[Still waiting for Gotalk to come and repair my internet. In the meantime I have been using my mobile as a modem thinking it cost mobile phone rates like they told me on Wednesday at the Vodafone shop
. Found out yesterday that they are charging per kb. Grrrrrr. How can PP operate on a per kb basis lol. Anyway, excuse me if I miss anyones questions below or in the post that follows.]
Man, there have been some interesting posts here! Im very much looking forward to consolidating this. Before I comment/reply to the relevant previous posts, Ill write about my infection from hell as this will answer some of your questions...
Edit: As usual, I didnt realise I would write so much below. It is probably pretty boring for anyone but me but certainly shows pretty clearly what not to do. Ill whack a section at the end of what I have learned so jump straight there maybe...
My Infection from Hell Mainly Caused by Stupidity.
It must be 2 years ago now and I was sharing brewing with a young bloke who was just starting to AG. Wed alternate brewing double-batches and take a fermenter each. One day, he failed to smell and taste the water from the yeast we used to wash. That was the start.
I then bought new yeast and brewed again. My mate was losing interest at this stage as he was at uni and surrounded by young nubiles good on him! He therefore let a few brews go for weeks s but one thing I do remember was that his beer was relatively OK considering how much it had been abused. Mine were infected though the infection was not noticeable to the majority of palates. Like Screwtop, I couldnt stand it though I could sometimes get a glass down before it became apparent.
I cleaned everything as normal including beer lines etc. No change despite my thorough cleaning etc.
I then blamed the yeast as it had changed a little around that time. This got me into some trouble here lol!
After this, doogiechap explained to me how ball-valves always retain some liquid. I was using mini ones on my fermenters so as I could do closed transfers via filter to my kegs. I ran all sorts of stuff through them and opened and closed them a billion times. I never pulled them apart though as these ones are absolute bastards to pull apart. (This was my first silly mistake as doogie had warned me well.)
I brewed on and I remember changing a whole lot of stuff at the same time as all this was happening boil length, mash time etc. An occasional brew would be difficult because of the new auto-syphons they now sell which seem to work only about half the time. So I blamed all those things.
Finally I woke up and returned my brewing practices back to normal. There it was still lingering usually in the background but often very pronounced and undrinkable for me.
Somewhere around this time, I was able to actually get someone to name the problem (randyrob and a few others) and I confirmed this by putting 4 of my beers in a competition for the first time. (Only done it once since!) It was acetyldehyde. This green apple/cider/puckering flavour is often caused by poor yeast management and health so then I remembered I didnt aerate anymore as I had a nice way of dropping a small stream into my fermenters which aerates the wort.
So it must be aeration! I got my air pump and filter stone out again. Of course, no change.
I also tried a whole lot of new recipes at this time. So these were the next things to blame .
Im looking pretty stupid I know but I cleaned my gear so well or so I thought and was doing everything the way I used to.
After this, I had to focus on my parents for quite some months and so had a good excuse to ignore the problem and not brew!
I then read up some more on acetyldehyde and found that it can also be caused by a bacterial infection. So the next plan was to empty every keg of beer before I brewed again and clean the lot in my usual fastidious manner pulling everything apart etc. Emptying the kegs was a long process because I certainly wasnt going to drink them!
Finally, I had no excuses left. Katie and chappo had the ABBD coming up and so I thought I better do two brews prior to the ABBD as I was going to have a few troops over.
I brewed my house beer and another beer and didnt use my ball-valves on the fermenters as I had, a few months prior, taken the time to break a few of them open. Medicinal!
What is important here is that you couldnt smell any infection until you actually split the ball-valve. You must split them. Opening and closing a hundred times will not cut it.
So, this was obviously the problem. Yippee!!!!
So I used normal spigots for these on fermenters that had been clean, dry and sterilised for probably 8 months.
Bugger me! There it was again!!! I ended up drinking commercial beer at my brew day!
What to blame now???
I use a manifold system with mini-ball valves in my dispensing fridge so as I only need 1 tap to dispense 6 beers. This must be it! This was bloody stupid of me as I had previously narrowed down the infection to being prior to transferring from the fermenter. Thats definitely the problem so off I go and do 2 single and 2 double batches. 150 lts for ABBD!!! (I had got so enthusiastic about the day I even boiled my kegs in my 70lt pot full of Napisan in preparation).
I split the double-batches with Katie and Lloyd.
It was the hardest brewing weekend I have had as I had no chance to set up prior and had bought a heap of fancy new ball-valves for my fermenters, fridge and even kettles. I also bought a plate chiller and even some glycol but lets not go there! What a show!
