First Homebrew... I think somthing went wrong

From Palmer...
http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-1.html

 

Probably. How did you sanitize all of your post-boil equipment, including your bottles and caps?

 

I assume by "equipment" you also sanitized your bottles? If you did, did you wash the bottles out with tap water afterwards?

Starsan is my favorite sanitizer...I would recommend it to anyone.

 

Starsan is pretty much the benchmark. If you properly washed your stuff (no crud left), and then properly sanitized with (properly mixed) Starsan solution just before use, everything should have been sanitary. Which would leave bugs being introduced after the equipment at some step or another was sanitized.

 

Removing the lid on your fermenter should have been harmless (assuming you didn't set your lid down on something that allowed it to come in contact with bacteria). So, something wasn't done properly during sanitation...if you indeed sanitized every single thing that touched your wort. You may also want to check if your other bottles have the same "vinegar" flavor...as it could have been a problem with just that bottle...probably not...but something to check.

 

Try another bottle and hope that it was just the one bottle that got infected. Otherwise, we can help you dissect your cold-side procedures to try to help out for next time.

Make sure you do more than just rinse that bottle, or any other infected bottles out. a 1:10 bleach soak and 2-3 through rinses afterwards should do the trick.

 

The long lag time to the beginning of fermentation may be part of your problem. It is best to pitch an adequate number of healthy yeast so that they can get the party going before other bugs have much of a chance to take hold. Lag times under ~24 hours are generally what you want to shoot for.

 

this - something else could have caught hold by the time your yeast got rockin...

 

'Air Dry' implies (maybe) a long time between sanitizing and use. Were the bottles at least stored upside down while draining/drying?

 

For the record, no need to air dry. Some remaining Starsan in the bottom of bottles or on caps is safe and shouldn't affect your beer. Many here run bottles through the dishwasher on a sanitizing cycle to wet sanitize or through the oven to dry sanitize. You will never get your bottles sanitized if there is crud in the bottom though.

 

no need to let them dry at all - i pull bottles straight from a bucket of starsan, toss them on a drying rack just long enough for the liquid to pour out, then fill. Starsan doesn't effect the flavor at all.

 

I am not sure but I don´t think this contamination could have taken place at the moment bottles were exposed to airborne microbes, beer already had enough alcohol at that time

 

I'd like to caution though against leaving too much sanitizer in the bottle - another section in Palmer's book (quoted above) mentions a "bandaid" flavor that can develop in beers if too much sanitizer is left behind. When I opened the second bottle of my very first homebrew, it had a strong bandaid flavor and I panicked. However it was the only bottle out of the batch that this happened to - probably just forgot to dump that bottle properly.

I'm curious if you had any lactose sugar in the beer - I've had two different stouts go up in flames which used lactose sugar in the recipe. I'm hesitant to even use the stuff anymore...

When you sanitize your buckets and bottles, make sure you get the sanitizer ALL the way up to the top! Also be sure to sanitize your lids! As the beer ferments, the krausen can climb up the vessel, and bring bacterias back down into the beer as it settles.

Just a few tips - better luck on the next batch!!

 

There's a saying that goes along with Star San that I haven't heard in a while: "Don't fear the foam." Dump the bottles and get as much of the liquid as you can out of there. I wouldn't spend more than 5 seconds per bottle. If there's still some foam in the bottle when you fill it the foam will blow out of the bottle when you fill. You can let the foam run down the outside of the bottle and let your mind go to a dirty place. I think they've even gone as far as to say that Star San breaks down and is good for yeast. Regardless, in this amount it should be tasteless and you should be filling directly after sanitizing a batch of bottles.

On a side note, Star San has a little bit of a citrusy flavor to it. Not as unpleasant as it could be.

 

Acetobacter is aggressive as hell, and converts ethanol into acetic acid under aerobic conditions, so it thrives in beer and wine. Acetobacter is also responsible for wine vinegar production.

Also, they are routinely cultured in the lab on media containing 7% ethanol by volume.