First Homebrew... I think somthing went wrong

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Good to know that, thanks.So I was wrong , it could be possible this contamination was due airborne microbes.

 

Did you sanitize your bottling bucket fully assembled? Or did you sanitize everything individually then assemble the spigot?

Did you happen to taste the beer before bottling?

 

Absolutely, Acetobacter is everywhere, including our skin, on flies and in the air.

I actually was able to contaminate my Flanders red by exposing one of my barrel top off buckets to air, and was successful (I wanted a little bit of acetic character to the beer and was not getting it in the barrel; final product is minimal but just a tiny bit is there for balance).

 

Wow , how do you know beforehand how much acetic acid taste you are going to get?

 

That is a good question, that I didn't/don't know the answer to... I literally went by taste alone.

I had two buckets full of Flanders Red that I used to top up my barrel. I kept one closed and another open for a day or so, and then used them to top up a 15.5 gallon barrel over the course of 11 months. I just went by taste and when I felt I had enough acetic character in the barrel aged beer (sanitized steel nail in barrel wall to allow tasting) I stopped adding beer from the acetic bucket (actually threw it out around the 8 month point because it got too vinegary). Acetobacter thrives in oxygen, so the barrel should have produced a bit, but not as much as the bucket. Once the beer was bottled, as long as there was minimal oxygen pickup the vinegar character should be pretty stable over time (not increase); in 2 months in the bottle it hasn't increased at all, while the lactic sourness and brett esters have went up a touch, most likely due to bottle conditioning.