Fermented too high

I made an IPA and we had a bit of a heat wave while it was fermenting. I had it in the coolest part of my basement but the temps still got high enough to really cause this beer to get out of control. It went down to 1.006 and developed some strong alcohol flavors that are way out of balance. I haven't had to deal with this before, so I was wondering if there was anything I could do at this point to offset the strong flavors. Perhaps adding some lactose? Would DME help at all?

I think that may be one of those problems that age will cure. Is it still on the cake?

age will not cure this. what temps did it fermentor see?

Age doesn't cure it but I have noticed in my first few beers that were underpitched and over heated that time helps. Maybe a month after its fully bottle carbed. But the alcohol taste won't go away.

I made a Belgian dark ale that accidentally fermented at high temperatures during primary fermentation. The whole downstairs area in my house smelled like bananas. I thought that was kind of neat... until I tasted the bottled product. Awful off flavor. It was like super esters transformed into nail polish. I don't have concrete evidence that high fermentation temperature was the root cause, but it seems to make sense. This beer has been in the bottle for 4 months, and while the beer has slightly improved on both aroma and flavor, I still find it undrinkable.

I recently decided to put 3 bottles of beer into a growler and added a light DME solution. I really have no idea if this will improve the beer, but I figured it was better to try than dump the bottles. I will let it re-ferment for a week or so and then re-bottle.

gregoreckbrews said:

I made a Belgian dark ale that accidentally fermented at high temperatures during primary fermentation. The whole downstairs area in my house smelled like bananas. I thought that was kind of neat... until I tasted the bottled product. Awful off flavor. It was like super esters transformed into nail polish. I don't have concrete evidence that high fermentation temperature was the root cause, but it seems to make sense. This beer has been in the bottle for 4 months, and while the beer has slightly improved on both aroma and flavor, I still find it undrinkable.

I recently decided to put 3 bottles of beer into a growler and added a light DME solution. I really have no idea if this will improve the beer, but I figured it was better to try than dump the bottles. I will let it re-ferment for a week or so and then re-bottle.

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good to experiment but i'd be hard pressed to put that much effort into a batch of beer, not to mention all of those transfers could be edging your beer toward oxidation. i kept a few bottles from my early batches and a yr later they are still crap.

Your problem is most likely not the amount of alcohol, but the type. At higher temperatures you have created more fusel acohol, and it is going to be very difficult to cover it up. I would dry hop it to death, and just put up with the strong alcohol flavor.

If it is just fusol alcohol it will temper with time...if esters than they won't subside. However, while time passes the hops degrade. If it is esters I would either toss it if they were too strong or try to cover them with dry hops if possible. If it is fusol alcohol I would consider aging it in a keg and let them subside some and then dry hop when ready to serve.

Dry hopping. That sounds like an excellent idea. If you can't get rid of the flavor, just sweep it under the rug.

I'm always hesitant to throw good hops into bad beer.

Well if you Keg... I would use this as "BLENDING BEER" for future batches that come out:

To tweet, to weak, taste burned.

Sitting there for a long time won't hurt it... and if "WE" are wrong about the source of the taste "fusol alcohol" it will get better....

I agree with Tytanium. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. You really need to have a good base beer and no hops or additives are going to help it.

Yeah, I'm fully prepared for the beer to still be undrinkable after my experiments. I think it will be interesting to see what happens, though.

Okay, I'm back. Thanks for all the input.
First, to answer some questions: the temperature the beer was fermenting at was about 80 degrees. That's too high and I suspected the flavors I'm getting are fusels. I have a lot of hops in stock so I dry hopped it a ton anyway about a week ago before posting here to see if it helped. It didn't, but now the beer smells great. I moved it from the brew bucket to a glass carboy in anticipation of bottling and put the carboy in the fridge to let it settle out a little more. Last night I took it out for bottling and sampled some: oddly, it's much better. Not perfect, but the fusel flavors I detected before are not nearly as bad. When I transferred the beer to the carboy it aerated quite a bit. I'm wondering if that agitation somehow helped release some of the pungent flavors. It's my best guess.

MrHadack said:

Okay, I'm back. Thanks for all the input.
First, to answer some questions: the temperature the beer was fermenting at was about 80 degrees. That's too high and I suspected the flavors I'm getting are fusels. I have a lot of hops in stock so I dry hopped it a ton anyway about a week ago before posting here to see if it helped. It didn't, but now the beer smells great. I moved it from the brew bucket to a glass carboy in anticipation of bottling and put the carboy in the fridge to let it settle out a little more. Last night I took it out for bottling and sampled some: oddly, it's much better. Not perfect, but the fusel flavors I detected before are not nearly as bad. When I transferred the beer to the carboy it aerated quite a bit. I'm wondering if that agitation somehow helped release some of the pungent flavors. It's my best guess.

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the fusel alcohol flavors will be covered up by the wet cardboard flavors down the road