Infection reflection

[Philipek]

Of my two recent batches one had a very noticeable phenolic taste and the other one had quite a strong phenolic taste, not undrinkable but certainly not pleasant. This was identified by two independent beer brains. I thought the smell was strangely sweet. They described it as "band aids' though I've never smelt or chewed a band aid so couldn't agree or disagree.

The phenolic taste and smell was attributed to a wild yeast infection. This brings down the body of the beer and brings up the attenuation and makes the beer hazy. On later reflection, I realized that this phenolic smell has been in all my beers. It was barely noticeable in the first, but made my beer not smell beerish. Homebrewing is full of challenges and new projects. Mine is the fun task of eliminating this infection.

Being a jittery nervy kind of person, I've been paranoid about all aspects of brewing since I started, and that includes cleaning and sanitation. I practised what I thought was impeccable cleanliness and sanitation. Apparently not.

I would clean the entire kitchen: the floors, the surfaces, but also the doors of cabinets, walls and the sides of the fridge and cooker. I sanitize the surfaces on which I would be working with iodophor solution made up according to the guidelines on the bottle. I clean all my equipment thoroughly with oxy clean until surfaces shine and see through stuff is completely free of smudges. I submerge all items small enough to fit in the basin for at least 1 minute (I've since found out that 2 minutes is the required time, but also that 30 seconds is enough). Items not small enough, I squirt with a turkey baster repeatedly for at least 1 minute. If something has been out longer than about 5 to 10 minutes before it contacts the wort, I sanitize it again. I sanitize the inside of the carboy and squirt iodophor over the top so it runs down.

So, when the beer brain told me that I needed to use a bit of elbow grease on my kit, I listened attentively, but later felt a little despondent. Apart from not sanitizing the outside of my carboy, I couldn't find anything that I could improve. I was wondering if I had an evil kitchen with wild yeast riding motes of dust straight into my wort. I've had a few spillages and that stuff's hard to get up, so I imagined massive colonies of wild yeast in the grouting of my kitchen floor tiles puffing spores all day every day. I also wondered if I had bad equipment. I'm going to ditch my tubing and racking cane and get new ones. I'm quite happy about this, though, because my racking cane is part of a defunct autosyphon and doesn't have the right fitting on the bottom and my tubing is a little too short.

A few days later and I'm feeling better. I found this part of the forum and read what Chrisx1 has to say about iodophor. I've been diluting it with cold tap water, completely unaware that the chlorine was messing it up. Also, I can up it's murderous power with citric acid.

So, that's my plan. If anyone has any other ideas or criticisms of my regime, I would love to hear.

Thanks for reading.
Phil

[vacant]

I would clean (long list snipped) ...

Strewth. I brew in a car port with cobwebs on the rafters, birds and insects flying through, wren's nest up in the corner etc etc.

I rinse out the boiler and mash tun with hot water but when the boil comes to end I use Videne solution to sanitise the rest including sticking a baby bud soaked in Videne solution up the boiler tap.

[Philipek]

Strewth. I brew in a car port with cobwebs on the rafters, birds and insects flying through, wren's nest up in the corner etc etc.

Many people brew in less than sanitary environments (with perfectly sanitary equipment, of course) and turn out excellent beer. I was trying to work out where my problem came from and I couldn't see a way that it was linked to my sanitation regime and wanted to blame something other than myself

The problem is all I've got is a phenolic taste and they can come from many things, as Chris mentioned. Apparently, brewers' yeast will also produce phenolics if the fermentation temperature is too high. I considered this as I have been brewing as the weather has been getting warmer and, lo, the phenolic taste has become more pronounced in my beer. However, my house is in the shade of two huge oak trees and is around 20 degrees, but I have tried to control the temperature of my fermenting beer with the water bath and ice bottle method.

Sodium/potassium metabisulphite is campden tablets, right? I've been using them in my water, but I will be a little more generous seeing as a whole tablet will not harm 30 litres of water.

The thing that seems most likely is that either too much iodophor is going in the beer, or I've been severely compromising the killing power of the iodophor by using tap water or water that has been treated by campden tablets. That or I could have unwittingly dropped the ball, sanitation wise, on one thing: spoon, thermometer etc.

I was a bit miserable about my crap beer, but this has been an excellent learning opportunity and an opportunity to review my cleaning and sanitation regime. I do feel wiser, or at least more knowledgeable. I will use distilled water for my iodophor and use a bit more campden for the brewing water. Other good practice is that I'll shell out on some powdered brewery wash, I may even switch to Star San (apparently the foam is good for the beer and creates yeast nutrients), and I'll make sure that the fermentation temperature is around 18 degrees C rather than pushing 20.

One question. Sodium metabisulphite has been mentioned as useful in the mash for its antioxidative powers. I'm using a separate lauter tun, so I'm pouring the mash out of stockpot into the lauter tun. This, of course, causes a bit of frothing. Could this be causing problems in my beer?

[jonewer]

If "phenolics" are caused by the reaction of halogens in the liquer with the phenols in the wort, and you are using large amounts of halogen-based sanitiser, I put it to you that the phenolic taste in your beer may be caused by the large amounts of halogen-based sanitiser you are using, rather than wild yeasts.

[edit1now]

If you use Videne at the recommended no-rinse concentration of 12.5 ppm, or 1.25 ml in 1 litre, you're not going to taste it unless you've got a much finer palate than most of us. I ran-off a batch of wort out of the boiler onto a couple of litres of Videne solution and the beer was fine.

My TCP experiences have been down to a couple of batches which were made with water out of a brand-new garden hose, which I suppose was giving off unpolymerised vinyl chloride, and another where I'd sanitised with dilute bleach and failed to neutralise it sufficiently with sod met. I now put a couple of teaspoons of sod met in both the mash tun and the hot liquor tank as they're heating up.

[Philipek]

What are halogen based sanitizers? Is that iodophor? Because I'm dunking everything in that stuff 2-10 times a brew.

Also, I had a pint of my Bitter and twisted, the beer with the very strong phenolics. And instead of phenolics, I could smell hops. My beer's playing peek-a-boo with me. When I took the FG it smelled of hops, when I bottled I had the last pint out of the bottling bucket - phenolics. First few pints - phenolics. Last pint, hops.

Perhaps I'm emptying the iodophor out of some bottles and leaving a little puddle of iodophor in others. that's the kind of brain fart kind of thing I'd do.