So I was checking the beers I have fermenting right now, (two glass carboys, one oatmeal stout, one amber ale) and noticed that my chest freezer smelled a bit funny. (I have a 7 cu ft freezer) Tilted one carboy to get a better look at the fermometer on the side, and saw a lot of grey/green fuzzy crud all over the straps of my brew hauler. Then I noticed that there was a fair amount of this stuff all over the inside of my freezer. Needless to say, I had a mild heart attack.
Removed both carboys, thoroughly cleaned and sanitized them with starsan, and scrubbed the whole freezer down with a mild bleach solution, then soaked with some starsan also. Gonna burn the brew hauler, and buy a new one. Was totally worried that both beers were ruined, but then remembered that I filled the airlocks with starsan. Both beers look fine. Took a deep breath, drank a home brew, and relaxed a little bit. Gonna keep a close eye on the beers. The amber is ready for bottling, and the stout has another week or so left before its ready.
Lesson for me: Sanitize fermentation chamber before and after each use…
Yeah, that freezer is a pretty healthy environment for mold, but it’s not going to get in your beer unless you’re doing an open fermentation. Like others said, Damp-rid keeps the moisture level down to prevent it, and oxyclean is great for scrubbing down any moldy areas. This reminds me it’s time to clean the inside of my freezer once the next couple beers come out of there.
Use some bleach to kill everything when you clean it. Whatever you do, don’t put another fermenter in there that might have wort that’s warmer than the freezer, until you’ve had a chance to clean it. It will create a vacuum and suck who knows what into the fermenter.
I keep a microfiber mop (long handle style with the built in wringing by twist mechanism). I routinely give it a good wiping with Star San and use an EvaDry rechargeable crystal style passive dehumidifier.
Seems to work pretty well - but as to the brewhauler belt, I would just wash it and dry it out, rather than pitching it.
I got the brew hauler soaking in some starsan, will wash it out good later. I never intended to get rid of it, but that was my emotional state at the time… I was slightly disconcerted…
Although visible mold may make you feel queazy, remember there are bad things floating in the air and dust all around us and the whole purpose of closed fermentation is to create an environment that is microbiologically separated from that. Good thing too since all our fermenters live in a half bathroom.
StarSan isn’t a very effective cleaner. Soap and water, Oxiclean, PBW, TSP, or anything like that will do a better job of cleaning than StarSan, so they would probably do a better job of reducing the bioburden.
I don’t think that Starsan will effectively kill the mold without washing it first. Starsan works on clean surfaces, where the contamination is relatively rare and sparse cells, but won’t necessarily penetrate into mold colonies. Soap will probably kill more of the mold than Starsan, in this case. Not that I would bother with the Starsan at all, but I just wanted to reinforce the practice of “clean, then sanitize”.
Something like 5% bleach would be very effective at killing the mold, and virtually sterilize (“decontaminate”, technically, but almost nothing can survive 10-20’ in 5-10% bleach). However, bleach and plastic aren’t usually compatible, and I’d hate to see the Brew Hauler become brittle and snap.
