Damn! Had to tip 75L of beer - ACETOBACTER!!!

[metal micky]

Hi
I have just Barrelled 10 galls of beer rather than pour it down the drain, it looks like wild yeast floating on top with a greasy like film but
it tastes ok at this stage. Normally I rack off fermentation after 5 days, then barrel after a further 5 days, usually the SG has dropped a couple of points.
I could not do this due to work, I racked after 9 days, I barrelled after a further 5 days and the SG was the same as at racking 1012. this is when I noticed the flowers?? I am hoping that after the first racking the fermention was maybe finished and left a negative CO2 on top of the brew, but by adding priming sugar in the barrel this will start the secondary fermentation and kill any nasties (CO2). your comments would be appreciated I will wait in hope of a drinkable beer. or it will feed the slugs in april

[jmc]

Hi
I have just Barrelled 10 galls of beer rather than pour it down the drain, it looks like wild yeast floating on top with a greasy like film but
it tastes ok at this stage. Normally I rack off fermentation after 5 days, then barrel after a further 5 days, usually the SG has dropped a couple of points.
I could not do this due to work, I racked after 9 days, I barrelled after a further 5 days and the SG was the same as at racking 1012. this is when I noticed the flowers?? I am hoping that after the first racking the fermention was maybe finished and left a negative CO2 on top of the brew, but by adding priming sugar in the barrel this will start the secondary fermentation and kill any nasties (CO2). your comments would be appreciated I will wait in hope of a drinkable beer. or it will feed the slugs in april

The greasy like film may just be a yeast krausen slow to sink, or pessimistically either wild yeast or acetobacter

Did the beer taste OK when kegged?
Waiting until April to drink a suspect brew may be pushing your luck.
If it tastes OK, you could always invite a load of mates over to drink it ASAP before things develop.

Alternatively if its wild yeast, maybe your first lambic brew may be an interesting adventure.

[metal micky]

thanks jmc for your input, it tasted ok when I barrelled it, but I would probably not wait till april, I will give it about a month then try it, good idea to invite some mates around and say its my first lambic beer!
cheers and all the best

[maxashton]

Just my two pence, backing up Frothy, plastic fermenters really can harbor a lot of bacteria. I tend to suggest ditching any post boil plastic kit that's involved in an infected batch.

Fermenters are cheap. How many batches have you lost, cash wise?

[Valley Commando]

I think the best thing to beat infection is boiling water. Fill that Mofo full to the brim with hot scalding water (assuming it can take the temp without melting and causing burns!). Make sure its visually all clean, remember if it looks dirty, it is contaminated. Apply sterilant solution and allow good contact time. Then apply another batch of boiling water as a rinse. Run boiling water through fittings and dismantler and soak in sterilant where possible. Bin any cheap ancilliaries you can (wooden spoons, bungs). any FVs with uncleanable nooks and crannies. There is a reason hospitals use disposable items!

[metal micky]

thanks for the advice but I have been brewing for over 20 years and although, yes I could have lapsed, the plastic fermenters are sterilised and rinsed immeadiatly before use. I think that when I racked them the fermentation had ceased and when I replaced the lid there was no CO2 to protect the wort, this is the first time that I have not had further fermentation after racking, SG 1012 and normally ferments down to 1006. so I will wait and see,

[norstar]

Obviously these things are often infections, but thought I should mention that I had two batches recently where I thought I had a bacterial infection due to a skin forming at the top of the bottles. I'd been impeccable in my disinfection etc.

However it didn't affect the taste of the beer in either.

I noticed it had only started happening since I'd been adding glycol heading fluid, and so left it out of the last two, and it hasn't happened since...

So I wondered if it was a film from that, perhaps stopped tiny bubble of CO2...

[JammyMatt]

Thought i'd update on my progress in trying to combat infection.

All my brews since developing the first infection have to some extent been infected too. I've found that despite pretty heavy cleaning and good rinses and immersion in boiling water, i can control the infection so that it doesn't develop significantly. Basically, i found after two weeks fermenting it would start to show veeeeeery light signs of infection (a very slight 'skin' forming on the top of the beer, kinda like when tea has been left to stew). At this point I'd rack off into a corny, give it a good blast of co2, purge any oxygen, and sometimes give it abit of rolling/shaking to force carb abit quicker, since acetobacter need oxygen to develop. After a few weeks in the corny i'd release the pressure, open the keg, and take a quick look, No skin, no sign of infection. I'd carb back up, and it tasted fine.

