homebrewandbeer.com

Scooper,

1. Have you ever brewed exactly the same beer twice, once successfully and once when you've had an "infection"?

2. What styles of beer are you making?

3. And what extra ingredients are you adding, and how much of these ingredients?

4. What temperatures are you brewing at?

These are quite important questions. If you can answer them I might be able to help.

Oliver

Hi Oliver,

1. Yes. I've been trying different brands and types, but have tried BlackRock Lager twice. One was successful and the other not.

2. A few. Off the top of my head: Lager, Wheat, Pale Ale, Draught, Bitter. All using cans from known brands, such as Black Rock, Muntons, etc., plus Brewcraft ingredient kits.

3. Presently, the bare minimum until I eliminate what I'm doing wrong. Essentially, these are just Brewcraft ingredient kits, for example, Brewcraft #10 - mixture of dextrose and malt. I'm not adding any more or less than the recommended amounts, again until I can eliminate the issue. The only other ingredient is the water itself.

4. Whatever temperature the room's at. The bathroom is a little cooler than the rest of the house, and so the brews usually sit between 18-24 degrees C. They have occassionally gone above or below these levels, but not regularly. From observations, it doesn't seem that the temp. fluctuates a lot, either. I had read some months ago that temp. fluctuations can cause a brew to become infected.

Where am I located in Melbourne? Outer-eastern suburbs, not far from Brewers' Den in Boronia. So why go to Oakleigh? I was put onto them by an in-law, and this is where I got my gear from initially. I discovered Boronia some time after. I now visit both.

Today, I've contacted the HBS where I bought the fermenter and posed a few more questions to them, including the debris caught in the side. The suggestion was to try in a different area of the house - they were suspicious of using the bathroom, as it can be a haven for things like mould. If that fails, then they've suggested that it's most likely the fermenter.

Armed with a few suggestions, I'm now going to go away and give it another go. For me, boiling that much water in such a short amount of time (and storing it) is difficult, so I will grab some bottled water from the Supermarket. I'll also do everything in the kitchen, and not use the bathroom at all. Time permitting, I'll kick this off this coming weekend. The HBS are also interested in the results, just in case the fermenter itself is the cause. I'll post the results of this experiment soon.

Once again, thanks eveyone for replying. I will work my way through the remainder of the suggestions to make sure that I brew happily ever after!

Scooper,

I just don't know where to go from here.

As I said earlier, it's got me stuffed.

Let us know how you get on with the bottled water.

Oliver

Gosh, that's a lot of messing for a brew. I'm a newbie and on my 15th brew. I've had 1 (maybe 2 -more on that later) infections. The 1st was in a Wheat beer that I left in the fermenter too long. Plus it was stinking hot in Sydney. I bottle the bugger and drank a few. The rest got turfed, since they would geyser from the bottle themselves!!!

I use filtered tap water, and only boil the necessary amount to get the wort to the correct temp, and apart from the above infection had no problems. I'm on another list of homebrewers (a car forum mainly) and from what I can tell no one bothers boiling the water.

My latest brew is a Morgans old, which I bottled today. It was meant to end at 1014, but after checking and re-checking it seemed to now want to go lower than 1016.

After bottling I noticed a bit of white in top of the fermenter and in one of the clear bottles (though that could have been sugar). Not nearly as bad as the wheat beer and maybe I was seeing things?

From what I read, infected beer if it tastes ok isn't dangerous to drink?

The old tasted good in my sampling from the fermenter.

B

If it was infected you would know.

and there is nothing that can live in beer that can kill you. Might make you sick

Dogger

That's not necessarily true Dogger. I could kill you if you took my beer away. Then again, there's always my red wine. And the spirits.

Anonymous wrote:After bottling I noticed a bit of white in top of the fermenter and in one of the clear bottles (though that could have been sugar). Not nearly as bad as the wheat beer and maybe I was seeing things?

Yeast is also generally white, so I wouldn't be too concerned.

Oliver

Thats not true Evo, I can run a lot faster scared than you can mad.

Either way you aren't living in your beer........... are you?

Dogger

aren't living in your beer

Living on his beer perhaps?

Greg

Oliver wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After bottling I noticed a bit of white in top of the fermenter and in one of the clear bottles (though that could have been sugar). Not nearly as bad as the wheat beer and maybe I was seeing things?

Yeast is also generally white, so I wouldn't be too concerned.

Oliver

That was my thinking also (and my hope . I did stir the sludge in the fermenter up a bit when trying to fill the last 2 bottles. Normally there isn't an issue, but for some reason it kept getting blocked this time so I jiggled back and forth to no avail. The hops bag might have been the culprit.

I'll know in a month or so.

