I vote for clean and sanitize the equipment. I use my bottling equipment for sour and non-sour beer and do not have crossover infections.
Ok, then advise as to your cleaning and sanitizing routine - prolonged PBW soak?
Getting this train back on the rails…
IME, and I have been bottling for a long time, it’s typically the bottles and/or caps and not the equipment. My thoughts on this are that the first several/many bottles were fine but they may have been consumed early enough.
Usually if it’s the equipment infections so up quicker so the early bottles would have had some sour to them as well, not just the last. I would evaluate your bottle/cleaning/sanitizing process here first before tossing a bunch of equipment just because. Maybe clue us in on how you maintain/clean/ sanitize your bottles.
Also, the amount of sugar used to prime sounds good but did you weigh it or measure by volume? the former is much more accurate. Also, was it a full finished volume of 2.5 gallons or possibly less causing the over carbonation possibility.
Thanks for the response. I too thought about the bottles. I have to admit, often times I store my empties simply sitting on a shelf in the closet with my brewing equipment. I typically rinse them we’ll when I pour a beer and rinse them again right before bottling. For sanitizing, I use a spray bottle and spray starsan into the bottle and then let them drain in a fast rack., usually 4 or 5 sprays. One of the things I’ve been mulling over is some bad advice I read in a forum about oxy caps. Some don’t sanitize cause it supposedly messes with the oxy seal. I used this process for a short while. Now I pull the caps out of the bag and dip them into starsan then cap. I honestly don’t remember when I started sanitizing them but it may possibly have been after the batch in question. I also don’t go to great lengths to store the caps in an airtight bag or anything. I may have been shooting myself in the foot there too.
As far as carbing, I do weigh using a gram scale and I try hard to be sure of the volume I’m carbing. Any things possible, but I’m pretty confident the carbing amounts are good. My plan for the next batch is to soak my bottles in PBW a day or two, before bottling and then rinse again with water as well as hitting them with starsan. I wonder if I need to starsan me more than I am?
If I’m understanding correctly… You’re rinsing the bottles after drinking, storing, rinsing, and sanitizing? I’d add another step here between rinses. Actually I’d eliminate the second rinse if your bottles aren’t exposed to dust. But once you gather about a case of dirty bottles (bottles that have been rinsed after drinking), you should give them a nice soak in some oxiclean over night. Then rinse, dry, and stash in the “clean” stack of bottles. Then hit them again with starsan before bottling.
I’m going to probably say your infection occurred in the bottles.
ii think that is a very real possibility.its sad to say, up u til now I’ve been lazy with bottle cleaning. I soaked my next bat h of bottles a day ago for about 45 min in PBW then stored them in a fast rack, covered with a clean plastic bag. Tomorrow when I bottle I’ll starsan them good. Is it ok to dip oxy caps or is it better to soak them for a few minutes I wonder. Thanks for the info!
I’ve never used PBW, but it’s made for that, so you should be good to go. As far as caps go, I fill a bowl up with starsan and put my caps in it throughout the bottling process. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but it’s what I’ve always done.
I treat my caps the same way as Frank. I have a small bowl of starsan and a small mesh screen. I dip the caps and then fish them out with the screen and keep the bowl next to me as I bottle.
I doubt the caps were the problem though.
Really nothing unusual, except maybe a longer soak.
As soon as I finish bottling whatever I’m bottling I immediately get in and start cleaning. It’s far easier to get everything clean while it’s still wet. There’s no time for brett to cough up a biofilm and hide itself. Hot water rinse and if there is visible debris on/in the equipment then I scrub with a soft sponge or for my one gallon glass jugs I use a bottle brush. Soap is used if there’s a lot of debris. Then rinse several times, fill with hot water and mix in oxyclean. I let it soak for a week and then dump, rinse several times and let dry. Then I sanitize with starsan before the next use.
Some comments above discussed possible infections in the bottles. That is certainly likely although I would compare infected bottles side by side and see how similar the infection is in taste and aroma. I would be surprised if an entire collection of 40 or whatever number of bottles had the exact same wild yeast or bacteria.
A whole week in oxyclean? Does oxyclean continue to work after a few days?
As to bottle versus other source of the infection - agreed that if all are suffering the same problem, then it very well would point to hose or bucket contamination. I took it to mean that just a few bottles were affected by the infection…sounds like it might be the dreaded acetobacter.
I’d be a bit concerned about the possibility of mold forming after that long.
Replacing all your equipment probably can’t hurt but… When I bottle I frequently notice different levels of carbonation as time goes by. The beer tastes the same, but sometimes a batch will be more foamy for the last few bottles. The thing with bottle carbing is that it’s usually not quite the exact science that kegging kind of is. I find this happens more often in winter when the inside temperature swings around a bit more and the bottles take longer to carb. There are so many variables to bottling that you may want to think about. How did you measure the sugar, How much yeast got into the bottling bucket, the ambient temp of the room where the bottles are stored etc etc. All I’m saying is that it may be a carbing quirk and not an infection.
The batch in question didn’t have what I considered a ‘blatantly obvious’ infection. It just seemed to go crazy on the carbonation at a point (2 months post bottling) that I did not expect. It also gained what I considered an off, somewhat metallic flavor that wasn’t the flavor I had ben getting. Interestingly enough, it was the 2nd in a series of 3 test batches of the Northern Brown style. The first was an extract w/specialty grains, second was all grain and the third was bottled today, an all grain with a bit higher amount of specialty grains and liquid yeast. The first 2 used the same fermentation, yeast (notty) and carb level. Batch one turned out nice and has not exhibited any unusual activity. the second one started out OK up to 6 weeks post bottling but then started the excess foaming. I still have a few bottles of batch 1 that are good. If anything has come of this, it has pushed me to a new cleaning/sanitation regime. If it touches my wort/beer on the cool side, it gets PBW/oxyclean post use and a good soak in Starsan prior to use.
The company that produces oxyclean says it stays effective for six hours but from watching it remove stains in buckets I find it takes more than six hours to remove the stain and seems to continue to work for several days. I might be overdoing it with cleaning after bottling sour beer but I haven’t had a problem letting the bottling bucket and bottling equipment soak that long. Definitely no mold problems.
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