Possible infections?

[Wutz]

Two questions, both about possible infections:

First - About a month-and-a-half ago I bottled a Dry-hopped English IPA. There was a period of time where the bottles were improving and tasting better. As of the last couple weeks it seems like the beer that's coming out has less and less body. In addition, I've had one "gusher" that, as soon as I opened it, started to foam up and foamed over for a few minutes with little or no agitation before opening. Infection? I'm fairly confident it's something that just didn't take hold quickly (due to a slight underpitch) and now it's finally getting around to ruining my beer.

Second - This last week (on Wednesday) I made a starter for a dubbel using the Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardens yeast. I made the starter and pitched in the yeast. There was some activity. I decanted the beer off on Friday evening and added another dosage of wort to get it active before I brewed on Saturday morning. Over night on Friday, it did a fair bit of foaming and "blowing off." I smelled it and it smelled a bit like band aids. I'm not familiar with the yeast so I wasn't sure if this was a red flag. I called a homebrew shop on Saturday morning, they said it was fine and to brew with it. It's been fermenting pretty well these last couple days but I've been noticing a bit of the band aid aroma coming out of the blowoff bucket (filled with sanitizing solution). I made an effort to be ridiculously sanitary in both the starter preparation and the brewing process. Unless my sanitation solution is infected (I doubt it), I don't understand how it could have gotten infected.

[Bugeater]

Two things jump to mind here. First is your water. Is it treated with chlorine or chloramines and what did you do to remove it? These compounds can lead to the bandaid flavor.

Second, what is your sanitizing solution? Use of chlorine is often a problem. First, if you don't rinse well you will get the bandaid flavors. Second, sanitizing with a chlorine solution is not instantaneous. You need a wet contact time of a couple minutes for sanitation to be complete. If you just wipe stuff down and it dries immediately, it may not be completely sanitized.

As you mentioned, underpitching probably contributed to letting the infection take hold. Sources of infection may also include the bottling bucket/fermenter bucket spigot, the inside of the bottling wand, and even the bottles themselves. These are often places where you can easily miss a piece of crud that didn't cleaned out completely.

I hope this gives you a clue where to look in your process so you don't mess up future brews.

Wayne

[Wutz]

Two things jump to mind here. First is your water. Is it treated with chlorine or chloramines and what did you do to remove it? These compounds can lead to the bandaid flavor.

Second, what is your sanitizing solution? Use of chlorine is often a problem. First, if you don't rinse well you will get the bandaid flavors. Second, sanitizing with a chlorine solution is not instantaneous. You need a wet contact time of a couple minutes for sanitation to be complete. If you just wipe stuff down and it dries immediately, it may not be completely sanitized.

As you mentioned, underpitching probably contributed to letting the infection take hold. Sources of infection may also include the bottling bucket/fermenter bucket spigot, the inside of the bottling wand, and even the bottles themselves. These are often places where you can easily miss a piece of crud that didn't cleaned out completely.

I hope this gives you a clue where to look in your process so you don't mess up future brews.

Wayne

As far as the water goes, I've got three batches that don't exhibit any sort of band aid aromas and I've used the same water source for all of my batches.

I use Star San for my sanitation. I was using the "spray bottle" sanitation method where I get all the surfaces wet and I typically spray everything down a couple times before I use everything (unless I actually have it sitting in the sanitizer, as is the case with all my tubing, bottle filler, and anything else that'll fit in a 6.5 gallon bucket filled halfway with Star San solution).

The band aid aroma seems to be less apparent from the fermentor today than it was yesterday.

[ajdelange]

Loss of body and gushing sound like a wild, hyperattenuative yeast strain infection. Gushing by itself could be indicative of oxalate haze or ergot contamination of the malt (unlikely).

Bandaid/platic aroma, as has been noted, is usually a chlorphenolic problem usually caused by chlorine/chloramine in the source water. In general, if you can't smell chlorine when pouring the water back and forth between a pair of tumblers then the chlorine/chloramine is at a low enough level that you don't have to worry about it. Chlorine is usually not a problem because allowing the water to stand overnight or heating it to boiling will drive it off. Chloramine is a different story. Call your water supplier and ask if they are chloraminating. If they are (and it's pretty widespread these days) then take that as a warning and be especially attentive to smell or better yet buy a chloramine test kit from an aquarium supply store or www.hach.com. The cure is one Campden tablet per 20 gals. of water treated.

[Wutz]

Loss of body and gushing sound like a wild, hyperattenuative yeast strain infection. Gushing by itself could be indicative of oxalate haze or ergot contamination of the malt (unlikely).

Bandaid/platic aroma, as has been noted, is usually a chlorphenolic problem usually caused by chlorine/chloramine in the source water. In general, if you can't smell chlorine when pouring the water back and forth between a pair of tumblers then the chlorine/chloramine is at a low enough level that you don't have to worry about it. Chlorine is usually not a problem because allowing the water to stand overnight or heating it to boiling will drive it off. Chloramine is a different story. Call your water supplier and ask if they are chloraminating. If they are (and it's pretty widespread these days) then take that as a warning and be especially attentive to smell or better yet buy a chloramine test kit from an aquarium supply store or http://www.hach.com. The cure is one Campden tablet per 20 gals. of water treated.

I just called my local water authority: 2 parts per million of chloramine. Is that an unacceptable level?

By the way, thanks for the help, everyone.

[ajdelange]

Yes, that's definitely enough to be a problem (as I think you are now aware). Use Campden tablets in the future (the alternative is to install a GAC filter and make sure the flow rate is slow enough to remove the chloramine - the Campden tablets are simpler). The 1 tablet per 20 gal dose is calculated for 3 mg/L and so will take care of 2 mg/L easily. If you are preparing, say, 10 gallons of water use half a tablet etc.

The tablets are a bit hard to dissolve so I suggest crushing with the back of a spoon before adding into the water and then stirring thoroughly to get the powder to dissolve. The chlorine smell in the water should disappear within seconds of adding the powder to be replaced by a sulfur dioxide smell. Do not worry about this. It will not harm your beer (in fact it will probably benefit it). The other reaction product will be a small amount of amonium ion which your yeast will love.