However, this is only really dealing with the symptoms, when i actually want to cure it. It'd be nice to know i could leave the ale to ferment for 3 weeks if needed without worry that it'll go bad. So on my last brew i decided to ditch the sterilising cleaner stuff I've been using (VWP) and just use cheap thin bleach. I basically put a couple of litres of neat bleach into my FV at the start of a brew day, and threw in any bits that would touch the ale post boil, put the lid on tight and gave it a roll/shake every 30 minutes, plus a good sponging all over the FV. Later, i added a kettle full of boiling water, and did the roll/shaking thing again. I rinsed everything off, then did another boiling water rinse.

Amazingly, it seems to have worked. I did a brew that after 2 weeks showed no signs of infection whatsoever. I've even used the yeast in another brew (also using the same cleaning process). So bleach seems to have been the solution here. It's dirt cheap at least, but abit of a pain because it seems to need alot more rinsing to get rid of any bleachy smell, but worth it to avoid the infection. Btw, i use plastic FV's, but they're in pretty good condition, without scratches or anything.

[boingy]

It's not a substitute for good rinsing but I believe a sodium met solution (or campden tablet solution) will neutralise any remaining bleach smell.

[gregorach]

So on my last brew i decided to ditch the sterilising cleaner stuff I've been using (VWP) and just use cheap thin bleach. I basically put a couple of litres of neat bleach into my FV at the start of a brew day, and threw in any bits that would touch the ale post boil, put the lid on tight and gave it a roll/shake every 30 minutes, plus a good sponging all over the FV. Later, i added a kettle full of boiling water, and did the roll/shaking thing again. I rinsed everything off, then did another boiling water rinse.

Amazingly, it seems to have worked. I did a brew that after 2 weeks showed no signs of infection whatsoever. I've even used the yeast in another brew (also using the same cleaning process). So bleach seems to have been the solution here. It's dirt cheap at least, but abit of a pain because it seems to need alot more rinsing to get rid of any bleachy smell, but worth it to avoid the infection. Btw, i use plastic FV's, but they're in pretty good condition, without scratches or anything.

Well, that's very strange, because VWP basically is bleach. Were you using it at at least the recommended dosing rate?

[EoinMag]

Thought i'd update on my progress in trying to combat infection.

All my brews since developing the first infection have to some extent been infected too. I've found that despite pretty heavy cleaning and good rinses and immersion in boiling water, i can control the infection so that it doesn't develop significantly. Basically, i found after two weeks fermenting it would start to show veeeeeery light signs of infection (a very slight 'skin' forming on the top of the beer, kinda like when tea has been left to stew). At this point I'd rack off into a corny, give it a good blast of co2, purge any oxygen, and sometimes give it abit of rolling/shaking to force carb abit quicker, since acetobacter need oxygen to develop. After a few weeks in the corny i'd release the pressure, open the keg, and take a quick look, No skin, no sign of infection. I'd carb back up, and it tasted fine.

However, this is only really dealing with the symptoms, when i actually want to cure it. It'd be nice to know i could leave the ale to ferment for 3 weeks if needed without worry that it'll go bad. So on my last brew i decided to ditch the sterilising cleaner stuff I've been using (VWP) and just use cheap thin bleach. I basically put a couple of litres of neat bleach into my FV at the start of a brew day, and threw in any bits that would touch the ale post boil, put the lid on tight and gave it a roll/shake every 30 minutes, plus a good sponging all over the FV. Later, i added a kettle full of boiling water, and did the roll/shaking thing again. I rinsed everything off, then did another boiling water rinse.

Amazingly, it seems to have worked. I did a brew that after 2 weeks showed no signs of infection whatsoever. I've even used the yeast in another brew (also using the same cleaning process). So bleach seems to have been the solution here. It's dirt cheap at least, but abit of a pain because it seems to need alot more rinsing to get rid of any bleachy smell, but worth it to avoid the infection. Btw, i use plastic FV's, but they're in pretty good condition, without scratches or anything.

To be honest what you are describing sounds like the hop oils surfacing and sitting in a film on top of the beer, that's why your "infections" are not developing, but your paranoia has grown with every batch since one real infection I suspect.

[JammyMatt]

'Well, that's very strange, because VWP basically is bleach. Were you using it at at least the recommended dosing rate?'

