Wild yeast living in my basement???
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I've had 3 cases where the same off-flavor turned up in the finished product. Also had one spontaneous fermentation. My hypothesis is there's a wild strain loose and concentrated in my fermentation room (basement). The pattern is, if I open an active fermenter in my basement, the resulting beer takes on this distinct off-flavor. Here is my record...
1) Brewed a Belgium wit. Resulting beer had a distinct off-flavor. Initially thought it was just DMS but then the off-flavor became more complex (in an undesired way) with age. Continued to ferment even after kegging.
2) Around the same time, a bottle of fruit juice decided to spontaneously fermented in my basement. Upon noticing, naturally I stuck an airlock on it. The resulting fruit wine had the same distinct off-flavor. Not terrible tasting, but not very good either.
3) Most-recently, had 10 gal fermenting in two sealed 5 gal buckets. Opened one of the buckets mid-fermentation for sample. When I eventually racked into secondary, the sampled bucket took on an off-flavor and the unopened bucket did not.
Has anyone experienced similar situations? What else can I expect? I'm intrigued by spontaneous fermentations, yet unhappy when anything crashes my party.
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