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Clogged Carb Stone Causing Off-Flavour???

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  • Clogged Carb Stone Causing Off-Flavour???

    Hi there,
    I have a question about our sintered stone in out BBT. We have carved probably 30-40 beers with no issues, now, our last 2 beers have a weird off-flavour. Almost acidy, carbonic. We use a BrewWizz FizzWizz to carb. Usually it takes our small batch (150L) about 1-2 hrs to carb around 2.6 volumes. This time it took almost 7 hours, and it now has that same taste. Could that be from our stone being plugged? We are cleaning it now, and will be setting our flow rate through it this time, just wondering if that is the issue here. Thanks

  • #2
    When you clean the bbt do you completely disassemble the stone, check valve, and back flush the stone with hot water? If the stone is properly cleaned it should not add any off flavors.
    Joel Halbleib
    Partner / Zymurgist
    Hive and Barrel Meadery
    6302 Old La Grange Rd
    Crestwood, KY
    www.hiveandbarrel.com

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    • #3
      When we clean the BBT, we do everything, but this last couple times it was not done by our employee, and we just caught it. We thought we had something wrong with our last beer, so when we made our next batch, he cleaned it again and we carved our new beer. Same weird acidy like taste. We then removed all pressure from tank, transferred beer to another tank below the stone, removed stone and cleaned it with Acid and our Sanitizer for a few hours, then hooked our CO2 to it and blew about 20 PSI through it. Really weird foam came out of it, then it went back to normal. Our flowmeter started working better also. We had no pressure on our BBT, then re-carbed it, and it carved in less than an hour. We did notice that the flavour is getting better. Just still wondering if that carb stone that was almost plugged would give it that taste.

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      • #4
        I doubt that it was the physical action of the clogged stone giving you off-flavors. Rather, it was what the stone was clogged with that was doing you evil. I'm surprised you're able to salvage the off-flavor beer, as it seems contamination with an off-flavor causing micro-organism is most likely the problem.
        Timm Turrentine

        Brewerywright,
        Terminal Gravity Brewing,
        Enterprise. Oregon.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by TGTimm View Post
          I doubt that it was the physical action of the clogged stone giving you off-flavors. Rather, it was what the stone was clogged with that was doing you evil. I'm surprised you're able to salvage the off-flavor beer, as it seems contamination with an off-flavor causing micro-organism is most likely the problem.
          We thought that it was getting better. It was not. We ended up dumping the beer and going back through our cleaning schedule. We may not have waited long enough after passivation to brew. Our cleaner says 48 hours air dry. This batch was brewed 24 hrs after that. That's all we can gather. The stone is fine now. Just another thing to put on our list of things to check.

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          • #6
            Passivation doesn't affect sanitation, as long as the vessel isn't getting rusty.

            Brewery sanitation is critical--we've lost batches from hoses with very slightly loose hose ends harboring critters. Most breweries could teach hospitals a lot about sanitation.
            Timm Turrentine

            Brewerywright,
            Terminal Gravity Brewing,
            Enterprise. Oregon.

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