Off flavours from not cleaning properly?

[Naich]

Afternoon chaps. Long time no wibble, but with the evenings drawing in and less stuff to do at weekends, an old fart's thoughts return to making beer.

To cut a long story short, I'm still drinking beer I made a few months ago. My kegged beer is fine, but the bottled ones went off very quickly. Some are mostly OK but over the course of a couple of months, most of them have pretty much lost all their hoppiness, taking on a musty character instead. Although the bottles are a month younger than the last brew I kegged, they have aged dreadfully compared to the kegged one, which still maintains most of its original character.

Normally I'd say infection but my steralisation is pretty thorough, bordering on OCD. The bottles are cleaned with a brush and Oxy, rinsed well, cleaned with detergent and rinsed loads more, then baked at 170C for an hour. All the pipes and bottling stuff is either soaked in Bruclean and rinsed well or sprayed with peracetic acid. The only thing I did notice about the bottles was that there was a varying amount of residual crud in them. Just a thin film that is only visible when you shine a strong light through them, mostly in small patches where the brush doesn't reach very well.

Is steralised residual crud enough to make a beer turn nasty over a month or so, or have I missed something else? I'm going to start brewing again soon and it's pretty disheartening when the beer goes off so quickly.

[Befuddler]

If there's any residual crud at all, it isn't sanitised. You need to get stuff spotlessly clean before applying sanitiser or it's effectively useless.

I'm in the process of ditching bottles and switching over to cornies because I've recently lost a batch in the same way. From now on, any bottles I want to hand out to mates will be filled from the keg on the day of consumption. I just can't be arsed with cleaning bottles any more, it's too bloody awkward.

[adomant]

you gotta get those bottles spotless otherwise you could get spores that will survive a nuclear war and laugh at the oven.

[Naich]

Could they really survive 170C for an hour? I thought that was supposed to kill anything off. I'd like to give up the bottles too, but space round here is so tight I've not got enough room for 2 kegs. We are looking around with a view to moving though, and I've got having enough space to brew high on the list of priorities.

[adomant]

for a true kill in dry heat 2 hours is recommended. if you get em clean, then 20 minutes 100 would be ok

[Capn Ahab]

'Musty' sounds like oxidation to me. Could it be that the beer was splashed about or not sealed well enough? HSA is supposed to affect beer stability, though I don't know of anyone categorically experiencing problems as a result of it.

If it's infection then every bottle must have residual crud on it. Were there any unaffected bottles? If not, it's likely the problem occurred before bottling.

Edit: that's some cleaning regime BTW! I just give each bottle a good rinse immediately after use, then douse it in starsan prior to bottling the next time. I had 3 infected brews along with occasional gusher bottle infections before I started using starsan; since then, touch wood, no problems. This may be partly down to more scrupulous attention to cleanliness, but I think starsan plays a big role.

Now I've mentioned gushers, it occurs to me that they are the normal indicator of infection in bottle, as the bug continues to ferment the residual sugars. If you didn't get any of these, this again points to something going wrong before bottling.

[Kev888]

Hiya, probablythe heating time for dry heat could be longer to be safe but not a great deal will survive 170c for an hour (presumably with additional time to heat up and cool down) so it'd be unlucky. But even sterile crudd can contribute to flavours, so thats another possibility - maybe it gradually leached out over time; I'd be a bit surprised if there was only a bit of it but I guess you never know, and it could have made rinsing out the oxy stuff less complete etc too.

Other possibilities that I can think of (as its seems to be the bottling rather than kegging) are light-strike/skunking especially if they bottles are less dark brown, or oxidising more than the kegs during filling, or some nasties in the bottling equipment that isn't used for the kegs. Also the bottles can heat up quicker than kegs (bigger surface area-to-volume) so if they've been somewhere warm or variable over summer that could also be a factor, with them peaking rather higher than the kegs.

(Personally I consider that most homebrew is probably infected, in that its not completely sterile. So its more of a continuum than a black and white thing IMHO, and longer storage times and/or less ideal storage conditions show up more subtle infections sooner).

Cheers
kev

[Naich]

If it's infection then every bottle must have residual crud on it. Were there any unaffected bottles? If not, it's likely the problem occurred before bottling.

It varies from bottle to bottle. Some aren't noticeably affected, some a little and some a lot. The worse ones seem to be a little cloudier too. There's quite a lot of haze in all of them though. That seems to be normal for my beers at the moment, bottled or kegged.

Now I've mentioned gushers, it occurs to me that they are the normal indicator of infection in bottle, as the bug continues to ferment the residual sugars. If you didn't get any of these, this again points to something going wrong before bottling.

Nope, they aren't gushers. But on the other hand, all the bottles tasted fine for a couple of weeks after bottling, which points to something going wrong inside the bottle.

[Naich]

Other possibilities that I can think of (as its seems to be the bottling rather than kegging) are light-strike/skunking especially if they bottles are less dark brown, or oxidising more than the kegs during filling, or some nasties in the bottling equipment that isn't used for the kegs. Also the bottles can heat up quicker than kegs (bigger surface area-to-volume) so if they've been somewhere warm or variable over summer that could also be a factor, with them peaking rather higher than the kegs.

Hi Kev. Yeah, it could be heat. I think I feel an experiment coming on next time I try bottling. Keep a couple of bottles in the fridge and see if they fare better.

(Personally I consider that most homebrew is probably infected, in that its not completely sterile. So its more of a continuum than a black and white thing IMHO, and longer storage times and/or less ideal storage conditions show up more subtle infections sooner).

That's true. The warmer conditions would have sped up whatever the process was that made my beer go pants. We went to look at a house with a cellar the other day - an ex pub. That would have been perfect, if only the bedrooms hadn't been tiny. Bah.

[Kev888]

An ex-pub sounds superb! But beer vs sleep, thats a difficult one..

[Naich]

An ex-pub sounds superb! But beer vs sleep, thats a difficult one..

I would have been perfectly happy to buy it and make the kids sleep in a tent in the garden.