Lacto contamination in plastic fermenter = new fermenter?

Question

Lacto contamination in plastic fermenter = new fermenter?

david w

2020年2月17日 19:27

Just bottled my first contaminated beer, got lazy and didn't freeze/boil the watermelon I added to a wheat beer and got lacto(?) contamination and an amazing sour watermelon beer as a result!

But, now I want to know if it's time to chuck the fermenter that had the contamination out (or put biohazard stickers on it and keep it for a deliberately sour beer). I ferment in plastic pails, so no great cost to replace and probably hard to really clean.

Reading around, there are quite different opinions on whether there is enough starsan or bleach in the world to restore a pail that's carried a contaminated batch; so I thought I'd ask the experts.

Topic disinfecting contamination homebrew

Category Mac

dmtaylor · Accepted Answer · 2020年2月17日 19:27

Based on much experience where I had many batches go sour unintentionally after the first one did, I can honestly recommend that any and all plastics and rubbers be replaced or dedicated to sours after it happens just one time, just to be on the safe side. I even tried to decontaminate with a soak in strong bleach solution for several weeks, but this effort was NOT successful for my old plastic buckets, with or without scratches. In my experience, odds were close to 50/50 of preventing contamination on future batches. It is for this reason that I have converted to all glass or stainless fermenters for all batches ever since that time, and have never had a problem after. Your mileage may vary, but I know I don't find it worth the risk to try to reuse these materials after they've seen wild beasts at least one time, regardless of visible or non-visible scratch marks or anything else.

brewchez · Accepted Answer · 2020年2月17日 19:11

1

brewchez answered at 2020年2月17日 19:11

Clean it with warm sanitizer. Fill it with normal strength sanitizer and leave it over night. It will be good to go IMO. Clean and sanitize the lid also really well.

Jerry C. · Accepted Answer · 2016年5月26日 16:23

What's the condition of the contaminated pail? If it's a really old pail, there might be hard to clean scratches and cracks that can harbor the infection into your next batch. That said, I think if you are careful with washing it out multiple times and following the standard sanitization routine, it's probably safe to keep the bucket.

Peter Baker · Accepted Answer · 2016年5月26日 16:23

Have used plastic, glass, and stainless fermentors with bacteria and yeast without them contaminating the next batch. Just need to make sure you do a good clean and proper sanitization.

As always, there are many caveats:

Are the fermenters cleanable and sanitizable? Do they have scratches or hiding places (see valves)
Can you really clean and sanitize the tubes?
Are your being very paranoid about sanitization?

But, if you are careful, you should not have any problems.

PS forget where I have heard this but bacteria is like yeast. We all seem to do fine switching yeast strains between brews, we should be able to do fine using (or not using) different bacteria between brews. That is the logic I use :)

Lacto contamination in plastic fermenter = new fermenter?

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