What could have gone wrong with my white house porter

I made the white house honey porter with the northern brewer kit. It tastes bitter, bland, just a sad beer. My guests faces puckered, it isn't skunky, it is bitter and maybe even a tiny bit sour.

We brewed it to spec, it fermented like crazy... but that's when things got crazy, I put it outside. It was finally cold out, I live on an Island, it never gets cold, it was a dream come true, I could ferment at 65f which never happens. I didn't think about the light, it's the only thing I can come up with that I did wrong, it saw day light while in a brew pale during primary, never direct sunlight, but certainly not dark. Could my exposing it to day time light conditions sealed away in the brew pale cause it to go bad? I moved it to secondary and then it sat in the dark.

It really is bad, and that's sad, I was going to bring it out for a party next week. I'm really beating myself up here trying to figure out what went wrong. I have to think it was the light, it's really the only thing I did that was not normal.

My guess is sanitation. Sounds like a lacto infection to me.

stirge said:

It tastes bitter, bland, just a sad beer. My guests faces puckered, it isn't skunky, it is bitter and maybe even a tiny bit sour.

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Sounds like something from the White House.

I would agree with the above: infection

Do infections occur with no appearance? The beer looked perfect.

Time and temperature. Temperature first. If your beer started fermenting like crazy and then you put it outside where it was cooler it probably fermented to hot. Once the yeast get started where it is a bit warm they take off and really ferment which raises the temperature and leads to off flavors. Putting it somewhere cooler was a good idea but by the time that happened your beer was quite a bit too warm and the yeast kept on putting out heat while gorging themselves on the nice malt sugars. It's really hard to slow them down when they have such a start.

Time is second. Beers take time to mature and for the flavors to meld. The light color and light in alcohol beers mature first but as the color and alcohol increase, the time needed to mature goes up.

You also could have an infection that will lead to off flavors but these should take some time to develop. Try it next week and be prepared to find something else to bring to the party if it doesn't taste good. Don't dump it, it may mellow out into something really good in a couple months or so.

crunchydoc said:

Sounds like something from the White House.

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beat me to it. LoL

Cool, I'll let it sit in the keg and see what happens. I have a lager I made that came out great, and I have another pumpkin ale that's fermenting though it's high ABV so it won't be ready in time, if it goes does not come back to life in the next couple weeks, I'll dump and prepare for the pumpkin.