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  • #31
    Originally posted by nickfl View Post
    If you are heat sanitizing and still getting infections, you aren't heat sanitizing properly. The beauty of heat is that it doesn't so much matter if things are clean, as long as they get hot, they are dead. If you are having infections this bad there is some glaring problem in your cleaning/sanitizing SOP. Frankly, I can't believe that you are only losing a couple of degrees of heat while recirculating 175F water through a spray ball, it seems likely you are probably never getting the walls of the tank hot enough to sanitize it. Even then, I'm surprised that poor heating of a visibly clean surface would be enough to give you an infection bad enough to show up this quickly. Is there anyplace in your plastic tanks that is a blind spot from the spray ball? I expect that there has to be in order for this to be happening. In my experience beer almost never shows an infection prior to packaging and it would take a seriously nasty spot in your tank to give you an infection bad enough to show up during primary. Also, as someone mentioned earlier, if this is indeed acetobacter, then your beer has to be getting oxidized for it to have an effect. I don't think you could chalk that up to the oxygen introduced prior to fermentation either because acetobacter metabolizes alcohol into acetic acid, so the yeast has to consume that O2 and start making alcohol before the acetobacter can become active. So your beer would have to be getting oxidized post runoff, in the tank, for that to happen, which means you have more problems than just poor sanitation.

    Follow the good advice a couple of people have given and FILL those tanks with 180F water, at least then you know they will be sanitized, with plastic tanks anything less than that is asking for trouble. I bet that if you do this you will finally have a clean batch.

    Good luck.
    He has some really good points.

    What are your SOPs for mitigating dissolved oxygen content of beer post ferm?
    Ryan
    Viridian Brewing Company
    [Brewery-In-Planning]

    Comment


    • #32
      The tanks we are using now are small, 60 gallons, so I can literally put my head and one arm in the tank and clean and inspect. I use the white scrubbie pads from morebeer. All fittings are removed and cleaned.

      Good thought on the acetobacter , wort stability samples were spoling, and there was no yeast in those obviously...(intentionally anyways)

      We plated several infected beers, wort stability samples, water, chiller, hoses last night on pre made lmda. One plate has had the media turn color already.

      Will take the advice on the sanitizing of tanks with 180 water

      Originally posted by nickfl View Post
      If you are heat sanitizing and still getting infections, you aren't heat sanitizing properly. The beauty of heat is that it doesn't so much matter if things are clean, as long as they get hot, they are dead. If you are having infections this bad there is some glaring problem in your cleaning/sanitizing SOP. Frankly, I can't believe that you are only losing a couple of degrees of heat while recirculating 175F water through a spray ball, it seems likely you are probably never getting the walls of the tank hot enough to sanitize it. Even then, I'm surprised that poor heating of a visibly clean surface would be enough to give you an infection bad enough to show up this quickly. Is there anyplace in your plastic tanks that is a blind spot from the spray ball? I expect that there has to be in order for this to be happening. In my experience beer almost never shows an infection prior to packaging and it would take a seriously nasty spot in your tank to give you an infection bad enough to show up during primary. Also, as someone mentioned earlier, if this is indeed acetobacter, then your beer has to be getting oxidized for it to have an effect. I don't think you could chalk that up to the oxygen introduced prior to fermentation either because acetobacter metabolizes alcohol into acetic acid, so the yeast has to consume that O2 and start making alcohol before the acetobacter can become active. So your beer would have to be getting oxidized post runoff, in the tank, for that to happen, which means you have more problems than just poor sanitation.

      Follow the good advice a couple of people have given and FILL those tanks with 180F water, at least then you know they will be sanitized, with plastic tanks anything less than that is asking for trouble. I bet that if you do this you will finally have a clean batch.

      Good luck.

      Comment


      • #33
        We haven't used our brite tank yet, pretty rudimentary right now. Ferms are rolled into cold room and crashed, 1/2" hose attached to racking valve on ferm and valve opened to fill keg.

        Once we get this infection figured out, we will be using Brite and should be able have better control of o2

        Originally posted by Viridian View Post
        He has some really good points.

        What are your SOPs for mitigating dissolved oxygen content of beer post ferm?

        Comment


        • #34
          Are you purging the kegs of oxygen? The transfer system used to fill kegs? These kinds of things are important to mitigate o2. I would suggest dearated sanitized water filled into the keg, and then pushed out with C02, for purging kegs. The transfer lines you can just push a slow stream of c02 through for a while to purge.
          Ryan
          Viridian Brewing Company
          [Brewery-In-Planning]

          Comment


          • #35
            It's been 36 hours since we plated several infected beers and HX and a few hoses. Only one is showing activity so far, and it seems to indicate Enterobacter based on BSI reference. Will post back with updates

            Comment


            • #36
              Is it possible when you put your fermenters in the room to cold crash that the temp. change could be causing air to be pulled in?

