Lost My First Brew To Infection

[Bribie G]

A few months ago I had a brilliant idea to save yeast cake in medical pee bottles and chill it down and keep in the brew fridge for future use. They are guaranteed sterile when you buy them so no worries. A week ago I brewed a northern UK brown ale and a couple of days before pitching I made up a starter with 2 pee bottles of 1469 West Yorkshire saved from January. Starter bottle was a sanitised 1.5 litre glass bottle plus some boiled LDME, textbook .....

Nothing happened for two days then on day three there was a collection of white 'lily pads' on top of the starter. Great, 1469 is a top cropper so it's waking up.

Pitched, and for the last week there has been frothy scum and bubbles, but no rocky cauliflower head like you get with 1469.

I did a taste test just now. Vinegar.


Tossed it, and the fermenter will be out in the recycling. A fermenter costs the same as a slab of Tooheys anyway so not going to break the bank.

Lessons?

• Nice idea to save dollars by farming yeast
• Great if you are going to strictly use methods such as slants / autoclave etc and you know what you are doing
• Not a good idea to assume that your bottle of saved trub is pure healthy yeast
• Saving a few dollars by reculturing yeast and saving it is probably going to be offset by losing thirty dollars worth of ingredients and in my case thirty dollars worth of equipment as well. You can buy a swag of yeast for sixty bucks.

I will continue to pitch yeast from a healthy brew into the next brew on the same day, making sure that I don't go more than three generations, but for now my yeast farming experiments are on hold B)

 

[chappo1970]

Bugger Bribie but it happens to best of us.

No need to throw out the fermenter should be fine with a scrub and san, No?

 

[Bribie G]

Bugger Bribie but it happens to best of us.

No need to throw out the fermenter should be fine with a scrub and san, No?

Nah it's like when your house has been burgled............ fresh start. Good excuse to go to the LHBS in the morning. shopping shopping :beerbang: :lol:

 

[mckenry]

A few months ago I had a brilliant idea to save yeast cake in medical pee bottles and chill it down and keep in the brew fridge for future use. They are guaranteed sterile when you buy them so no worries. A week ago I brewed a northern UK brown ale and a couple of days before pitching I made up a starter with 2 pee bottles of 1469 West Yorkshire saved from January. Starter bottle was a sanitised 1.5 litre glass bottle plus some boiled LDME, textbook .....

Tossed it, and the fermenter will be out in the recycling. A fermenter costs the same as a slab of Tooheys anyway so not going to break the bank.

I will continue to pitch yeast from a healthy brew into the next brew on the same day, making sure that I don't go more than three generations, but for now my yeast farming experiments are on hold B)

What if it was a wild yeastie that got you between fermenter & pitching? Sometimes we're just unlucky, no matter how good our sanitation. I feel for you BribieG. I will continue my yeast bank as I very rarely brew with the same yeast strain consecutive brews and never on the same day. Sorry about your loss, but I tend to agree with the chucking of the fermenter. If an infected fermenter ruins your next brew - who knows what else might be thrown ??

 

[Gavo]

Bribie
I have been yeast farming since mid last year and not had a problem. I have been using glass jars around the size of baby-food jars. I tend to like the seals better than the hard plastic of the specimen jars. I would say to give it a whirl with the glass jars and check the results. Baby food jars are around 90c each full of baby food. Get the apple ones and use with roast lamb.

Good thing you applied the golden rule of smelling and tasting the starter rather than chucking it in and getting an infected batch of beer.

Cheers
Gavo.

Edit: whoops missed the bit about the pitching the starter into the beer. Commiserations Bribie and better luck in future brews.

 

[Bribie G]

Thanks for commisserations Chappo and macca....... I have a son in law at Berrima and we get down every year, might get together for a pint or five, probably November if Allah spares us?

edit: Gavo, great idea for glass as opposed to plastic. My kids are now taller and richer than I am and I had completely forgotten there was such a thing as baby jars

 

[dpadden]

There is a very good brew strong episode recently on the brewing network site all about re-using yeast. Heaps of great tips including how to get the viable yeast and trying to keep as sanitary as possible....also how long it should be kept in the fridge, etc...

Repitching Yeast

 

[mckenry]

Good thing you applied the golden rule of smelling and tasting the starter rather than chucking it in and getting an infected batch of beer.

Cheers
Gavo.

Hope you're taking the piss Gavo and pointing out the golden rule??

Pitched, and for the last week there has been frothy scum and bubbles, but no rocky cauliflower head like you get with 1469.

