Help - Killer Infection

[craigarino]

Hi There! I ve been making full mash beers for about four years, have made a small shed and kitted it out like a second home and never had a bad batch....until recently!
On grand final day i made two batches of beer, and used the trub from a batch that had just finished fermenting... they all went bad!
Scrubbed the fermenters and made some more a fortnight later, all one hundred and twenty litres went bad! I have made three hundred or so litres since then, and only two twenty litre batches have not caught this abominable plague- one was a stout kit beer, the other was a normal mash, but I used saflager dried ale yeast, as opposed to the wyeast liquid yeast I normally use!
My questions are this- could I be using the wyeast incorrectly ( i follow the instructions, but it just doesnt seem to take, do I need to thow out my fermenters and replace them ( two are brand new), Do I need to burn my shed to the ground or get a priest to exorcise it? What is the safest method to make a coopers yeast starter from a bottle of beer!
This isnt funny any more Ive got only got two kegs left and over the last four days I just lost another 50 litre batch which got the smell the next morning after brewing, and I just noticed of the three batches left, two of them have gone down while I was away overnight!
O the humanity
Craig

 

[Darren]

Craig,
Do you clean the lines from your taps?
cheers
Darren

 

[craigarino]

Just reading some of the other post... I dont crash chill the wort, I just leave it covered with the air locks in.. Could this be contributing??
Craig

 

[craigarino]

Craig,
Do you clean the lines from your taps?
cheers
Darren

[post="99632"][/post]​

Do you mean the Keg lines? Yeah I do- but the problem is way before it even gets to the kegging stage! If you mean the mash tun lines i have done also but to no avail!

 

[Darren]

crash chilling is important in both reducing the chance of infection but also the formation of other undesirables such as DMS (cooked corn).
When was the last time you cleaned your lines to your taps?

 

[craigarino]

which taps? I clean whenever i change my kegs over!?
Is tghis what you mean?

 

[Darren]

yep, the lines that go to the taps. Do you clean them with line-cleaner or similar?

 

[craigarino]

Yeah proper home brew store cleaner, that i clean the keg with, just pumped through, and then rinsed when i rinse the keg!

 

[Darren]

Sanitise everthing for at least 24 hour by soaking with a good dose of chlorine (not your kegs though). Chuck out all your plastic transfer tubes.
Culturing up a Coopers slurry is the last thing you want to do at this time.
How would you describe the "off-flavour"?

 

[craigarino]

It smells sweet, very kind of fusil alcohole i guess, and the taste, well spitting out instantly bad! The brew i made the day before christmas, the infection had been there less than eight hours, and i thought i might be able to boil it and pasteurise it, but the taste was already well and truly through it when i tasted the wort with no yeast scum!

 

[Darren]

sounds very quick. Are you boiling the wort?

 

[craigarino]

For an hour and a half!

 

[Darren]

How long have you mashed for? What about your water? Are you using mains water?

 

[craigarino]

Mash about an hour and a half, single step infusion, as per dave lines brewing beers like those you buy! Mains water! I use a grain bag in the boiling vessel ( keg) then pull the bag out to sparge, so there is no transfer where it could catch anything, then i pour straight from the boiler into the fermenter!

 

[Darren]

Are you filtering or boiling the mains water. Chlorine and chloramines present in mains water (usually quite high at this time of year) can combine with components of the grain (phenols) producing chlorophenolic compounds. These could be described as "medicinal" or "bandaid" or "dettol".
8 hours is too short for an infection IMHO.
cheers
Darren

 

[craigarino]

Thanks darren
I ll give it a crack with filtered water then

 

[Darren]

cheers, good luck. Undersink filters should remove the chlorines

 

[vlbaby]

craig,
its sounds very captain obvious, but something contaminated is still coming into contact with your beer.
I wouldnt be looking at any process prior to the boiling stage as the boiling would kill any bugs anyway. You need to look at the everything that makes contact with the wort after it leaves the kettle.
The main idea i can think of is the chiller and the lines. If the lines had some left over wort in the them the last time you used them, this will have probably gone moldy and stuck to inside like glue. No amount of sanitisation will fix that until its been cleaned first. when this happens to me i fire up the HLT with 30L of boiling water chuck in some napisan and circulate it through everything. The heat will disolve anything thats stuck in there, with the aid of the napisan.
After that i run iodophor through to sanitise it.
Then last of all i run some more boiling water through again.
Touch wood i havent had an infection yet.

BTW what sanitiser are you using? I hope its not sodium met. I used to have the odd infection when i was using that stuff. Aparently its only an inhibiitor not a steriliser.
Whatever it is thats infected its gotta be really huge, because i've never heard of an infection taking hold in less than 24 hours.

good luck finding it.

vlbaby.

 

[Screwtop]

Was the wort stringy (snotty) in any way or quite viscous or would you say normal viscosity?

 

[craigarino]

Yeah I think i am using sodium met.... I would think that because the wort is almost boiling when it goes into the fermenters it must be either airborne or in grained in the fermenter and able to survive even with hot wort over it! The wort isnt stringy or snotty- just normal, even after the fermentation finishes!
This is really killing my brewing gumption!