Enough already…
I’m sick and tired of pouring beer down the drain. I poured out the last of my most recent Swashchuckler IPAs last night. Note: if you ever do this, make sure not to leave the caps in the sink as they can be washed down the drain and into the garbage disposal.
Brewing tainted beer hurts my soul. We’ve been trouble-shooting a sanitation problem for a few months now. Fortunately our most recent beers seem to be free of the “gusher bug,” so I think we’ve figured it out. In addition to replacing a lot of plastic equipment for glass and stainless steel, which is easier to clean and doesn’t get tiny cuts after repeated use, we’ve also started sterilizing all of our bottles. And after we sterilize them we sanitize them. Survive THAT you little beer-ruining critters!
Jonathan, Joel & Jeff
July 6th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
I was thinking about the glasses today and sure enough they showed. Brilliant! Thanks a lot guys.
July 7th, 2007 at 12:39 am
Oh, that hurts. I learned early that I shouldn’t store my hoses in the same bucket as a porous mash paddle, with one batch mildly infected, one batch seriously infected, and one batch infected so badly I poured an entire 5 gallon carboy out in the yard.
I replaced all tubing, because that’s something that you can’t really fix easily if it gets the funk. I then boiled basically everything left over in my brewery, and haven’t had a problem since. Obviously I also took measures to improve my storage procedures as well… I only store my tubing hanging on a wire rack, and make sure to keep mash/boil equipment stored in a different location than fermentation equipment.
But that’s a horrible lesson to learn. Best of luck getting rid of that demon.