Yeah, i'm always very generous with the stuff, and tend to mix it very strong. It never smelt, or at least seemed, quite as potent as neat bleach though, and I definately got infections despite using it thoroughly on everything.

'To be honest what you are describing sounds like the hop oils surfacing and sitting in a film on top of the beer, that's why your "infections" are not developing, but your paranoia has grown with every batch since one real infection I suspect.'

Well, i cant say for total certainty if the batches that displayed the same visual symptoms after two weeks as batches that certainly did go VERY bad after three weeks, would've gone bad if i'd left them to continue fermenting, because on a couple of occasions i got them in the corny quick, and they seemed to be fine. However, I did do a batch that displayed the tea-like film i mentioned previously, that i got quickly into a corny, then stupidly forgot to purge the o2, only to check it a week later in the keg to find the horrible moldy film that the infected batches got (it was definately infected, i'm not talking about the light film or floating froth/bits you occasionally get froms hops/krausen/yeast etc. I carbed it up anyway, and me and some mates drank it young and quick and it wasn't too awful lol!) - which led me to the conclusion that i was catching the infection before it fully developed, but if exposed to o2 in the keg it'd continue to develop.

Obviously, I can only make judgement calls on these things from the experience i have. After observing and tipping about 3 batches now that had gleaming white powdery/plasticy coating and tasted vinegary, and bottling one that looked abit dodgy on the off-chance itd be ok, only to find a month later i had 40 bottles of vinegar (that wasn't fun lol), I feel i've actually become quite good at spotting the signs. When i've seen the signs on the brew, i've racked off quick, and 'saved' the odd brew, if i was being overly cautious it doesn't really matter, as when i took the chance and left them i ended up losing beer when the infection fully developed.

With each brew I've gradually changed bits of equipment, and altered my cleaning process, and have just found that using alot of neat bleach has resulted in the first brew that showed no signs of the infection at all after 2-weeks (despite having alot of yeast, and hop gunk floating on the top, but all stuff i've seen before and know is fine). It may not have been the bleach that fixed the problem. I did take a months break between brews since the last one, so it might be that. Either way, i stuck with the same bleach process for a brew i did last week, and am hoping it'll be ok. If it is, i might go back to the VWP anyway, as i did a good 20-30 batches using the stuff with no problems before i got the infection for the first time.

Hope that's not too rambling

[floydmeddler]

Just when I thought I could take my eye off the ball slightly, it's f*cking back. As stated previously, I managed to get rid of it through 60c+ heat. Recently, however, i didn't oven bake my bottles thinking it was all in the past now - nearly a year ago!. I used Star San for the bottles instead. Big mistake. It will be OK though as it has developed in the bottles only so no vinegar taste will develop.

Lesson: If you've been hit with this before, don't trust anything other than HEAT again. Why? Because Acetobacter can still be lingering in the very many nooks and crannies of your brewery and bottles.

Roast and scald the bastards!!!!!!!

[Goulders]

I thought star san is only a steriliser? I clean everything with domestos, including bottles before thoroughly rinsing. I know some say don't use thick bleach because it sticks but I have never had a problem and even GW recommends this in his book. The bleach will clean and sterilise. I don't measure the bleach either. I fill the FV about a quarter full and just give a one second squeeze of bleach. Anyway, horses for courses and all that!

[greenxpaddy]

Just when I thought I was immune to infections - none in 18 months - I find acetobacter has appeared within the brewery.

After filling four casks last week there was 8L of beer left pretty near FG. I moved this to a secondary vessel to bottle at a later date. 5 days later its neat vinegar. Very well progressed.

Panic!

Everything I had used to syphon into the first bottle was put in the vessel. Luckily it was stainless steel. Put it on the hob with a little water in and steamed to 90 degrees. I believe that level of temeprature kills all acetobacter.

Now the paranoia starts....

I can't remember fillng the secondary with CO2, so probably I didn't. So that could have been it. All beer will turn to vinegar eventually if left inthe presence of oxygen.

Any procedure change that has increased the likelihood of infection? I have moved from bleach to starsan since going stainless. Maybe I am not leaving long enough time after spraying to do its work. I might move to steam cleaning all fermenters now on the hob. Its quite easy to do.

Secondly there have been a lot of wasps around the brewery the last two weeks. Maybe one of those has landed.

The new stainless stockpots I use as fermenters have lids which are not as effective at keeping out tiny flies. So cling wrap around as well is going to be a must I think.