Clovey taste from S-05?

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Rivenin

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So, here is something interesting...
i've had an infection as of late (porter tastes like yogurt, bleh) but this tastes different then any sort of infection i've tasted.

So i brew 2 beers almost exactly 2 weeks ago, an IPA and a Stout...
Stout recipe as follows

8lb 2 row
4lb munich
.75lb roast barley
1lb c60
Mashed at 150
chinook at 60
cascade at 45

(roughly 50ibu and 1.080)

S-05 - fermented at 65-67ish (fermometer on better bottle)

While i've made something similar to this, and it's a decent roasty stout... this one is anything but.

instead of a roasty stout, i get a very clove forward saison taste... no roast, just a straight up kinda "dark clove" taste with some belgian fruit flavors (just think dark saison and you're straight on)... if you closed your eyes, you would swear it was a saison... wife is pregnant, but she LOVES stout, so i had her at least smell it and she said the same things, "no roast, no chocolate, no coffee... smells like spices". And from my uses in the past (in my early days of screwing up batches) even when i fermented at the wrong temps, it still was "stout/porter" with the normal off flavors associated.

With that being said, it's VERY nice and i kept drinking the sample i had in my hand from the carboy

i also fermented the IPA with another package of S-05 right next to this one, same cleaning , same sanitation, same temps, and is a very chewy on hops and fruit, no note of spice at all...

I've used S-05 numerous times (along with 1056 and the white labs version) and never ran into cloves... with prolly the close to 20 some odd batches I've done with that strain.

So what say you HBT? possible good infection? or S-05 doing something funky? maybe a mixup of the packages at the factory? should i bleach bomb my better bottle after this is outta there?
 
It does sound like an infection. I had one beer that started that way (from a washed WLP001 yeast starter) but it got worse and went from 'clove-y" to "bandaid".
 
I would say infection if you have two beers that fermented under basically the same conditions regardless of style. I use only US-05 and have never had clovey tastes except once under rather warm fermentation conditions.

For me it's a very clean-tasting yeast all the time.
 
I use S-05 in a lot of my beers and its a very clean yeast. I have never tasted anything you have described using that yeast. If you like the clove taste, I guess it could be considered good, but I'd clean and sanitize that equipment really well if you don't want that flavor in future beers. Also, do you bottle? It could be an infection in the bottling bucket if you use that or in the bottles.
 
Thanks gents! and gem! :)

i think this is the same better bottle that gave me the infected porter as well. i didn't know the porter was infected till way after i cleaned and organized all my equipment, so i didn't know which was which. so i guess a bleach bomb is in order! i know everyone says "Wait! don't dump it!" but if its' going in the same direction that the porter is... i want no part of it.

And nope, don't bottle (well, i do for some batches) but this is straight out of the fermenter after 2 weeks.
 
It does sound like an infection. I had one beer that started that way (from a washed WLP001 yeast starter) but it got worse and went from 'clove-y" to "bandaid".

I need to chew on a band-aid sometime so I know what to look for.:p

Sorry about the issue with your stout batch.
 
Haha isnt that part of the BJCP certification??
 
So, i thought i would reply to this with some interesting stuff...
So i ended up taking some bottles of the whiskey porter and the vanilla porter to my home brew club meeting, had some people try them and they didn't taste any off flavors... i poured a small sample and, didn't notice any "yogurt" type flavors either, like i had previously.
i popped another one of each bottle last night, and same thing, tastes almost like a vanilla and a whiskey porter. Strange....
so i grabbed another sample of the stout i made, that is going back to normal as well... there is still a bit of clove, but it's dying off and more roast is coming into play... so maybe it was more or less it needed some more time? i'm not sure, but it is going back to normal now.

i'll keep you guys posted if i can!
 
First, I use US-05 almost exclusively. I have only have a clove taste one time from S-05.... Which I attributed to pitching the yeast when the wort was a little too warm. For the next batch--get it cooler, pitch, and you will find the problem will go away. Its not an infection....the clean ale yeast is stressed to the max with temperatures at pitching. Regardless of your ferm temps (which are in line with that yeast), pay closer attention to your pitch temps. That is whats giving you the off flavors.

TF
 
Hmmm....now that is interesting. Like I said it only happened to me once, and I attributed it to pitching too warm. Clove sure sounds like a ester to me, but maybe it could have been something to do with a batch? My notes show that it subsided after some time....maybe yours will too....

Best,

TF
 
Hmmm....now that is interesting. Like I said it only happened to me once, and I attributed it to pitching too warm. Clove sure sounds like a ester to me, but maybe it could have been something to do with a batch? My notes show that it subsided after some time....maybe yours will too....

Best,

TF

"Clove" isn't an ester- it's a "phenol". That's very common when Belgian yeast are used as it's a character of those strains, and it's also common when chlorinated water is used (it forms chlorophenols). Another cause of "clove" is infection.
 
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