Here's To Hoping It's Gone

Over the 3 day weekend I took the time to thoroughly clean and sanitize some of my equipment. As I was able to deduce that the infection spread through 1 yeast into 2 fermenters, I knew what I needed to care for. I started by giving all 3 fermenters a 17 hour soak in hot PBW over night. I gave it the recommended ½ cup dosage for the 15-25 minutes, and left it for 17 hours. I came to find out that I actually didn’t need to use that much if I was doing an elongated soaking, but at least this way I know they are clean. After this I filled a bucket with the PBW solution from one of the Better Bottles, removed the brass ball valve from my conical (it smelled like mushrooms – not cool), and placed the conical into the bucket so that the threads could get a good soak. At this point I filled the Better Bottles with cold water and 3 cap fulls of bleach. After a few hours I removed the bleach water and refilled the Better Bottles with PBW solution to help clean out any bleach. I then rinsed each one 5 times with hot water, and had my wife smell test them for any bleach. I also added the bleach to the bucket that previously contained the PBW and soaked the bottom and threads of the conical overnight. The next morning I put my bottling bucket spigot on the conical (same size threading) and filled it up with the bleach water as well (topped off with more cold water and extra bleach), and that has been soaking for 5 days. Tonight I will give it a thorough rinse with PBW and hot water and then let it dry out.

Next week I have an extra day off after taking the youth group to the coast for a weekend retreat, and I am going to brew up a batch of beer to test the Better Bottle and Conical. After talking to Michael Tonsmeire (Mad Fermentationist), I decided to do an American Blonde Ale since this style will show any signs of infection, and will probably still taste good if it does get infected. I worked up a recipe for it and will finally get to use the Amarillo hops I have in the freezer. Typically an American Blonde only has about 0.5oz flavor and 0.5oz aroma hops, but I am brewing an 8 gallon batch as opposed to 5, and I am going to (if it stays clean) enter it in a Club Only Competition in May and still want the hops to be around for it, so I am going to use 1oz each for flavor and aroma. I am putting this against a malt back drop of Pale Malt, Carafoam, and Honey Malt so it will have a nice honey sweet flavor, body, and retain a light, smooth, dry finish. I am choosing to use the WY 1469 West Yorkshire strain that I used to brew my ESB since I really liked the stone fruit aroma, and think it would compliment this beer well. Only issue with this yeast is that it doesn’t flocc out well, so it will get a little longer in the fridge before I transfer and bottle. For bottling, I am going to use a brand new bottling rig for the Better Bottle version, and will bottle straight from the conical for the other to keep them as separate as possible and to isolate any possible place that an infection may still be harbored. I am going to purposefully divert a few gallons of this brew to my gallon jugs where I will intentionally sour, wild, and oak it just because I can, and I don’t want to actually bottle another 8 gallons of the same beer like I did on the ESBs, and of course, I like souring stuff (intentionally). I will of course keep the blog up to date as that brew progresses.

Beating the Bottle Bugs

One thing that came of my debacle was a reevaluation of my cleaning and sanitizing procedures. I got a fairly large forum discussion going back and forth over on Tasty Brew. What has seemed to come of it is that my cleaning and sanitizing is fairly tight, but every-so-often I miss a few bottles. This problem could be stemming from micro scratches inside the bottles that are harboring the bacteria that ravage my beer post packaging. I could always throw these bottles away when I end up with a gusher or two. Another option allows me to tighten up my process to have the best beer packaging available.

Cleaning: I told the guys at the LHBS that I wash with Sun Oxygen Cleaner and they stated that this was bad. They told me that it had detergents in it that would coat the walls of my equipment and bottles, that it was difficult to wash off, and that it would de-activate StarSan. I started the forum thread and did some reading and snooping. According to John Palmer, a very good cleaner for your brewery is a Sodium Percarbonate cleaner like PBW and One-Step. Turns out that the Sun Oxygen Cleaner that I use is simply Sodium Percarbonate, just like the expensive stuff they were trying to sell me. According to the forum thread, I wasn't rinsing them well enough, and the Sun MSDS sheet does state that the Sun Oxygen Cleaner doesn't work correctly with acids. To properly rinse the cleaner from the bottles (or any equipment) it should get a good 3-5 rinses with hot water. I would fill the sink with warm-hot water and submerge the bottle once, drain, then sanitize. I wasn't rinsing the first bottles thoroughly, and then I was diluting the rinse water each time as well. To rectify this issue I am going to purchase a jet type bottle washer that attaches to the sink. You turn on the hot water, turn the bottle over, press it down over the nozzle, and it sprays the hot water all over the inside. Repeat a few times and then sanitize. Another cool thing about a hot water Oxy soak is that it removes labels easily, and typically breaks up any gunk inside the bottles (still give it a good scrub with a bottle brush to be sure).

Sanitizing: This is where you take the previously cleaned (all debris, gunk, etc, removed) bottles and kill off most (if not all) of the bacteria and wild yeast that might be in/on them. Options for effectively sanitizing the bottles include baking, boiling, and steaming them. Baking will effectively sterilize the bottles killing any and everything in them. It will also degrade the stability of the glass which may lead to bottle bombs, or broken necks in the future. Boiling is very effective, yet how do you fit ~ 60 bottles into a pot of water? And even if you can get them in, how do you avoid the current of the boil crashing the bottles into the wall or each other? The third option is using the dishwasher. In this method, you remove all dishes from the dishwasher and give it a good cleaning inside (wipe down the walls, make sure there are no food particles on the bottom). Some may want to open up the insides and give it a through cleaning (be prepared, I hear this is putridly disgusting). Once it is clean, fill it with bottles, and run it with out any detergents and have it set to high heat and heated dry/sanitize cycle. Once this is done, your bottles are clean, sanitary, and on a sanitized shelf for bottling. If you bottle from the dishwasher (as I do) then any beer that spills on the opened door is just dumped into the dishwasher once you are done, and goes down the drain. Of course with as anal as I am now with everything that has happened, I will most likely take these bottles and hit them with StarSan, then place them back into the dishwasher to double sanitize.