i have often heard the sanitization thing is overblown as well. not that it’s not really important… but, without opening up that argument… for my next batch, and all future batches… i will be:
cleaning my carboy and buckets with oxi clean prior to sanitization
making yeast starters
fermenting in a temperature controlled wine cabinet.
if i still get a 50% dump rate… well, then maybe it’s time for me to retire from the homebrew biz.
[quote=“brwrboy69”]I could be wrong but it looks like much advice is about sanitizing this or that, and from your first post, it doesn’t look like you’ve had an infection. If you bottle and haven’t had bottle bombs, your sanitation is probably fine. You said you were anal about sanitation. I’m far from anal and have never had an infection. IMO the whole infection/sanitation issue is way overblown. I usually just rinse my equipment with water and then starsan it next session.
I would say that it’s either your water, temperature control, or yeast health. Your buddy brews good beer with well water, but have you tried using RO water to compare?[/quote]
Phenolic or Bandaid flavor is usually bleach or chlorine related. I bought an off name oxi clean product that had bleach in it ruined a couple of batches with that. Use PBW its made for breweries and beer loves it.
Just to throw my two cents into the brew kettle: you say you dump about 50% of your beers and you haven’t used a chemical cleaner on your carboys. How many carboys do you have and do you notice your issues coming out of any certain ones, all of them, or not sure? Maybe its just an infected carboy(s).
i have 2 carboys (i guess one of them would be 50%)… and, well, i’ve dumped maybe 35% of my brews… or a third… probably not QUITE 50%… but… yeah… i did think that one may be a problem more than the other… but i’ll be cleaning well from now on. so… we’ll see how it goes…
