The Pol
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2007
- Messages
- 11,390
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- 117
Well, it happened.
My Holiday Ale will be re-brewed. After a couple weeks in the primary it was finishing nicely, tasted great... all was well.
I dropped in 1oz of dry hops to finish her off.
A week later I return from work to a bubbling airlock... odd, but beer generally knows what it is doing. So I grab the refractometer... odd, the airlock was bubbling pretty steadily but the gravity is almost exactly the same as a week ago.
It was late, so I didnt have time to really investigate until this morning.
I wake up to take a small sample from the fermentor. The fermentation freezer smells... odd, vinegary... not the CO2 sting that I am accustomed to, but very sharp.
I pop open the fermentor, the top of the beer has small bubbles on it, like you would associate with a fermentation that is winding down.
I pull a small sample and smell it. I can almost not smell the cinnamon, ginger and allspice AT ALL over the scent. Again, quite sharp, vinegar like.
I taste it... very sour, sorta hot... I can taste some roasted malts, but none of the spices. It leaves a very bitter and sour aftertaste.
I have brewed this beer before, this is not normal...
A couple things that were different with this brew from the previous times I brewed it.
1. I re-used this yeast. I washed and saved this yeast from a previous match of beer.
2. I dry hopped this batch instead of a "flameout" addition. Though, there is a distinct possibility that there was grain dust on my scale when I weighed out the hops.
I have never had an infection from a dry hop, so I am placing blame on the yeast wash. I am not too heartbroken, for $12 I can re-brew this thing this week instead of making my IAPA... but I am concerned about what caused it in the first place.
The fermentor gets a good Oxi soak... then a thorough rinse, then a Star San rinse... after that it is filled with boiling hot wort. For these reasons I am ruling out the fermentor itself.
My Holiday Ale will be re-brewed. After a couple weeks in the primary it was finishing nicely, tasted great... all was well.
I dropped in 1oz of dry hops to finish her off.
A week later I return from work to a bubbling airlock... odd, but beer generally knows what it is doing. So I grab the refractometer... odd, the airlock was bubbling pretty steadily but the gravity is almost exactly the same as a week ago.
It was late, so I didnt have time to really investigate until this morning.
I wake up to take a small sample from the fermentor. The fermentation freezer smells... odd, vinegary... not the CO2 sting that I am accustomed to, but very sharp.
I pop open the fermentor, the top of the beer has small bubbles on it, like you would associate with a fermentation that is winding down.
I pull a small sample and smell it. I can almost not smell the cinnamon, ginger and allspice AT ALL over the scent. Again, quite sharp, vinegar like.
I taste it... very sour, sorta hot... I can taste some roasted malts, but none of the spices. It leaves a very bitter and sour aftertaste.
I have brewed this beer before, this is not normal...
A couple things that were different with this brew from the previous times I brewed it.
1. I re-used this yeast. I washed and saved this yeast from a previous match of beer.
2. I dry hopped this batch instead of a "flameout" addition. Though, there is a distinct possibility that there was grain dust on my scale when I weighed out the hops.
I have never had an infection from a dry hop, so I am placing blame on the yeast wash. I am not too heartbroken, for $12 I can re-brew this thing this week instead of making my IAPA... but I am concerned about what caused it in the first place.
The fermentor gets a good Oxi soak... then a thorough rinse, then a Star San rinse... after that it is filled with boiling hot wort. For these reasons I am ruling out the fermentor itself.