Anyway, I dressed my 3 old fermenters with their brand new ball-valves and saved my new fermenter for the last brew (the best beer I have tasted in my life) a tettnang pilsner recipe stolen from Gryphon Brewing. Oh shit! I was one fitting short so had to use one part from my old gear on the brand new fermenter. Anyway, no worries...
7 days later, I tasted my house beer from the fermenter and the other ale. FFS! My house beer is totally stuffed. I think the other ale is OK (just snuck a taste then) and I am still too scared to taste the 2 lagers but might build up some courage on the weekend. Fingers crossed.
I rang Katie and Lloyd to get them to check their beer and all was no worries. The following day I took a sample of mine and asked them to give me a blind tasting. Mine was stuffed and theirs wasnt. We all picked it straight away. (Another interesting thing was that my beer was darker in colour than theirs. Bugger me!)
So we had the same brew kettle, chiller, transfer hoses etc. This fermenter was dressed in brand new clothes and still I had the problem. I had narrowed it down to the bare fermenter plus lid something I should have done many, many months ago.
What I Have Learned from the Above
Ill add the following to the list we have going when I have better internet access. Once again, these are not necessarily in order of importance. (I think (f) below is very interesting for those who have brewed for some time and suddenly get a problem.)
a) Stop and Think: As soon as you have a problem, stop brewing and start thinking. Brewing a great beer is not hard so if you are not brewing a drinkable beer, you have a real problem that need to be thought through. A big problem is not going to be solved through small changes.
B) Establish Your House Beer: Your first priority as a new brewer, whether it be kit or AG, is to establish a house recipe. Ideally, this should be based on a beer you have tasted that has been brewed by another brewer and that you have really enjoyed. If you cant copy the taste to within say 10% then you need to find out why before brewing other recipes. This establishes there is no problem with your equipment or that you are not in the unfortunate position of getting an infection on your first brew. As you try other recipes, you might like to change your house beer. The sooner you get a house beer you really love, the more you will brew it and the more you can start to play with subtle changes in your brewing practices.
c) Establish Your Ground Brewing Rules: eg 90 minute boil, 90 minute mash and aeration of wort. Anytime you change your brewing procedure, it should be done on your house beer. For example, dont try dry hopping on anything but your house beer. Your house beer is where you try making changes to your brewing rules.
d) Fermenter Size: Consider a 30lt fermenter rather than a 25 lt. I have been using 25lt fermenters and fill them up to 23lts. Occasionally you get a vigorous yeast or ferment that gushes to the lid and sometimes beyond. This does nothing for hygiene. Consider larger fermenters and maybe even bottling (if you keg) a few beers from each batch and storing them long-term. You can also be a bit more generous in your sample/hydrometer sizes with a larger fermenter.
e) Fermenter Lip: Actually scrub under the lip of your fermenter. This is one area that is hard to soak in chemicals and one that I have neglected even though it always looks clean. Hopefully using a larger fermenter will lessen this hazard.
f) Beerstone and Bio-Films: beersolutionsjapan post in this thread has struck me the most. Not using an acid based cleaner from time to time may be the cause of long-term brewers suddenly having a problem. For example, I usually use Napisan, bleach etc and even gave my fermenters a good caustic soak! Very interesting.
g) Put the Same Dress On Your Fermenters/Kegs/Kettles etc: I havent done this yet but if you use multiple fermenters and kegs, it would be well worthwhile working out how to mark the components so that you can dress each keg/fermenter in the same gear they wore before. Keeping fermenter tap A on fermenter A and gas post B on keg B will certainly help you if you are ever unfortunate enough to have a problem.
h) Dont Over-think Brewing Great Beer is Not Hard: You can do what I did and find something small to blame and go and do another brew and find yourself in the same boat. Stopping and thinking things through slowly as I suggested in a) above will avoid a comedy of errors. Trust your house beer and ground brewing rules. Dont brew again until you have a sound plan.
i) Ask an Experienced Brewer to Watch You Brew: If you are new to a brewing method such as AG and cannot brew a decent beer within your first 3 brews, dont brew again until you have an experienced brewer watch you. Bad luck does happen to new brewers and there is no shortage of experienced brewers who will enjoy helping you out and can usually spot something that you have missed or mis-interpreted. Give them lots of decent commercial beer when they come over .
I did intend to thank or respond to the prior posts in this thread but Im buggered so might sign off now. So much good stuff has been posted.
beersolutionsjapan, loved your posts. Can you post here a cleaning regime that we could all be confident in including the chemicals and their dilutuion rate? I know its a big ask but Id love that!
Spot ya ron from the internetless,
Pat
