Sometimes even the most experienced homebrewer brews a batch that gets contaminated somewhere in the process. Mike presents this Best Bitter that had such wonderful potential but well, it turned out not so good. In this video, we discuss the recipe and the contamination which caused phenols in the finished beer.

Hey, Wha’ Happened?

Dude, Mike’s recipe sounded great. He’s been brewing English ale styles for over 20 years. They are tasty. It was a disappointment to take a sip of that beer and taste the phenols.

Mike thinks that the cause of the contamination came from his process of transferring the cooled wort onto the yeast cake of the stout he just brewed in this video (the one brewed with the British yeast). Before he brews again, he’s going to do a prolonged soaking/cleaning with Powdered Brewery Wash and sanitize with Iodophor. He thinks that changing up the sanitizer from the one he usually uses (StarSan) will give him the chance to minimize the issue. Using a different sanitizer tends to take care of issues that may be getting around your typical one.

I think this video should serve as a lesson to us all. Don’t take cleaning and sanitizing lightly. When you get lax, you could end up pouring a beer down the drain. It’s not the end of the world but the mistake can sting for a bit. It’s all a part of the homebrewing practice.

Brew On!