              Comment


              • #37
                That's a good thought, but beer is spoiling within 1 week in ferm room.

                Originally posted by ipaguy View Post
                Is it possible when you put your fermenters in the room to cold crash that the temp. change could be causing air to be pulled in?

                Comment


                • #38
                  Originally posted by jrtredo View Post
                  It's been 36 hours since we plated several infected beers and HX and a few hoses. Only one is showing activity so far, and it seems to indicate Enterobacter based on BSI reference. Will post back with updates
                  What was the source of the sample that is showing contamination?

                  Comment


                  • #39
                    Originally posted by ipaguy View Post
                    Is it possible when you put your fermenters in the room to cold crash that the temp. change could be causing air to be pulled in?
                    I think this is a very real concern....You can buy some sterile air filter discs and attach to your tanks to prevent this, but it will still be sucking in air - not good for the beer at this stage.

                    Alternately, you could (and probably should) add co2 pressure to your ferms before rolling into the cold room. This will take the worry out of forming a vaccum and pulling in air (sterile or otherwise).

                    If you have no bad samples upstream of your fermenters, this would be a very likely culprit.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      Recirculating boiling wort?

                      Don't recirculate the wort through the heat exchanger.

                      After every brew scrupulously clean the heat exchanger with hot caustic. Reverse the flow to help dislodge any residues in the heat exchanger. Occasionally use an acid cleaner on it.

                      If the caustic cleaner when circulating shows sediment; dump the cleaner, flush it out, and clean it again. Reversing the flow can help.

                      Leave the heat exchanger sealed with the caustic cleaner until your next brew. The high pH will keep it from growing bacteria.

                      At the start of your brew flush the caustic out of the heat exchanger with hot water. Then sanitize it with hot water. You need at least 160 degrees for 15 minutes. You can do this with either single pass water from your hot water tank ( decent flow to get up to temperature, then a much slower flow to maintain the temp) Or circulate hot water using the kettle as a reservoir. Sanitize the whole transfer arrangement from the heat exchanger on through all the hoses to the fermenter. And then leave it sealed up and sterile until doing the cooling.

                      Dump the first quart or so of wort from the kettle prior to sending it to the heat exchanger to avoid sending a huge slug of hops and trub to the heat exchanger. Then push the sterile water out of the heat exchanger with your hot, sterile, rapidly cooling wort. When cooled sterile wort reaches the fermenter divert the flow to the fermenter rather than the drain.

                      Some people like to push the water out with hot wort, then starting the cooling. Whether one can do that or not depends somewhat on your procedure for adding the yeast pitch and the size of the brew.

                      Recirculating the wort in the heat exchanger is only going to foul it. The wort when it returns to the kettle will stir up trub and hops, when you want to keep it clear - not muddied.

                      Brew smart. You're overthinking a critical step, and probably messing up your heat exchanger.

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        Great advice, will stop recirculating hot wort through HX, and follow your procedure.

                        I have obtained some o-rings to make the plastic conicals air tight, or closer to airtight. Will figure out a way to purge with co2 before crashing.

                        On the 16th we boiled water in our BK for 20 minutes, we recirculated the boiling water through the HX and hoses we use on brew day for the last 10 minutes. Then we chilled water to 80 degrees. Once we hit 80, we plated a sample from the cold side of HX and then another after the fittings and tubing.

                        We also plated a sample of water directly from our faucet in the brewery, we use well water. They are all showing activity. I posted pics below. We did not take a sample of the boiling water, wish we did.

                        We had obtained a UV light for water treatment from a store that had closed a few months ago, as we were told we would need it for a state agency inspection. The inspector told us it was not necessary, so we did not install. I think the next step is to install the UV light and plate everything again?

                        I will post pics of the infected beer plates in my next post.

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                        • #42
                          Here are the infected beer plates.....Click image for larger version

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                          • #43
                            Nice work getting this far with the plates. One easy thing for the future is to label them on the agar side.

                            It's tough to see past the covers and labels in the pictures. You can take the covers off and take pictures. Just know that once you take the covers off in a non-sterile way anything that grows can't be assumed to have come from the sample.

                            What I can make out:

                            Wit Keg: Definitely some acid producing microbes there. It has the classic clear/yellow areas around the colonies indicating acid production. This is probably what is responsible for the major off flavors you are tasting. My guess is it's lactobacillus, could be acetobacter too. We can do a simple test with hydrogen peroxide to tell. Look at the BSI handbook and see if they have a section on catalase tests. Or test the same sample with HLP.

                            DME from FV: Can't really make out much from the picture. Hard to tell if there are clear/yellow areas. I'm guessing these are wild yeast, maybe Brett.

                            Porter from FV: Hard to tell if it's the same as the DME from FV sample. From the pic it looks like the colonies could be more rough than the DME sample.

