color change after bottling

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tomj

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I brewed a belgian blonde ale that fermented out to about 1.012 with sacc. I then added Brett B, (from Orval dregs, Wyeast Brett B, and WY Trappist blend) which took it down to 1.000 pretty quickly. At bottling, the beer tasted great. It was pale in color and had a nice subtle Brett flavor. I primed it with carb tabs and cracked one open three weeks after bottling. The result was very disappointing. The beer was purple colored and completely undrinkable.

Has anyone had this happen before and what do you think happened? I have opened and dumped every bottle and they were all the same. I am guessing that it picked up something from the bottling bucket (Better Bottle with spigot) or from the carb tabs (opened packs kept in a mason jar).

Thanks,
Tom
 

Purple!

Some of my sours taste a bit off for a few months after bottling, and sometimes they get a bit hazy which makes them look a bit darker, but unless you had some weird sort of sanitizer in there I have no idea.

Got a picture?
 
Here's a picture from my phone. Before bottling it was around 3 or 4 srm. I use star san to sanitize but I didn't think that it would affect color like iodophor might if used at a high dose. The flavor change is even more drastic than the color change though.

IMG_20110212_080600.jpg
 
I had the exact same issue.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/m...ge-flavor-color-soured-beer-secondary-400456/

It's actually happened to me twice. First time was a batch of no-boil Berliner Weisse. I split the batch with my buddy. His was perfectly fine. Mine turned into this ruddy purplish mess. Tasted gnarly metallic and papery. When I dumped the keg, there was a pool of purple sludge at the bottle of the keg.

Fast forward a year later and we pull 20 gallons out of our sour barrel, split into 4 carboys. 3 out of the 4 carboys are tainted with this purple gnar. We are quite desparate to figure this one out so that we don't spoil any more beer that we've been aging for over a year.

The keg/carboys in question were cleaned with oxyclean and sanitized with star-san.
 
I had the exact same thing happen to me. All brett brux trois primary, pale meets IPA, warrior bitter, nelson sauvin and motueka late hops, nelson sauvin motueka and citra dry hop.

This is a sample poured after I took the FG reading:
IMG954024.jpg


...and this is from after I opened a bottle 6 days later (fully carb'd BTW):
Untitled.png


I'm going to let it sit in bottles for a few more weeks
 
I've had the same experience on a Saison with Brett B that I made. It transitioned from a very light colored beer (simple pils and wheat grist) to a dark purple(y) color. I don't have a pic on my iPad, but I tweeted a photo of the beer after it had darkened:

https://twitter.com/socalbeer/status/276551552527921152

I've looked around for some reference on the subject and haven't found much.
 
why would anyone want to use oxyclean on carboys? seems like a risk to me, but I'm just a noob......interesting that infected brews seem to happen to veteran home-brewers (per this forum), wonder if the same phenomena is at work here....
 
cageybee said:
why would anyone want to use oxyclean on carboys? seems like a risk to me, but I'm just a noob......interesting that infected brews seem to happen to veteran home-brewers (per this forum), wonder if the same phenomena is at work here....

Oxyclean is widely used to clean homebrewing equipment. It is similar to Five Star's Powdered Brewery Wash. It works great and as long as you rinse well there's no residue leftover.
 
might be similar....how similar? PBW was formulated for brewers (coors) oxyclean was not? ...dunno

oxyclean is used by many brewers on cleaning, similar but not the same.
DO a google search plenty of reading to disban your myth
 
Could it be some form of oxidation? All of the pictures look like its turning to a rust color. I do not purge anything with CO2 before transfering or bottling...don't have the resources for that. I would assume that the brett would react somehow to to the extra O2, but none of my bottles have a pellicle in them.

...WTF!?!?!
 
if I had some oxyclean, I could put a drop of it into some Belgian blonde to see what would happen....maybe my wife has some somewhere....
 
if I had some oxyclean, I could put a drop of it into some Belgian blonde to see what would happen....maybe my wife has some somewhere....

I beleive everyone of these has brett, lacto, pedio or a combination of them all not just regular sach...

Dropping a high concentration of oxyclean in a beer is different than these issues suggest
 
Need more detailed info if there's any chance to get to the bottom of this, although I'm beginning to doubt that there's a common cause:

1) Describe taste (metallic, astringent, acetic, sewer, soapy, etc.)

2) How long did it take for the change to occur?

3) What cleaners and sanitizers were used? If starsan, do you "fear the foam" and try to get most of it out, or do you rack on top of foam?
 
Hookstrat said:
Need more detailed info if there's any chance to get to the bottom of this, although I'm beginning to doubt that there's a common cause:

1) Describe taste (metallic, astringent, acetic, sewer, soapy, etc.)

2) How long did it take for the change to occur?

3) What cleaners and sanitizers were used? If starsan, do you "fear the foam" and try to get most of it out, or do you rack on top of foam?

1) I'd have to reference my notes, but will do so when I have access (on a plane right now). From memory, the beer was driven by classic Brett characteristics, which were WAY over the top due to the fact that the beer was left out in high temps (high 90's!) for several days during active fermentation after forgetting to place it back in the chest freezer (68F)

2) Color change didn't occur in primary. Upon transferring to the keg I noticed it about 2 weeks after that date, but this was the first time I poured the beer from the keg, so the actual duration of time is unknown.

