I brewed an IPA tonight and as I'm finishing off the night I decide I want to have homebrew from my stash. I brewed an American brown on Father's day, got it bottled, drank it two weeks later, which was about 2 weeks ago now, and it was heaven. It was my first all grain batch and was just awsome. When I had it tonight it was contaminated. So I opened 4 more and all contaminated. Really a bummer to a great brew day and got me worried about my sanitization. I keep everything very clean from kettle to carboy. I keep everything wet with sani-clean throughout the brew session, I use a hepa filter on my aeration stone, I pitch a large healthy starter everytime. I typically sanitize everything the night before and leave wet, then will resanitize just prior to contact with the wort When it's in the carboy everything smells and tastes fine, which leads me to believe the contamination is at time of packaging. Lately I've been using the priming tabs from coopers (wich I know is kinda weak). I buy a fresh package every time and wear latex gloves with sani-clean on them when handling. I also keep my racking can and bottler semi-wet at all times and have replaced within the past 5 batches. Also I sanitize new bottles everytime.
I'm planning on kegging the IPA for a party but I think I'm going to bottle one beer with no additional sugar added, one with a sugar tab, and one with boiled sugar water, leave some in the carboy, and see what happens. Hopefully it is the packaging and at the very least the amount left in the carboy will be ok.
Has anyone had experience either positive or negative with the sugar tabs? I'm just not ready to go to the beer gun (although I do keg).
Does anybody use heat to sanitize their bottles (although I really don't think it was the bottles). Any suggestions on carboy to bottle + sugar in general?
Ted
