"Debugging" my oxidation incident

[IslandLizard]

Do you have access to a fridge for chilling the wort, and fermentation control?

I used to be able to chill my wort down to only around 80-85F in Summer. By placing the (bucket) fermenter in the corner of my chest freezer I could bring it down to 66-68F within a few hours. Then aerate and pitch yeast. I kept ferm temps controlled in a large beverage cooler or storage tote halfway filled with water, doped with a few frozen water bottles 1x or 2x a day, as needed.

 

[deeve007]

Good idea! ^

What kind of cleaners are you using? You need to clean those infected fermenters thoroughly. Then bleach bomb them, and/or leave out in direct sunlight for UV sanitation.

What kind of yeast are you using?

Gonna buy an alkaline cleaner, wasn't aware of the bleach thing. And then bleach bomb again, and then star san when using.

Yeast I've used a few different, next one will be LalBrew New England, which has a fairly forgiving temperature range, but I'll need to keep an eye on it and make use of air con and fan in the absence of anything else to control temps. Might have to stop brewing for one of two of the hottest months.

 

[IslandLizard]

Washing soda (soda ash, sodium carbonate) or generic "Oxiclean" (sodium percarbonate/sodium carbonate mixture) should work fine as a general cleaner. When needed, you could reinforce it with a small amount (1-3%) of lye (NaOH, drain cleaner) for some caustic action (watch skin, eyes, etc.).

Adding some (~30%) TSP (trisodium phosphate) or TSP/90 (sodium metasilicate) to either turns it into homemade PBW.
That has a lot of cleaning/degreasing power. 1 Tbsp per 1 gallon (heavy duty cleaning) to 5 gallons (soaking and lighter duty), works like a charm.

I haven't used Lalbrew's NE yeast, but do use WY1318 (Boddington, London III) a lot, mostly for NEIPAs. It's very forgiving, and reliable. Works well when reused too, yielding slightly higher attenuation.

Maybe use (Scandinavian) Kveik yeasts during the hotter months. They like it hot, 80-95F, are fast, and the beers they yield are phenomenal! I prefer mixtures of a few Kveik strains for a bit more depth.

 

[deeve007]

Maybe use (Scandinavian) Kveik yeasts during the hotter months. They like it hot, 80-95F, are fast, and the beers they yield are phenomenal! I prefer mixtures of a few Kveik strains for a bit more depth.

Kveik yeasts are DAMN expensive here... but there's a local version that looks worth a try, with a bunch of different styles it appears: https://minicerveceria.com/levaduras/622-levadura-liquida-cellyeast (use Google Translate to cheat translate ).

Most of those appear to have a high temperature range too.

 

[IslandLizard]

Kveik yeasts are DAMN expensive here...

That's ridiculous!
Ask someone to send you some in an envelope, dried on a piece of filter paper. That's how they store them up there, hanging in the kitchen.
You make a starter from those.

 

[bracconiere]

*

 

[IslandLizard]

That's ridiculous!

Oh wait... I just looked at the value of the AR$ = U.S. $0.016$0.017. That is 1.61.7 cents in U.S. dollars.
That Kveik yeast is AR$ 160.00 = U.S. $2.56$2.72
Is that correct?

Still, there's shipping, not worth it just by itself. But if you're putting in a larger order at some point anyway...

 

[deeve007]

The local versions are that price, which is cheap, not the imported/foreign stuff.

 

[IslandLizard]

The local versions are that price, which is cheap, not the imported/foreign stuff.

OK, that's local "Kveik." I get it.

 

[DVCNick]

Just one man's experience; I have ~25 batches, no infections, and valves/spigots on my kettle and fermenters. What I've done so far for cleaning is first close the valve, then leave it submerged in PBW for several hours. Then let all the PBW run through the valve.

On the kettle, at least the inside of it will be heat sanitized during the boil anyway, and the whole assembly seems to get pretty hot. However, when I take a preboil gravity sample out of the valve, I spray water into the opening after closing it to try to get most of the wort off. After cooling, I take my post boil sample first (hopefully anything that is just starting to latch on there goes into the test tube) and then immediately transfer to fermenter.

On the fermeter spigots, I take them all the way off and soak in PBW separately.

I store all the valves in the open position so there is maximum airflow and everything gets as dry as possible.

I don't know if it is foolproof or if all my theories are correct, but it has worked so far.

 

[deeve007]

I've been pretty anal about sanitizing and cleaning, and can be even more so now I've purchased an alkaline cleaner as recommended previously.

What I've learned from this thread is that there are numerous things that could have caused such an issue, so putting the logic hat on first step is to remove the things I did on this batch that I hadn't done previously, while also reviewing my other standard processes such as equipment cleaning and so forth. And then if I avoid this issue it would seem to confirm something newly done this batch was the issue. If not then can re-examine further.