spilled into my air return vent in my kitchen some years ago (oops), my house used to be the "farm house" for my neighborhood, owned by the guy who had the big fruit orchard that used to be my whole neighborhood before the 1950s when it was fully developed. Big part of my basement was clearly designed/used for putting up fruit/veggies for the winter. There is probably all sorts of good $*%* in here that I could build fun cultures from.

I hear ya.
While this was never a farmhouse, it was a summer cottage added onto willy-nilly by owners and friends. Depending on the reference, it's between 65-85 years old. There is no plywood in it, and plenty of plaster. There are steps and windows that lead nowhere. In addition to the flora, I refrain from brewing in the basement because it is shorter than I am.

Wow, lots of good stuff in this thread, after only one day. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the Borg is the best damn place on the web!

To everyone who has responded thus far: thank you for taking some of your time, and brain-power, to help a fellow brewer try to figure out a head-scratcher.

To Screwy: I use a bottle brush to scrub out my bottles, both @ the bottom and along the neck. I fill w/ PBW-water mix, let 'em sit overnight, then scrub w/ the brush. Empty and rinse a few times, then sometimes even nuke 'em in the microwave for a minute or two to boil the film of water and droplets that are inside. Other times, I have dunked bottles in boiling water for a few minutes. I used to bake 'em in the oven for an hour or so, but it bothers SWMBO's asthma, so I gave up on that. On bottling day, I fill each bottle w/ StarSan for at least 2 minutes before bottling. Long story short - I don't think it's a problem with the bottles. But I appreciate the thought, as it confirms that my extra bottle-cleaning diligence is warranted.

To Dawg LB Steve: I've been reducing the priming sugar down from 2.6 volumes to 2.3, to make sure it's not a simple over-carb situation. I haven't been checking FG on successive days (not wanting to open the fermenter more than necessary), but I leave batches in the fermenter for 2.5 - 3 weeks, and the FG I get at bottling time is where I'd expect it to be, so I'm reasonably sure it's finished.

To Mashani: I don't have a chiller, so I do my cooling in a manner very similar to what you described: at flameout, I put the lid on the kettle and transfer it to an ice bath in the utility sink. I used to occasionally open the lid to stir the wort to speed the cooling, but in recent batches I've even stopped doing that, in an effort to eliminate infection opportunities. Still no luck. I used to transfer from kettle to fermenter in the same room as the utility sink (laundry room), but I tried doing that outdoors instead. No luck. So I tried it in a "cleaner" room of the finished basement w/ little air flow. No luck.

(As I said in my first post, I have tightened up my process, between bottle sanitization, swapping out bottling equipment, and avoiding cold-side exposure as much as possible -- WAY beyond what I used to do a year ago, when I was having no problems at all. That's why I'm at wits' end.)

To D_Rabbit: I ferment in a 3 gallon plastic Better Bottle. It's only a year old, and the only non-liquid that has ever been in it is an occasional soft microfiber cloth, sloshed around within a half-gallon of PBW/water, to gently rub the sides (after a night of a full PBW soak). And, I already do batch priming (my choice of words in the first post might've made it seem like it's bottle priming, but it's not).

To berryman: I agree, I'm considering bleach-bombing the sh#t out of everything, as a last resort. I'd like to avoid replacing a relatively-new Better Bottle if at all possible, due to the expense. But, getting only a few good weeks from each batch is an expense, too, in both ingredients and time/effort. So if it comes to that, so be it.

I've got a lager fermenting now. Before brewing it, I gave my kettle a major scrub-down. And I didn't open the kettle lid post-flameout, at all - not even to take a temp. I just waited a long while with the pot in the ice bath, and got a reading after transferring, via the temp strip on the fermenter. I might bleach all the bottling equipment before I bottle this batch. I'll see how all of that goes. If that doesn't work, it may be time to bleach the fermenter -- or consider a new fermenter. Or a new hobby!

Crazy Climber wrote: Or a new hobby!

No never

You don't use a spigot anywhere do you? I would run Star San through my bottling bucket but it didn't get into all the nooks and crannies of the spigot and I still picked up an infection.