How do you infect beer?

[garcia]

Anyways, I've never intentionally tried to infect a beer, but have made a boat load of mistakes while brewing: not a damn beer infected.

Don't get me wrong either, I don't want to infect anything, but wondering if you have to be completely reckless or deliberately do something to infect the beer.

Thoughts?

 

[bleme]

Mix a cup of grain with a cup of warm wort and let set out for 2 days. Add to any beer you want to sour.

 

[garcia]

That's deliberate.

 

[buhay]

I don't know lol I've never had an infection either and I had a couple that i was concerned about and never a problem

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[bleme]

That's deliberate.

Sorry. I didn't understand your question. Try pulling a sample every day. That should do it.

 

[BBL_Brewer]

I'm totally anal when it comes to sanitation. My brewbuddy, on the other hand, is extremely careless. It pains me to watch him sometimes. But, he hasn't had an infected batch yet. I'm not sure what you have to do, because I've seen him do just about everything. It makes me wonder sometimes why I go to all that trouble

 

[AerationStation]

I think infections are more common than people think. The beer doesn't have to turn out like vinegar for there to be contamination. Sometimes that little off flavor in the finish is due to some population of bacteria/wild yeast. It's not an all or nothing thing.

Thank you for indulging my rant

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[BBL_Brewer]

I think infections are more common than people think. The beer doesn't have to turn out like vinegar for there to be contamination. Sometimes that little off flavor in the finish is due to some population of bacteria/wild yeast. It's not an all or nothing thing.

Thank you for indulging my rant

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That's true, but it's almost impossible to keep the post boil wort completely contaminate free even with the best of sanitation practices. It only takes one viable cell to contaminate and I'm sure all of our beers have some microbes in there that we don't know about.

 

[AgentHubcap]

I've gotten infected from my children pulling out my airlocks

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[Lakeman]

I was very uptight about sanitation when I started brewing, was like that for many years, and prided myself on the fact that I had never had an infection.

I have a creek that runs through my backyard, and I often use it to cool my wort after the boil. I once was employing this method, hanging out by the creek and enjoying nature, when I watched in horror as my brew kettle and its precious contents slowly tipped in the current. I rushed and righted it, but not before around a cup or so of creek water had gotten into my kettle. At this point I had invested several hours in the process, so I went ahead and pitched, fully expecting the resulting beer to taste like a cross between a willow root and a salamander butt at best. It turned out fine though, a very enjoyable brown ale that I named Ol' Muddy.

After that experience I stopped worrying so much about infections. I still sanitize everything, and I'm extra careful about brews that I'm expecting to age at cellar temps for an extended period of time, but I don't worry if something happens to get into the beer or about topping up with unboiled water. I still haven't ever had an infection <knock on wood>.

 

[Teromous]

Some of it also has to do with old gear. When you buy new stuff from the homebrew store it still needs to be cleaned and sanitized, but over time it will slowly develop scratches or build-up in hard to reach or unnoticeable areas. At this point even cleaning and sanitizing isn't guaranteed to get everything. For example when you finish a batch you might not completely wash out a hose. A little bit of wort stays inside the hose and hardens because you didn't notice it wasn't cleaned out all the way. Running water through that hose will just make it wet (think of a piece of candy stuck to the carpet). You hang it up to dry and it starts to develop a little colony. Another example is if you take clean hoses and loop them to dry instead of hanging them. Little beads of water can stay in the loops and mold will start to develop. A big offender is when you have end connectors, like a keg-to-keg hose and you clean it out afterwards but leave the ends on. The little valves inside prevent air from entering the hose and it builds up all kinds of nasty beasts. If you don't notice it before you start to transfer your wort, you can infect it as well as spread the *crud* to other elements of your system. It's a good practice to take everything apart and clean it...but sometimes homebrewers are just lazy or tired. One thing that I notice all the time on homebrew videos is people who just quickly give something a shot of starsan and say "yep it's good to go" then dump it right in the brew. Check out post #3 here and tell me if you think these guys are doing it right. Maybe their beer doesn't get infected, but you'll see a lot of posts on this forum that say "I did everything right, sanitized everything, and it's infected." There are little things that can do it as well. Hair is notorious for clinging to things and I have noticed this especially when using silicon tubing. I'm not suggesting you break out a boroscope, but shine a pen light down your tubing and see if you notice any specks or hairs. Wash it out and do the same, and see how much stays in there. Then there's other stuff like wort chillers. If you use a plate chiller and you don't backflush and sanitize, you're pretty much creating agar plates while it sits on your shelf. There are other things that can do it too, like a blowoff tube, a dirty airlock that gets suckback in pressure or temperature changes...

Again these things are not 100% guarenteed to give you an infection, but eventually it can. If you've let things fall apart over the months and years of brewing, cleaning, storing, and moving your equipment around, it will get harder to pinpoint what the actual cause is.

 

[fearwig]

I've never had an infection. I've never used an airlock, and I constantly sniff, sample, and examine the wort in my plain old every day buckets, on which I put loose lids. I frequently use bleach (GASP!) to sanitize, with a thorough rinse (GASP!), and no Star-San (GASP! etc.). I rinse with well water. I always use recycled yeast unless it's a new strain, building up fresh daughter cells from starters after so many generations, as needed.

Again, no infections with this method. Ever. Maybe I'm just special. Maybe bleach penetrates my fermenters and tools better than Star-San. All I can say is it works, over and over and over again.

The only time I've ever had anything like an infection was when I stored wort in buckets for over a day before boiling, and obviously I didn't mash out hot enough to pasteurize the massive quantities of lacto in the grain because it soured. A lot. I spiced it. It was OK. Not good. My wife did not drink it. I probably could have balanced the flavor better with a Belgian or hefe yeast.

Moral of that story is that raw grain is an absolutely massive source of bacteria that absolutely love wort, and I get a strong feeling most infections come from cross-contamination with grain bacteria. If people knew this, they might do things differently, and show more deference to raw grain dust than to the scattering of ambient bacteria in their environment. I used to grind in my basement, which is where my fermenters are, and the more I thought about all that flying grain dust the more I decided that was the one actually risky part of my setup. I grind outside now. That is the one source of real "airborne" bacteria that you have to worry about, the one and only time an airlock might actually make a difference.

Of course I'm talking about primary for all of this, you need to take additional precautions when you bulk age a beer. I still wouldn't use an airlock for extended secondary, but I would cap my carboy with sanitary foil.

Finally, if and when I do get an infection, that's fine, out it goes. Unless you really hate brewing, I can't imagine why this would put you off, an infection once a year or something like that seems absolutely tolerable to me. Brew, brew often, and you will not be without beer.