                            Direct(?) Post Chiller: Is this a sample from after the chiller and before the hose? Is this before the oxygenating setup or after? Regardless, it seems you have contamination before the sample point. Can't tell if it looks like yeast or mold. Is it fuzzy or smooth?

                            Post Chiller End: Is this sample from the outlet of the hose used for moving wort from the kettle to the FV? Looks similar to the Direct Post Chilller with additional mold.

                            So, moving forward; 1) Your well water shouldn't be an issue. We have excellent water here but I'd never consider it sanitary(even if it might be). Your wort in the kettle will always be sanitary after the boil. Do you have a lid for your kettle?

                            2)It looks as if you have at least two sources of contamination. The first being upstream of your Direct Post Chiller sample. The other being a source of acid producing bacteria as shown by the Wit Keg sample.

                            The goal now is to find sample points for the same batch where one is clean and the next is contaminated. It may also be a good idea to do a negative control to validate your results. Boil some water (a flask with some loose foil on top) and cool it in a sanitary manner; plate that and hopefully it comes back negative.


                            I'm guessing there isn't any equipment between your kettle and chiller. If that's the case then we can assume your heat exchanger is a source of contamination. What are your current CIP procedures for your HX?

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              I dealt with some nasty infections when I was just starting out 4 years ago. The cause was plastic fermenters. The batch started spoiling before primary ferment was over just like you are describing. What I realized was bacteria was building up inside the pores of the plastic. My star San CIP wasn't contacting the bacteria in the deep pores of the plastic, so we had to start heating the fermenters up with hot water. Our SOP for a 60 gallon fermenter was to use 2 or 3- 5 gallon buckets of water, one at a time, and circulate through the spray ball each one until your temp stabilizes. You can feel the outsides of the plastic to verify its getting very hot. Or if you have a thermowell, use your digital probe to verify your over 150F then hit it with a bucket of paracetic to cool it down, drain and transfer in. I would avoid using any scrubby pads on your fermenters, your chemicals and spray ball should be doing all the work for you.

                              Like another poster said, this has to be a very bad infection for your beer to be souring this fast with a new pitch of yeast.

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                I have attached some pics with the cover off.

                                The direct post chiller sample was taken from the cold side valve of the chiller before it hits anything else. The unlabeled pic below is another shot of this one, there are both fuzzy and smooth.

                                Yes, Post Chiller End is taken from the hose that goes into ferm

                                We had the UV light, so we installed it, yes, we cover the BK with a lid during chill.

                                We had slacked with our cleaning of the HX which is probably what got up into this mess. We backflushed with 185 degree water til clean every time, but only cleaned with PBW every 3 brews, it was never packed because we didnt have valves on it either.Click image for larger version

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                                Originally posted by AT-JeffT View Post
                                Nice work getting this far with the plates. One easy thing for the future is to label them on the agar side.

                                It's tough to see past the covers and labels in the pictures. You can take the covers off and take pictures. Just know that once you take the covers off in a non-sterile way anything that grows can't be assumed to have come from the sample.

                                What I can make out:

                                Wit Keg: Definitely some acid producing microbes there. It has the classic clear/yellow areas around the colonies indicating acid production. This is probably what is responsible for the major off flavors you are tasting. My guess is it's lactobacillus, could be acetobacter too. We can do a simple test with hydrogen peroxide to tell. Look at the BSI handbook and see if they have a section on catalase tests. Or test the same sample with HLP.

                                DME from FV: Can't really make out much from the picture. Hard to tell if there are clear/yellow areas. I'm guessing these are wild yeast, maybe Brett.

                                Porter from FV: Hard to tell if it's the same as the DME from FV sample. From the pic it looks like the colonies could be more rough than the DME sample.

                                Direct(?) Post Chiller: Is this a sample from after the chiller and before the hose? Is this before the oxygenating setup or after? Regardless, it seems you have contamination before the sample point. Can't tell if it looks like yeast or mold. Is it fuzzy or smooth?

                                Post Chiller End: Is this sample from the outlet of the hose used for moving wort from the kettle to the FV? Looks similar to the Direct Post Chilller with additional mold.

                                So, moving forward; 1) Your well water shouldn't be an issue. We have excellent water here but I'd never consider it sanitary(even if it might be). Your wort in the kettle will always be sanitary after the boil. Do you have a lid for your kettle?

                                2)It looks as if you have at least two sources of contamination. The first being upstream of your Direct Post Chiller sample. The other being a source of acid producing bacteria as shown by the Wit Keg sample.

                                The goal now is to find sample points for the same batch where one is clean and the next is contaminated. It may also be a good idea to do a negative control to validate your results. Boil some water (a flask with some loose foil on top) and cool it in a sanitary manner; plate that and hopefully it comes back negative.


                                I'm guessing there isn't any equipment between your kettle and chiller. If that's the case then we can assume your heat exchanger is a source of contamination. What are your current CIP procedures for your HX?

                                Comment

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