Wild Yeast Problems - How you overcame

[fraser_john]

<snip> The taste is kind of band aidy or soapy or something i really can't describe it.. it's just not beer.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html
and
http://www.bjcp.org/docs/Beer_faults.pdf

point to different issues, chlorine based sanitisers (he is not using) and infection (well covered already).....

What a bad situation, feel for him.

 

[clintonforster]

So I cubed and fermented in the cube and it all went perfectly except that somehow the wild yeast still got in!!!

Gravity went from 1.040 to 1.010 is highly carbonated when I check the gravity and really hazy even though I used finings. Tastes exactly the same as all brews I have done for the last 7 months, loses all hop and malt character and tastes band aidy / soapy / just bad and bitter on the back of the tongue.


Seems like I need to disenfect my whole house somehow, any ideas??

 

[MitchD]

Find a new hobby?

 

[Mardoo]

Dude, that sucks big fat donkey dicks. Twice.

You, sir, have extraordinary perseverance. The only recommendation I would have is to get an extremely experienced homebrewer to come round and watch you brew and look for holes in your process and at the place you brew.

 

[clintonforster]

Nothing wrong with my process man, I've brewed in mates systems and taken it to my place to ferment and same issue. Definitely some microscopic bacteria or something involved.

 

[Mardoo]

Well that's even worse. So hard to solve if there are no gaps in your process. Good luck.

 

[manticle]

ImageUploadedByAussie Home Brewer1424563695.609609.jpg

ImageUploadedByAussie Home Brewer1424563710.345948.jpg

So I cubed and fermented in the cube and it all went perfectly except that somehow the wild yeast still got in!!!

Gravity went from 1.040 to 1.010 is highly carbonated when I check the gravity and really hazy even though I used finings. Tastes exactly the same as all brews I have done for the last 7 months, loses all hop and malt character and tastes band aidy / soapy / just bad and bitter on the back of the tongue.


Seems like I need to disenfect my whole house somehow, any ideas??

Shit.

I've one more idea to try.

Grab a fresh wort kit and a brand new siphon. Crack the lid, packet of dry yeast, ferment in cube. When it's ready and hopefully the persistent devil has been kept out, siphon into keg.

If you can get one beer that turns out right, you can work back through process and equipment, eliminating any possibile hiding place.
I'm sure it's been asked but have you thoroughly broken down your kettle tap and cleaned it out?

By the way - what is the cloth on top of the cube in the picture?

 

[tombolo]

I've had a similar taste, and have poured 150L of beer down the drain trying to isolate the problem. Went nuts on sanitation but that was a red herring. Turned out that the boiler water supply was being contaminated by plasticiser from a short section of (garden) hose used to fill the boiler. Totally undetectable in the source water, totally bloody awful in the finished product. No idea if there was some kind of reaction during boiling for fermentation but the taste was as you described (a difficult to describe chemically, band aid taste that hangs in the back of the throat).

I think you've eliminated my cause by brewing at a friends place but I thought I'd pass this on anyway. Good luck.

 

[Eagleburger]

I've had a similar taste, and have poured 150L of beer down the drain trying to isolate the problem. Went nuts on sanitation but that was a red herring. Turned out that the boiler water supply was being contaminated by plasticiser from a short section of (garden) hose used to fill the boiler. Totally undetectable in the source water, totally bloody awful in the finished product. No idea if there was some kind of reaction during boiling for fermentation but the taste was as you described (a difficult to describe chemically, band aid taste that hangs in the back of the throat).

I think you've eliminated my cause by brewing at a friends place but I thought I'd pass this on anyway. Good luck.

This is what I would be looking at. Bunnings had a drinking water hose 20m/$20 or bunnings 10m/$20.

Also chlorine in your water can do it too.

Hope ya get it fixed. Only problem I ever had was from chlorine in water. Tasted like band aids, so watered the grass.

 

[panzerd18]

Quarter of campden tablet dissolved in fermenter 20 litres should remove chlorine.

 

[elcarter]

Lost 120L + over 3 batches recently. It can be soul crushing when your on your last keg let alone out of beer!

Nothing I did fixed it. Replaced tap, nuked with every chemical I could still had to tip each batch after the other.

In the end I ditched the plastic fermenter all is well again.

I know you keep saying your process is perfect but that attitude may be the issue. The result really is proof something is not right.

Your pretty safe post boil after that there's little room for error.

