I have a kate the great clone that sat on the normal yeast for 9 months. it now tastes nasty, and I think its autolysis. My question, will bugs clean up the weird autolysis flavors, think a1 steak sauce, and make a decent beer?
Souring an autolysized beer
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Did you just get out of jail that you were unable to move it off the cake for 9 months? Im
Joking about that and i know sometimes things can get in the way of brewing. Hoping it wasnt too serious.
But im still curious what happened for 9 months?!
Joking about that and i know sometimes things can get in the way of brewing. Hoping it wasnt too serious.
But im still curious what happened for 9 months?!
I thought I recalled reading somewhere (Wild Brews maybe? I don't remember) that one of the things Brettanomyces does is actually feast on autolyzing Saccharomyces. Hence why Lambics can sit in their barrel for as much as 3 years without autolysis. My Lamebic has been in primary for about 19-20 months (the better part of two years) with no sign of autolysis.
Long story short, worth a shot I suppose. But I'd agree with the advice above that crappy beer in probably means crappy sour out.
Long story short, worth a shot I suppose. But I'd agree with the advice above that crappy beer in probably means crappy sour out.
Haha jail would have made sense. I just got lazy, very busy with work and life so I never got around to taking care of it. In retrospect I really should have got off my ass and just kegged it. Its a shame too because I think it would have beer really good.
I think I'm going to bottle a couple bombers of the original and put this beast in a carboy and dose it the roselare blend. At the very least it will be interesting to watch. Its around 12% abv right now at 1.018 fg so I am hoping the yeast won't crap itself. Should I pitch a starter or just dump a smack pack in?
don't make a starter, you'll upset the balance of bugs (lacto doesn't like oxygen, while brett loves it).
12% is typically listed as brett's alcohol tolerance so you're throwing it into a rough enviro. i would consider getting another wyeast pack of just brett and adding that too, to up your brett cell count and thus improving your chances of finding some hardy cells that can stand 12%. a roesalare pack doesn't have that much brett in it, i believe it's something like a quarter the number of cells you get in a brett-only pack. don't get white labs, the cell counts in their brett tubes is much lower than wyeast.
brett supposedly does feast on autolyzed sacch so maybe it will clean things up... but i wonder the brett eats up the dead sacch right away, before it has time to really decompose and create off-flavors - so in this case, since the sacch has been dead for a while the off-flavors might already have been created. in other words, even if the brett eats the long-dead sacch the off-flavors, once created, will stick around. i don't know if this is the case, just wondering out loud. please do this, give it a year, then come back and let us know!
12% is typically listed as brett's alcohol tolerance so you're throwing it into a rough enviro. i would consider getting another wyeast pack of just brett and adding that too, to up your brett cell count and thus improving your chances of finding some hardy cells that can stand 12%. a roesalare pack doesn't have that much brett in it, i believe it's something like a quarter the number of cells you get in a brett-only pack. don't get white labs, the cell counts in their brett tubes is much lower than wyeast.
brett supposedly does feast on autolyzed sacch so maybe it will clean things up... but i wonder the brett eats up the dead sacch right away, before it has time to really decompose and create off-flavors - so in this case, since the sacch has been dead for a while the off-flavors might already have been created. in other words, even if the brett eats the long-dead sacch the off-flavors, once created, will stick around. i don't know if this is the case, just wondering out loud. please do this, give it a year, then come back and let us know!
After some hard thought I decided to dump this nasty beer. It was really awful I don't think there was a cure for it. The good news is, I'm about to dive into making sour beers. I have 5 carboys I am going to donate to the cause and an older fermentation chamber that I can temp control year round. It should be an exciting endeavor.
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