What Happened to My Beer?!?!

Ok, a while back I had a nice clear APA kegged but I needed room in the freezer to force carbonate a few kegs of IPA. So I took the keg of APA, already carbonated, and disconnected it from the CO2 and put it in another freezer at serving temp to store while the IPA was carbonating. After 2 weeks I put the APA back in the original freezer, hooked it back up to the CO2, and drew a beer. Terrible!

The once crystal-clear beer was now cloudy, darker, and tasted terrible. The nice malt character was replaced by a sharp, somewhat astringent, fizzy taste. By this time the beer was about 3 months old or so but I have no idea how the beer went so bad so fast without leaving the keg? A friend said that it tasted oxidized and that was probably what happened. But this didn't really make sense because the keg was never opened.

In the end I dumped it and chalked it up to an freak mystery. Now this past weekend I had a keg of blonde ale that I had brewed with a friend about a month ago. To split the keg he said he used a jumper (I wasn't there, but I trust him) to push half from the original to his keg. After 2 days i went to draw a beer and it was the same thing. Cloudy, much darker, and with that odd taste.

At least this time there was a transfer so of course a possibility that it was oxygen, but given the similar result I wanted to make sure it was not something else.

Anybody ever have this happen? From what i have read the typical tell that it is oxygen is a cardboard taste which i really don't get. Does oxyginated beer also change color and become cloudy? Could this have really happened this fast?

FYI, I also tend to cut the CO2 and purge the relief valve a bit before drawing a beer to limit foam (I do have 6' lines). Not sure if this is a problem.

Any help wouldd be greatly appreciated, both times this has occured just when the beer was really starting to taste great so it's sucha shame to lose it.

Thanks,
Josh

I don't keg and not really sure of the whole process but the taste you describe sounds like carbonic acid which is associated with over carbonation.

Perhaps the CO2 that was left in the keg when you disconnected and moved it over saturated the beer?

Just a thought....

I don't know what happened to yours but I know my kid off gassed every one of my kegs.

Sounds like the yeast sediment in the bottom of the keg was stirred up when the keg was moved. In my experience, even the slighted movement of a keg will cause this to happen. When it happens, it will take a day or three to clear and then all will be well again. I would have given it some more time to settle (unless you did, then never mind) before dumping that first batch. At any rate, let this batch settle for a spell and I think you'll find that it will be back to normal taste and color.

I will try waiting a bit longer but it sat for 2 days before I tried it on Monday.

It's stories like this that set me back a few steps from getting into kegging. I'd like the convenience of it but the additional cost of CO2, and the (what seems like) endless line of problems makes me wonder if it's really worth. it.

To the OP hope you figure out what happened, sorry I can't offer anything constructive.

DoubleAught said:

It's stories like this that set me back a few steps from getting into kegging. I'd like the convenience of it but the additional cost of CO2, and the (what seems like) endless line of problems makes me wonder if it's really worth. it.

To the OP hope you figure out what happened, sorry I can't offer anything constructive.

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A little off topic and not trying to high jack but I agree! Everyone talks about going to keg and then I read all these threads about all these problems and expenses and I just stick with bottling, it's cheap, I'm efficient at it and I've never had to dump a batch for any reason or any infection issues to contend with!

+1 for yeast sediment getting stirred up. If I even bump a keg it stirs up some sediment and takes a few days to settle down. Then after a few days I have to pull a few pints to get it crystal clear again. It always does get better though. Just try not to move a keg unless you have to. Also, I have heard that if you rack to a secondary and fine with gelatin, you don't have this problem. I have never tried it but if you know in advance you are going to be moving a keg a bunch it may be worth trying.

duboman and Doubleaught,
I have been kegging for 3 years now and have never had to dump a batch. Once you know what you are doing there are really no problems. I have it down now to where I spend 1/3rd the time kegging that I did bottling let alone not having to worry about dealing with all the bottles. Plus, I know it is all mental but pulling a pint off a draft just seems like it tastes better than pouring a bottle. At least to me it does. If it is all in my mind oh well.

One of the things I've learned from kegging is that it's really best to try to leave as much of the yeast behind in the fermenter as possible. There's always going to be some that settle out in the keg, but it helps to be as careful as possible when transferring and to not let the syphon get down into the trub. Although I don't do it, as rjsnau mentioned, a short secondary (or a cold crash) and some gelatin before transferring to the keg wouldn't be a bad idea.

duboman said:

A little off topic and not trying to high jack but I agree! Everyone talks about going to keg and then I read all these threads about all these problems and expenses and I just stick with bottling, it's cheap, I'm efficient at it and I've never had to dump a batch for any reason or any infection issues to contend with!

