Infection!

[Brewing_Brad]

I was bragging to a friend how wonderful my homebrew was tasting and she suggested I bring a bottle of seven over for a BBQ. Imagine my horror when she opened the bottle and reeled away in disgust at the smell of it!

Not every bottle from that batch is infected, but a good proportion are! I'm not sure what when wrong, I'm usually pretty anal about cleaning & sterilising! Maybe it was just the beer gods telling me to stop bragging.

Luckily that wasn't the only batch I took the BBQ, so I was able to save face at least.

Just thought I'd share my misery.

Cheers
Brad

 

[Brown_hound]

I was bragging to a friend how wonderful my homebrew was tasting and she suggested I bring a bottle of seven over for a BBQ. Imagine my horror when she opened the bottle and reeled away in disgust at the smell of it!

Not every bottle from that batch is infected, but a good proportion are! I'm not sure what when wrong, I'm usually pretty anal about cleaning & sterilising! Maybe it was just the beer gods telling me to stop bragging.

Luckily that wasn't the only batch I took the BBQ, so I was able to save face at least.

Just thought I'd share my misery.

Cheers
Brad

Like yourself I'm pretty meticulous also...

I've been very lucky to have never had and infected brew..

Strangely though, and more recently I've had 1 or two infected bottles in 2 of my last 5 batches! Phew!!


After all the effort and time which goes into AG brewing, an all-out infection would break any sane man's heart!!


Proof in the pud we need to be as meticulous with our iodophor as we do our mash temps!

 

[manticle]

I'm not sure what when wrong, I'm usually pretty anal about cleaning & sterilising! Maybe it was just the beer gods telling me to stop bragging.

All you are doing when cleaning and sanitising (unlikely anything you are using equipment wise is actually sterile) is reducing the risk of infection. You are not eliminating it and more than likely cannot eliminate it with an average homebrew set-up.

The more anal you are the less risk of infection you have but that still doesn't mean it's impossible, nor does it make you a bad brewer. Good brewers can get infections. Commercial breweries can get infections.

Wild yeast float pretty much everywhere you walk and breathe as do other microbes. Some microbes might be more resistant to one kind of sanitiser than others or might develop a bit of a resistance (one good reason for varying sanitisers or using a couple of different ones in the process).

Of course the simplest explanantion is that there was a tiny bit of crud in some of the bottles or else the uninfected ones simply haven't shown the signs yet.

It's disheartening but it's not the end of the world.

What's it taste like?

 

[raven19]

+1 to manticle's post.

Maybe step up your bottle washing regime slightly too.

My current bottle washing regime is hot PBW, then no rinse sanitiser, then bottle.

 

[brooke1]

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[jyo]

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[beerdrinkingbob]

Reported as spam, though I am going bald and a wig could come in handy.

the spam bots are out in force, there was six in a row at like 4 am!! poor form

Back on top, I've had a tuff run with a couple of infections that i didn't know about, I've made the choice throw most of the gear just in case and have stepped up the cleaning even more.

I think if i got another soon i would throw in the towel :blink:

 

[Brewing_Brad]

What's it taste like?

After smelling it - which incidentally smelt like mouldy bread and puke - I just couldn't bring myself to taste it.

The non infected stuff, however, tastes fantastic

Thanks all for your thoughts. I'm due to get some more sanitiser and stuff soon, so I might mix and match and keep the bastards guessing.

Cheers
Brad

 

[manticle]

Identifying the infection (where possible) helps future prevention.

I have had vomit character in fermenting beer but it's disappeared during secondary fermentation.

Could be a wild yeast or could be an actual mould. Remember you can only be as sanitary as you are clean. Insoect the bottles for any bit of tenacious crud anywhere (I mean the ones you have that re infected). Hold a bottle up to the light and see if little bubbles are appearing from anywhere - often a sign of foreign matter causing nucleation points.

 

[maxmcbain]

Isn't Pandora bracelets some kind of infection

 

[Brown_hound]

Isn't Pandora bracelets some kind of infection

Slightly :icon_offtopic: but yes...

My girlfriend is a serial Pandora pest.. Wish she was a sex pest though......

 

[InCider]

Slightly :icon_offtopic: but yes...

My girlfriend is a serial Pandora pest.. Wish she was a sex pest though......

It's the Broncos supporter in you... if you were a Sea Eagles man, you'd be busier than Oprah in a pie shop.

 

[beerdrinkingbob]

It's the Broncos supporter in you... if you were a Sea Eagles man, you'd be busier than Oprah in a pie shop.

:icon_offtopic: go easy there are more than one of us here :beerbang:

 

[Brown_hound]

It's the Broncos supporter in you... if you were a Sea Eagles man, you'd be busier than Oprah in a pie shop.

:lol:

Well mate- good point well taken..

 

[raven19]

Wild yeast around my place results in phenolic bandaids in the beer.

You can always invite a fellow brewer drop in during your bottling to check your process too.

I presume the brew tastes good out of the fermentor?

 

[schooey]

Heh... you should search for a thread a poor balding young bloke from Rutherford posted... I think all up he tipped near on two hectalitres

 

[Brewing_Brad]

you'd be busier than Oprah in a pie shop.

Beer literally came out my nose when I read that! Nice one InCider!

 

[Brewing_Brad]

Heh... you should search for a thread a poor balding young bloke from Rutherford posted... I think all up he tipped near on two hectalitres

LOL! The poor *******. Luckily for me I keep my hair well cropped (#2).

I'm testing the bottles one by one before I ditch them because some are good and some are bad. That alone leads me to think that there's obviously something in the bottles. My theory is that these bottles (which have been in storage for 4 years) simply had some dust or wild yeast or some such in them and I didn't clean them properly.

The ones that I've opened have been scrubbed with bleach to an inch of their life, so hopefully next batch should be ok. Fingers crossed.

But hey, not all is lost. I have a device - that I can't talk about on this forum - that helps me recover the important aspects of the brew in situations like this when it's all turn pear-shaped

Cheers
Brad

--EDIT: Fixing drunken typos--

 

[Brown_hound]

Beer literally came out my nose when I read that! Nice one InCider!

I have to say, the funniest thing I've seen on here yet was a post from Fourstar, early in the 'Not much scares me, however...' (something like that) thread.


"when i was cleaning out the now brewshed and prepping it the become said brewing chamber i had to move some stacked tiles and clean up A LOT of red back webs (they are easy to destingiush as they typically no no pattern and are very messy/dusty looking, as are the egg sacks.)

anyway, i spotted many small males and let them do their thing whilst cleaning up and then came across the big mother redback. The body seemed as big as a marble and whilst i quickly extinguished the mumma spider i felt quite alright until i noticed a handful of babies over my shoe and one on my leg. Yep, bare skin.

I proceeded to crap myself, swipe away the one on my leg and kicked off my shoes and socks quicker than i could if i spotted Natalie Portman on all fours."


Dead set pissed my pants...

 

[schooey]

"Natalie Portman on all fours."

Oh dear... and to think she is soon to be visited by the boob fairy...