Speaking of Conical Blues

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

I bought a stainless conical off eBay when I notice my LHBS, Austin Homebrew, had bought 10 from the seller. I think it was a lot of 50. My cousin bought one two. Looks great. First batch of beer was a Kentucky Common Sour beer, and I thought it was great. (But the judges at Dixie Cup said it was astringent and mediciney, as I found out later.) The second batch was a porter that was sour, astringent and mediciney. Crap! I thought. I shouldn't have made a sour beer in it. I had to dump the beer. My cousin had tried a bock beer and his turned out about the same: muddy and astringent.

I cleaned my conical with PBW, twice, then sanitized with StarSan. I brewed Jamil's Scottich Ale recipe from BYO. Just before fermenting, I put a very dilute bleach solution in for 10 minutes, cleaned with PBW, and rinsed, then sanitized with StarSan. The beer didn't have a sour taste. It had absolutely no taste at all. It was sparkling clear brown water. I kegged it, and today sampled it, and it's like drinking carbonated water. In the meantime, I have made four batches in my plastic and they turned out fine.

Anyone have any ideas what is going on?

[Push Eject]

Hmm... first of all, welcome to the BN.

When yeast have an anerobic fermentation they make alcohol -- however when the fermentation is aerobic or in the presence of oxygen they make water.

???

Push E.

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

Thanks, Push.

When I kegged the Scottish ale, I found this brown pellicle which I have been told forms in the presence of oxygen. Putting this together means I'm getting oxygen in the fermenter. Here's a link to my blog entry with a photo of it.

http://homebrewer2005.blogspot.com/2007/11/conical-woes.html

Does this sound reasonable to you?

[Mylo]

Did you try a 5 gallon batch in a 10 gallon conical?

Also I wouldn't use a bleach solution (in any dilution) on your expensive conical. There's no need for it when we have good sanitizers at our disposal that are safe for stainless (starsan or idophor).


Mylo

[Dirk McLargeHuge]

Did you try a 5 gallon batch in a 10 gallon conical?

Also I wouldn't use a bleach solution (in any dilution) on your expensive conical. There's no need for it when we have good sanitizers at our disposal that are safe for stainless (starsan or idophor).


Mylo

It's a 7.5 gallon conical. and it was a 5 gallon batch. I know I shouldn't use bleach, but I sanitized the fermenter twice with iodophor and once with StarSan and still had some contamination issues. It was half the concentration I use in my plastic for only 10 minutes then rinsed off and resanitized with StarSan. And I was desperate. I'm going to try a fourth batch. If it turns out bad, I may convert the conical into a planter.

[BDawg]

Try disassembling all the valves and gaskets and stuff at the bottom and snitizing them separately next time. Then reassemble and sani the entire thing (get EVERY surface) again. (Even consider boiling the small parts that can be boiled, too).

Try to think of every piece of equipment that has touched the soured beer/wort since you first made the initial sour batch. The critters hide in the nooks and crannies, and it's tough to get them all out. They also embed in plastic and rubber parts, so that's why you really should use a completely different set of hoses, stoppers, etc, when making sour beers.

I'm assuming here that you force carb, and you CP-filled when you entered the beers in the competition. So, there may be something going on at wort transfer time. Sani the hell out of all of your hoses (or get new ones), too. You may be re-introducing the bacteria when you transfer from the boil kettle to the conical.

Finally, I'd also toss all o-rings from any corny's that the sour beers were in, and look hard at how you sani your cp-filler, and even your bottle capper (cap on foam, right?). You never know if what's happening is that the first batch contaminated several different pieces of equipment, and you keep re-contaminating yourself at different points along the way.

HTH-