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Interesting, as I decided to ditch bottling and start kegging about a year ago mainly because I had more than one batch become overcarbonated to the point that I lost more than 50% of each bottle to foaming. This after doing due diligence with online priming sugar calculators and spending hours carefully bottling each batch. Nah, kegging is great. Takes little time to properly clean and care for, with no risk of bottle bombs to boot. The only drawback I can see is there is a little bit of a learning curve. I lost a few pints worth over the first few batches doing things out of sequence. Let me tell you how fun it is to get beer in the face and clean all of your equipment a few different times. Oh well, it made me learn that much faster I guess!

Yeah, to put things into perspective, I have lost about 2 gallons or so from a total of about 150 gallons that I have kegged over the last few years so it's not an epidemic or anything. I think that you would lose at least that much from bottling spillage, the ocasional broken bottle, bad cap seal....etc... over that volume of beer.

That coupled with the convienence of not having to wash bottles, keep a close eye on secondary fermentation to time priming and spend all the time that it takes to bottle is well worth the cost of a kegging system IMHO.

Just trying to figure out what went wrong here to prevent it from occuring again.

Do you purge the O2 off the top of the flat beer before carbing? I would say 99% just the yeast being stirred, as mentioned above.

"The once crystal-clear beer was now cloudy, darker, and tasted terrible. The nice malt character was replaced by a sharp, somewhat astringent, fizzy taste."- totally sounds like an infection.

A beer won't deteriorate just from being transferred, and it sounds like an infection by the description of the flavors.

rjsnau said:

I have been kegging for 3 years now and have never had to dump a batch. Once you know what you are doing there are really no problems. I have it down now to where I spend 1/3rd the time kegging that I did bottling let alone not having to worry about dealing with all the bottles. Plus, I know it is all mental but pulling a pint off a draft just seems like it tastes better than pouring a bottle. At least to me it does. If it is all in my mind oh well.

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This.

Once you get your system set up, kegging is so easy and fast. You can pour yourself however as little or as much as you want at a time. Once I keg a beer, it's carbonated and ready to drink in less than 2 days. I'll still bottle stuff that I want to age but I really find bottling to be much more of a PITA.

Sorry to hijack

Yooper said:

"The once crystal-clear beer was now cloudy, darker, and tasted terrible. The nice malt character was replaced by a sharp, somewhat astringent, fizzy taste."- totally sounds like an infection.

A beer won't deteriorate just from being transferred, and it sounds like an infection by the description of the flavors.

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Half of keg was bottled saturday (same day as transfer) and the bottles are great. Wouldn't an infection have got both?

Also, yes I always purge o2 after kegging ( and before).

declanhalpin said:

Do you purge the O2 off the top of the flat beer before carbing? I would say 99% just the yeast being stirred, as mentioned above.

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It's been 4 days and no change so I don't think it was just a matter of it being stirred up.

Jsbeckton said:

Half of keg was bottled saturday (same day as transfer) and the bottles are great. Wouldn't an infection have got both?

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What if the infection is on the beer jumper that went from one keg to another? I believe way back when I developed an infection transferring primary to secondary on two different beers. It was due to contamination on the racking cane or tubing.

If you bottled using different equipment than you used to transfer from one keg to the other, the infection might be in your transfer equipment.

Again sorry for hijacking but you just can't make fresh IPAs/APAs bottling that you can kegging. Brew to glass time much shorter!

How many glasses have you pulled off the keg? You basically cold crashed it, so all the yeast is at the bottom and you may just be drawing the dark dead yeast off the bottom. Pull a few ( if you haven't already) and see if it clears up.

bwarbiany said:

What if the infection is on the beer jumper that went from one keg to another? I believe way back when I developed an infection transferring primary to secondary on two different beers. It was due to contamination on the racking cane or tubing.

If you bottled using different equipment than you used to transfer from one keg to the other, the infection might be in your transfer equipment.

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same thing happened to me. definitely something to look into

For the infection in the transfer equip - I didn't think that was it because both the originial keg and the keg that had part of the original keg transfered to it went bad. Being that my keg was pressurized the whole time to push to the second you wouldn't think that there would be reverse flow once it got to the jumper but I guess its possible. I didn't do the transfer.

For the yeast stir issue, I have pulled about 3 glasses and still looks the same. When I first tapped this keg a few months ago there was no noticible sediment even in the first glass so I don't think there was too much to shake up, certainly not 3 galsses worth.

I have a similar issue, did you ever figure this out?

Skullduggery65 said:

I have a similar issue, did you ever figure this out?

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Unfortunately no, but it hasn't happed since so who knows.