3) Oxy/Starsan. I have no issue racking onto a good deal of foam in a keg or carboy and have never had any perceptible issues as a result.

I'm curious as to residual oxy in the keg being a reactant of some sort.
 
mathewjamesstone, was my brew partner on this batch that went off, he mentions it happening to our berliner as well. He answers most of these questions already, but here they are in a list just for the sake of science. haha

1) The taste retains the sour, funky, and malty tastes from the untainted beer, but the flavors are masked and blunted in an odd way. Stifled perhaps. Any fruity notes from the base beer are now obscured beyond recognition. Then the flavor that takes over is cidery, dirty, and slightly metallic/soapy. But it's not overpowering. Some people who tried it thought it was only just shy of drinkable still.

2) For this batch it's hard to say as it was kept about 1.5 hours away from where we live. I think I noticed it after a month or so though. In the case of the berliner however, it happened in around 2 days.

3) OxiClean and Star-San. I do not fear the foam, however in this case, I don't even think there was much if any.

It should be noted that I use both of these products in the process of every beer I make. I've been making sour beers almost exclusively for a few years now, and have never had an experience like this before.

Another aspect I had forgotten about that may be worth noting, is that none of the affected beers reformed pellicles in the carboys. This is very unusual, especially when fruit is added. The one surviving carboy DID form a pellicle.
 
I have a keg of BW with the exact same issue. Beautiful golden blonde in the carboy, hazy and purple in the keg. The taste has changed but I can't say it's horrible, just very different than it was....
 
I have had the exact color change in the post with the 2 snifter glasses. Both from the same batch, just split for dryhop variance. One stayed straw blonde, the other turned orange, murk and had an off taste with no visible signs beyond color.
 
I have had the exact color change in the post with the 2 snifter glasses. Both from the same batch, just split for dryhop variance. One stayed straw blonde, the other turned orange, murk and had an off taste with no visible signs beyond color.

A couple years ago I split a batch of saison with different sacch/brett combos in each BB, but one batch came out 2-3 SRM and the other was really murky, almost rusty brown.

I'm intrigued by this thread.
 
ok, I got it. I hate to go scify on your a$$ today, but here is a completely absurd idea. Under certain conditions yeast are vulnerable to a certain genetic mutation that is causing the discoloration/ off taste. Yeast providers have contributed to this vulnerability as a result of their continuously producing yeast from the same seed stock. alrighty then, case closed.
 
I did 3 gal of Belgian Pale with Wyeast Belgian Abbey. Bottled all of it. All of the bottles were great but the last 3 or 4. They were a couple/few months older when I drank them than the others and had a slightly different flavor but very clear color change with a pink tint.

Although anyone is susceptible to contamination, I'm pretty anal about sanitation. I figured it was something with the yeast aging in the bottle or oxidation since it was pale, lightly hopped, and older than the others I drank.

Strange.
 
ok, I got it. I hate to go scify on your a$$ today, but here is a completely absurd idea. Under certain conditions yeast are vulnerable to a certain genetic mutation that is causing the discoloration/ off taste. Yeast providers have contributed to this vulnerability as a result of their continuously producing yeast from the same seed stock. alrighty then, case closed.

Sounds like you're mostly joking, but I think your theory is unlikely given that these changes seem to occur well after primary fermentation. More likely that it's some type(s) of chemical-induced cell lysis and/or serious oxidation.
 
This meta humor is lost on me obviously. However if there was some weird yeast death possibility if be interested but doubtful.
 
ok killsurfcity..I can go with that. so....if a sample of the "purple taint" were to be carefully transfered to a fermentable-rich environment....it should do nada. if it grows into something that watches you back....its prolly a mutation.
 
Mutation post fermentation, and in two days seems highly improbable. And then why the color change? What about a simple mutation would produce a change in the color of fermented liquid? I still think a chemical reaction is more likely. Unless of course someone can point me to some actual research on a phenomena similar to what we're experiencing here.
 
I had a similar problem with an IPA beer I recently brewed - it turned murky brown/red after bottling, even though it was a nice golden colour before.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/beer-darkened-during-bottling-402445/

Someone locally suggested it may be due to too concentrated Starsan during the sanitation phase, but I have no idea. I am at a complete loss as well to explain it as two bottles only darkened moderately (went from golden yellow to a light murky brown), but the rest darkened so much as to more resemble a murky amber ale.
 
Describe your bottling process. Could be high concentration of metal ions in your water causing rapid oxidation after you bottle and introduce oxygen to the finished beer. It doesn't take a lot, there's a reason commercial breweries spend so much effort to avoid any contact with oxygen during bottling.
 
I really wish people would stop it with oxidation already. It's been ruled out as a cause, and any further mention of it is just muddling the conversation, unless you have some data. It's most likely a non-oxidative chemical reaction of some kind.

Think of it this way, if every noob who used too much star-San and splashed while bottling got this result it'd be a ****ing epidemic and there'd be loads of threads dedicated to avoiding it. Well, there's not, most likely because the most common causes are not what's at work here.
 
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