I'm putting the Cascade Chocolate Mahogany Porter today.


B

Bit the bullet over the weekend, and purchased two 19-litre pots to boil water in. They were $19 each in BigW - quite reasonable, I thought.

After I washing the pots out this morning, I did the following.

- Filled each up to about 15 litre mark
- Brought both up to the boil with the lids on
- Took lids off and boiled for about 10 minutes
- Put lids back on and removed the heat

My question is: Should I be trying to cool the water down, or, leaving it to cool on it's own? I've been reading some of the other posts about chilling the wort to reduce the chances of infection, and was wondering if this applied here too. What do others do?

Seems silly to ask, I'm sure, but I figure that I've dumped enough brews to warrant asking.

Thanks

Just leave it to cool with the lid on.

Cooling wort quickly is done for two reasons:
- hot wort is full of nutrient, so any bacteria/wild yeast around will multiply quickly. This is not the case with your water
- you need to cool wort quickly to generate the cold break (fallout). If left in the wort you will (probably) get chill haze in the finished beer.

Just be aware that 15L of water is going to take a while to cool down, so boil well in advance of brew day.

Tony

Great, thanks Tony.

scooper

scooper, there's not a toilet in that bath/brewing room is there?

maybe the fermenter is being mistaken for the bowl !!!

do you have a video camera? possibly your brew is getting a golden shower from a saboteur.

NickMoore,

Heh heh. No, no toilet.

Golden Shower? Good God! Would be a good trick, considering the fermenter is on a bench, almost out of arm's reach. And if I set up a camera in the bathroom, my girlfriend might get a bit suspicious. Sounds a bit like that scene from National Lampoon's European Vacation.

As an aside, am about to put on a Morgan's Blue Mountain Lager with the cool boiled water. Will see how it goes (no Golden Showers, hopefully).


scooper

good luck with it scooper.

you're not alone. I'm a novice too and I wouldn't be surprised if my lager downstairs has a greater infection than the monkey from "outbreak".

Guys

All is cool.

To quote Rabbit

Rabbit is knowing, Rabbit is wise

Being Newbies the chances of infection are slim really, why would beer spoiling critters be there? Scooper, this is why I am looking for something alternate to your problem although a good lacto bacillus will pooch it good and brewing in the bathroom, cleaner than the kitchen mind you.

Scooper, be careful with boiling the water. You will change its character, in this case by dropping out the calcium carbonate. This lives in a magic equilibrium which moves and shakes using three energy states. Heating it forces it out the other side and I found gave a real metalic flavour as I blew out the Calcium

Dogger

there's a saying in coffee and tea making, "boil the water, spoil the brew".

something happens to the water at boiling point that makes it taste less good. I heard dr karl talk about it once.

I'd also have my concerns about the warm stage when the boiled water is cooling. right temperature for nasties to breed eh.

Scooper, it warms my heart to see you asking so many pertinent questions. However, it chills my blood to see some of the responses you have got!!


Once Oliver, Lord of Brews, had asked his questions and received your prompt replies, the way should have been clear. However, you were told this:
"something happens to the water at boiling point that makes it taste less good. I heard dr karl talk about it once. (for Dogger's benefit, Dr. Karl is a populist science talking head)and this:
I'd also have my concerns about the warm stage when the boiled water is cooling. right temperature for nasties to breed eh.

Something? What exactly? What is the right temperature for nasties to breed, anyway? And isn't wort different to water?
This was remedied somewhat by these reassuring words, which are true:
- hot wort is full of nutrient, so any bacteria/wild yeast around will multiply quickly. This is not the case with your water.

To my mind, and apparently in the mind of your local HB storekeeper, the issue is:
scooper, there's not a toilet in that bath/brewing room is there?
This may be the key- damp, mould wild fungi & wild yeast living in the cracks between the tiles would be cause for worry, let alone anything lurking under the toilet seat. So go ahead and build yourself a brewery on that vacant land you were going to use as a ostrich or tomato farm. At least move your set up to another room until you have the fermenter lidded & locked.

Your sanitising procedures seem impeccable.

Also, bear this in mind:
If it was infected you would know.
though probably not until you drank some and then spent the next 48 hours with the galloping squits.

But if after trying the first few, you do end up back in the bathroom for long periods, remember this:
there is nothing that can live in beer that can kill you. Might make you sick

Salut!

undercover1, you're a bit of a hard marker.

boiling the water removes oxygen which results in flat taste.

and

germs thrive best about 37 degrees celsius (you hit that going from boiling to room temperature right?), and in moist conditions. water is quite moist.

that would explain the flat, germy taste of oliver's brews (which, I'm reliably informed, he has yet to share with any of his colleagues in five years ).

Nick