I did a taste test just now. Vinegar.

 

[mckenry]

I have a son in law at Berrima and we get down every year, might get together for a pint or five, probably November if Allah spares us?

Sounds good to me. Late November though. :beer:

Edit: SWMBO has a cousin on Bribie. Small world.

 

[Gavo]

edit: Gavo, great idea for glass as opposed to plastic. My kids are now taller and richer than I am and I had completely forgotten there was such a thing as baby jars

My kids got past the baby food jars a few years ago, but I now have friends just starting to use them so I will be getting a few more jars. I was about to start buying some and disposing of the contents.

Hope you're taking the piss Gavo and pointing out the golden rule??

Yep went back and made an edit as I had misread the OP.

Cheers
Gavo.

 

[mwd]

Slightly OT but I use the empty small size black olive glass jars from the supermarket for storing captured yeast in the fridge. They have a rubber seal ring inside the lid and are an ideal size for a one batch starter.

 

[RdeVjun]

A sad tale of woe Bribie, they're precisely the reasons I'm reluctant to go anywhere near the idea even though I have access to most of the kit.

So far, the common garden- variety commercial yeasts have been quite ok for my needs, top shelf in fact, and they're on just about every street corner, so I'm even less likely to start farming. Mind you I see 1469 being popular but hard to get sometimes, so I can understand why you'd want to plant a few.

One suggestion I can perhaps put forward is that any starter or rehydration I do is with sterilised water, but it stays in the same container it is sterilised in, maybe that's where things went wrong for you. I use schott bottles only because I know they can handle the heating and cooling, other folks do it with flasks. I boil the blazes out of it, yeast food and all (if it has it), for half an hour at least before anything else and don't even dare breathe on it when it comes time to innoculate it. I'm particularly careful during the cooling phase with the cap on loosely and covered with foil to keep stray bugs out at that vulnerable stage. This' probably close to sacrelige to all the yeast farmers and fanciers, but ease up- I'm just sharing my experiences- I've never had a dud with this technique in about twenty attempts.

Thanks to you though, for sharing too... Like just about everyone else- sincerest commiserations.

 

[Bribie G]

...

Edit: SWMBO has a cousin on Bribie. Small world.

........

What's that three degrees of separation thing, like we are all descended from Atilla the Hun whatever??

I'll also check up on that yeast saving link and learn how to do it properly. For the time being I have chucked out all my pee jars of yeast and today put in an order to Ross to completely renew all my yeast stocks, and doing a thorough sanitisation blitz on the brewhaus.

Gavo is clearly the compleet traditional country gentleman you only find in QLD nowadays West of and including Monto/Chinchilla and any suggestion of cynicism or sarcasm... welll............. :huh:

 

[yardy]

Gavo is clearly the compleet traditional country gentleman you only find in QLD nowadays West of and including Monto/Chinchilla and any suggestion of cynicism or sarcasm...

hey, i resemble that remark


back ot, i've just started farming yeast, all this talk of glass jars etc.. any problem with storing it in PET bottles ?

cheers
Yard

 

[reviled]

hey, i resemble that remark


back ot, i've just started farming yeast, all this talk of glass jars etc.. any problem with storing it in PET bottles ?

cheers
Yard

I have been using PET bottles since I started yeast farming, just sanitise the bottles with left over iodophor on brew day, I also went and got a heap of 300ml PET's to keep my yeast bank in, takes up a bit more room than slants but I havnt had a problem so far... (touch wood)

Bribie - Dont give up on farming buddy, be persistent Maybe advocate tasting the starter before pitching? I allways give it a good sniff and a taste, never had one taste sour or off but if I did I wouldnt pitch it..

 

[raven19]

Not good to hear this happening!

I hope the next batch goes better.

Did you taste the starter prior to pitching?

If the starter was not kicking off as per previous use, I personally would have been sceptical in putting it in your wort... but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Here is to your next batch being better than ever with no issues!

 

[Snow]

Sorry to hear about your infected batch - I hate it when that happens (so far only once for me...fingers crossed). I will question why you threw away the fermenter? If you just pull the tap apart and give everything a good soak in bleach then there's no way any infection will survive. Believe it or not, all our batches are infected in a minute way - good sanitation and good hygene on brew day is all we need to keep the nasties at bay.

With my one (noticable) infection, I just cleaned the fermenter with napisan, then soaked in orthophosphoric acid mixed with iodine for a day. Haven't had an infection since.

Cheers - Snow