Classic Band Aid/Medicinal Problem

[Richie_asg1]

Just don't try the flavoured stuff.

 

[Drunkula]

I actually get the Asda smart price thin bleach, perfect for this sort of thing.

You might have read before that I thought the same thing until that bit me in the ****. Well, using it as a no-rinse sanitiser anyway. Sometimes thin bleach isn't thin bleach. Shake the bottle and if there are bubbles that don't pop in a few seconds there's some surfactant in it.

 

[the_quick]

Re garden hose - definitely true - if I fill a bucket from the hose you can smell this medicine like smell at close. Made this mistake once, never again. Had to chuck lovely cascade Pale, that had almost 200g hops used in it - almost cried.
Now I mostly use RO water and treat it or for bitters/stouts tap water from home tap.

 

[JockyBrewer]

Although my setup is down a flight of stairs from the house to the garage, I take water straight from the tap and carry it down in a sanitised FV. Day after brewing, I can barely move I'm that stiff with pain!

Sounds like I need to buy a few bottles of Domestos this week. Nice one, cheers.

You can get potable water hoses - they're blue. I have one connected to the kitchen tap on brew day so I can pull cold water for brewing with and hot water for cleaning at the end of the day.

 

[JockyBrewer]

Given that you've eliminated everything else, it certainly sounds like infection.

One quick thought - how do you transfer from your boil kettle to the fermenter? If you have a ball valve, have you ever split it apart to clean it internally?

 

[Hanglow]

You can get potable water hoses - they're blue. I have one connected to the kitchen tap on brew day so I can pull cold water for brewing with and hot water for cleaning at the end of the day.

@Snrub

I use this stuff for my water from the tap.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Heavy-Du...n-made-in-Italy/333595375387?var=542696556367
Very well made hose however don't use it for transferring wort

Get some decent platinum cured silicone hose for hot wort if you need hose for that.

 

[Snrub]

Just by way of update...

I cleaned all of my equipment, and I mean every single last tiny bit, with a bleach solution, rinsed like mad, and set it all aside.

I made a boo-boo because that included my stainless steel mash tun and brew kettle. I read after that those shouldn't be cleaned with bleach. The kettle had around an hour contact time, the tun around 14 hours. Neither appear discoloured which seemingly is the tell-tale sign of corrosion. they got extra rinses. Fingers crossed.

In the days following my post, a thought occurred to me which I didn't highlight, but may be relevant. Whilst I don't take my brewing water from the outside tap and associated 25m of green hose, I use that for my chiller, and whilst chilling brew #1 on a brew day, I usually give my kettle and tun a clean with the water coming out of the hose before moving on to brew #2. Though neither of the affected beers were 'brew #2's' I guess it's possible that the use of that water affected subsequent brews.

I made 2 beers yesterday - one dunkel Bock, one IPA. I eliminated the garden hose element by 'no-chilling' both batches, and pitched today,. Both batches were spread across 4 existing FV's. So if they're good, we know the FV's either aren't at fault, or have been sorted with the bleach clean. If they're bad, we can be fairly sure the FV's need replacing.

I also bought some distilled water and made up a sanitiser solution with that instead of tap water, and noticed that whilst I hadn't previously thought the tap water version to be cloudy, it's noticably clearer with tap water. So it's possible I wasn't using as effective a sanitising solution as I could have. That doesn't affect this brew, but will the next.

Will keep you all posted, thanks so much to everyone who has offered advice!

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I like your thinking there! Good luck and fingers crossed :-)

 

[JockyBrewer]

Good luck with this! No way your rinsing with a hose would cause any problems. It would leave such a tiny amount of water on the kit.

One question I wanted to ask - do you have a ball valve/tap you use to transfer from kettle to fermenter (or out of the fermenter later on)? They are notorious for hiding nasties, but can be taken apart to clean properly.

 

[Snrub]

Good luck with this! No way your rinsing with a hose would cause any problems. It would leave such a tiny amount of water on the kit.

One question I wanted to ask - do you have a ball valve/tap you use to transfer from kettle to fermenter (or out of the fermenter later on)? They are notorious for hiding nasties, but can be taken apart to clean properly.

I do, but I don't cool in the kettle so the wort is boiling when it passes through the valve. I clean it every few brews sio relatively confident that's not the issue.

 

[BradleyW]

I had this exact problem at the start of my brewing odyssey. I first thought it was the water so switched to bottled water but it kept happening.
Eventually I narrowed it down to not rinsing the oxy clean from my bottles properly on bottling day.
Now that was sorted I hit a new problem, fermenting at too high a temperature. My options were either get a fridge or start using kveik. I went for option 2, just bottled up a batch, will let you know how it turns out!

 

[Snrub]

I had this exact problem at the start of my brewing odyssey. I first thought it was the water so switched to bottled water but it kept happening.
Eventually I narrowed it down to not rinsing the oxy clean from my bottles properly on bottling day.
Now that was sorted I hit a new problem, fermenting at too high a temperature. My options were either get a fridge or start using kveik. I went for option 2, just bottled up a batch, will let you know how it turns out!

Interesting re: oxi clean, I've been using that for around 6 months and never been totally convinced. I can never seem to get rid of the residue from bottles no matter how many times I rinse.

However, that wasn't the cause of the latest bad batch - it tasted awful straight out of the fermentor.

From now on, plastic will be bleached, Oxiclean for stainless steel, and bottles will be heat sanitised in the oven.

 

[Drunkula]

Bleaching plastic to get rid of medicinal tastes is like trying to smoothe out scratches in a table with a broken bottle.

http://beer-geeking.blogspot.com/2011/05/water-chlorine-chloramine-and.htmlhttps://beerandbrewing.com/off-flavor-phenolic/https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=24725.45
Bleach leeches into plastic. Metabisulphite counters the bleach - Strange Steve mentioned a campden rinse after bleaching.

 

[itry]

@Snrub i had this problem a couple of times. In fact ive a fermentor that looks very suspicious at the moment aswell.... Key give away is that all the krausen has fallen from the top and their is a lighter Layer of beer at the top. ive a fermzilla. I treat my water for chlorine(campden tablet) i am putting it down to poor sanitation. i cleaned the life out of the fermzilla yet it has happened. I stripped it cleaned it. then soaked it in vwp . then cleaned it then blasted with sodium percarbonate. bit gutted really as i was really looking foward to the beer from this one!!