Good rolling boil and sanitise the hell out of anything after it leave s the kettle.

One of these fermenter air filters helped make the process a little easier

http://carterbrewing.com.au/image/cache/data/Yeast%20propogation/Brew%20filter-350x350.png

 

[clintonforster]

Lost 120L + over 3 batches recently. It can be soul crushing when your on your last keg let alone out of beer!

Nothing I did fixed it. Replaced tap, nuked with every chemical I could still had to tip each batch after the other.

In the end I ditched the plastic fermenter all is well again.

I know you keep saying your process is perfect but that attitude may be the issue. The result really is proof something is not right.

Your pretty safe post boil after that there's little room for error.

Good rolling boil and sanitise the hell out of anything after it leave s the kettle.

One of these fermenter air filters helped make the process a little easier

http://carterbrewing.com.au/image/cache/data/Yeast%20propogation/Brew%20filter-350x350.png

Cheers for the advice mate but I've tried every sanitizer and bought new equipment 3. Times over the last 7 months. Right now I brew biab in an urn and ferment either in the cube or in my stainless steel brewbucket. No matter what I do same result.

 

[Nizmoose]

Sorry I don't have much to offer other than a serious amount of sympathy! Looks like you have covered every possible base and still been screwed, can't remember if you have changed Siphon but maybe that and then literally the only thing I can think to do is to ferment somewhere different in your house, somewhere like in a bedroom but in a brand new chamber or just a foam box that is covered, use spring water to test and be sure (I think you've already said you've tried your mates water?) use a new fermenter if possible and use a new fermentation chamber. Sure the temp control won't be as good but you'll be able to rule out your fermentation setup

 

[SimoB]

I had a wild yeast problem... what i did was start brewing at my mates place and fermenting the beer there. Then, a few months later I started brewing at home again, and strangely it just went away.

I know that's not helpful but I think wild yeast can be a bitch.

Is your brewbucket perfect? is there any pitting in the welds for something to hide in?

Good luck mate, it sounds like you love brewing and it'd be a shame to see you defeated. I think manticle's idea of fermenting in a fresh wort kit cube is a good idea.

 

[SnakeDoctor]

Sounds like something is in the fermenting fridge?

 

[Mardoo]

This is like if Stephen King and David Cronenburg teamed up on a movie about a brewer.

 

[TimT]

I wonder how many other home crafty sorts get this problem? I've heard of persistent yeast infections in cheesemaking, for instance - the one I read about was traced back to a probable source of infection being a sourdough or bread yeast culture.

Do you do anything like that in your brewery Clinton? Bake bread, make cheese, sauerkraut, etc? I know these are obvious questions and you've clearly been through all the obvious stuff before - but I'm interested to know if you might have observed the wild yeast doing naughty stuff in a sourdough culture, or similar.

 

[TimT]

I'm asking around about this on some other fermentation forums I'm a member of, may or may not help but at least I can try to crowdsource a solution.

 

[elcarter]

Righto,

There is still hope.

Your urn element... My mates bru-clone thing he devised had the element within the wort and he had god awful infections. Could aslo have been his baking tray - make shift o-rings. He's not sure yet.

When he ended up going back to his ghetto setup - (esky mash tun) He started turning out good beer again.

Is your element immersed by any chance? These were not metal tastes but vegetative.

If your 100% it's not your process;

The 2 micron air filter I referenced will help you "hot" transfer directly to your FV. Just open the tap to remove the starsan before transferring your wort this should stop any nasties from getting in post sanitise.

The only way you can get it infected is the yeast addition.

I'm sure you can devise a method to re-hydrate yeast and then inoculate the wort through the tap?

Wish I was in Melbourne so I can drop a cube off to you. - some one else might be able to.

 

[TimT]

Okay, just some preliminary feedback from those forums and then I've gotta get back to work:

1) A link to a post by a brewer who helped a brewing friend identify and get rid of a similar problem. Doesn't sound like your problem is the same but it has some interesting suggestions for finding the source of infection.
2) Some suggestions by another fermentation person - they suggest 'making a yeast starter first' to ensure you've got a yeast raring to go and using some different sterilising chemicals.
3) More suggestions that you go over to the dark side, as it were, and cultivate your own wild yeasts/wild yeasts and bacterias and brew with them - ie, doing what you can to encourage the right sort of infection and discourage the bad sort. I think they could be onto something there but now we're getting into the speculative area.