Infection?

Share your experiences of using brewing yeast.
Fingar
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Re: Infection?

Post by Fingar » Sun Oct 25, 2020 5:52 pm

No I don't think that it is a water issue - I always used a campden tablet. I am convinced that it was old yeast being put under strain.

guypettigrew
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Re: Infection?

Post by guypettigrew » Sun Oct 25, 2020 7:15 pm

Fingar wrote:
Sun Oct 25, 2020 5:52 pm
No I don't think that it is a water issue - I always used a campden tablet. I am convinced that it was old yeast being put under strain.
But you made a starter. So the yeast fermenting your wort would have been new yeast!

Guy

Fingar
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Re: Infection?

Post by Fingar » Mon Oct 26, 2020 7:12 pm

guypettigrew wrote:

But you made a starter. So the yeast fermenting your wort would have been new yeast!

Guy
Yeah... that is a damn good point actually! The starters did not appear very vigorous, so maybe, I could have done with stepping-up the yeast a bit more. On two occasions, at about the two week mark, there were some big yeast rafts and not the usual sinking of the krausen which I have experienced from this yeast (Wyeast 1469). On one of the brews, there was the moderate TCP flavour, but on the other, it was fine... just gert big dollops of yeast on the top.

Cheers... Fingar

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Jocky
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Re: Infection?

Post by Jocky » Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:19 am

Do you use any chlorine based chemicals for cleaning/sanitising? That's the other major cause of TCP in finished beer.

Otherwise I think it's something to do with your yeast. Stressed (or too cold?) either it's thrown the TCP flavour or a minor amount of wild yeast has. Either way the root cause is the same.

A friend who owns a brewery had this problem in their first winter in their brewery - a lack of heaters in the brewery meant that a particularly cold snap one day cooled their wort so much that their yeast pitch didn't take off, and by the time it did there was a minor infection and the finished beer tasted like slightly medicinal blackcurrants. They bought heaters immediately.
Ingredients: Water, Barley, Hops, Yeast, Seaweed, Blood, Sweat, The swim bladder of a sturgeon, My enemies tears, Scenes of mild peril, An otter's handbag and Riboflavin.

Fingar
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Location: Harrogate-ish

Re: Infection?

Post by Fingar » Tue Oct 27, 2020 8:35 pm

Jocky wrote:
Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:19 am
Do you use any chlorine based chemicals for cleaning/sanitising? That's the other major cause of TCP in finished beer.
You have to sanitise the equipment?!!! :D I use VWP, always rinse well and have never encountered this issue before in the 150+ brews that I have done.

I brewed in a temperature controlled brewfridge at 20 degs C which is standard practice for most of my British beers with this yeast an/or GV12 yeast.

What about the large yeast slabs onto of the nearly fermented beer? This happened twice, but only once was the TCP flavour present.

Thanks for all of your input.

Cheers... Fingar

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