If it smells like acetone....

.... It's going to taste like acetone. Just found that our the hard way.

6 month old sour that just didn't go the way it was supposed to go.

What were your bugs?

What was you recipe?

I have to say that my berliner weisse smelled like acetone really strongly when it was fermenting and it's fine now. My only problem is that it didn't carb in the bottles, so I had to carefully pour them into a keg yesterday.

i have a barrel aged porter that picked up some serious acetone aroma...anybody have any luck having it age out of finished beer?

It was to be a sour brown. Used a mix of previously good bugs, so I cant say what the exact makeup was.

One possible cause of strange bugs was that the seals on the fermenter failed (I was aging it in a keg) and it was exposed to air for 3 months. Smelled like nail polish remover, and tasted like taking a sip from my wifes nail polish remover. I gave up and tossed the whole batch.

It did do a decent job of removing an oil stain from my driveway.

The same bugs did a pretty awesome job on a belgian sour blonde. Need to carbonate that one and see how it tastes, but it looks promising.

Airborneguy said:

I have to say that my berliner weisse smelled like acetone really strongly when it was fermenting and it's fine now. My only problem is that it didn't carb in the bottles, so I had to carefully pour them into a keg yesterday.

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My berliner never smelled like acetone and it was amazing! How long did you let that one sit?

Primary for almost 2 months, and bottles for almost two more months, and now half of the batch is in a keg (the rest will go once the keg kicks). So it's just over 4 months old now. I was hoping for it to peak around 6 months so we'll see soon!

Sours can take 3 years in some cases. I have about 3 1/2 barrels in old Buffalo Trace barrels. It was acetone the first few month, then it soured, but not enough. To promote some more sourness, I took a handful of malt and just dumped it in there, soured right up. My thought is that is will eventually age out. Mine has been going for about a year and a half. With a little evaporation and filling the occasional keg, we end up with enough room to add fresh unfermented wort. In another year and a half, I'll blend it with fruit, package it and send it off to my distributor.

So, with that said, try aging it over oak chips and add a handful of grain, it might help.

Acetone is a by product of contamination, stressed yeast, high temps, under pitching or lack of O2 during fermentation. I typically attribute it to yeast issues than contamination. Proper amount of yeast, aeration and nutrition appears to be a common error for this issue.

Good luck

Airborneguy said:

I have to say that my berliner weisse smelled like acetone really strongly when it was fermenting and it's fine now. My only problem is that it didn't carb in the bottles, so I had to carefully pour them into a keg yesterday.

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I think you usually have to add yeast with the prime to bottle condition these - the yeast is looong gone.