White Labs Burton Ale Yeast Sour? Mutated?

I've never used this yeast previously but I'm imagining that it isn't supposed to smell/taste like sour fruit. I taught a homebrew class a few weeks ago to some college kids and made a robust porter I was planning to wood age. About 6 days in I noticed a very peculiar sour odor coming from the fermenter. I figured the students stood to close to the wort as it cooled an it was infected. I rebrewed the beer last Friday (after dumping the first go) and after I pitched my starter, I smelled the starter and it was definitely sour smelling. I'm going to let this one finish but what are the chances I had two infected starters with the exact same yeast...if it was my starter protocol that was the issue then the Stout I did in between these batches should have been infected too, but it wasn't, the Irish Ale Yeast I used came through just fine and I kegged that last night. I've only ever had one dumper previous to this and that's because hose water got right into it. I'm thinking that there are three possibilities

1) White labs has a contaminated Burton Ale Yeast strain...either wild yeast has gotten in or there are mutated yeast outcompeting the wild types.

2) This smell and off flavor is some kind of intermediate compound that would eventually be processed by the yeast metabolism and the end beer will be clean. This means I may have dumped a batch that was 75% of the way through fermentation, though I had every reason to suspect 25 college kids standing right near your 100 degree wort could have led to an infection. I've never had an ale yeast smell like this though...is Burton Ale a cross between an ale and cider yeast?

3) Completely random, two separate infections just happened to take hold in my starter which both happened to randomly be Burton Ale yeast for my Porter.

Any thoughts on Burton Ale Yeast from white labs?

Friendly Advice:

• Step away from the wert.
• Pitch cool (always below 75F)
• Don't judge a beer by it's fermentation aroma
• Wait, wait, wait for it to finish.
• It's probably not infected, that's harder to to accomplish than one might
  imagine.

Good lessons for every homebrewer IMO, newbie or oldie.


- M

Burton throws off apple and pear esters, especially if fermented warm.

My lager's fermentation usually smells like rotten eggs, but that is normal. Don't ever dump a beer until you have to!

Okay, so I'm guessing that the sour smell i got was just Burtons apple and pear esters coming out. WL says to use Burton at 68, but after reading more it seems like people prefer it lower like 64-66 to reduce these esters a little, it also doesn't seem like the best porter yeast considering this but WL website said it makes great porters.

Question. Can I clean up some of these esters by pitching some 001 cali ale right at the end of ferment, Which it's at now? Or cold crash it two days, and get it completely off the Burton ale cake and bottle ferment with Cali ale with normal 3/4 cup of corn sugar in the bottling bucket. How much sugar does a yeast cell 'hold'? I'd be worried about bottle bombs by adding fermenting yeast to sugar to carb a finished beer.

I really want to save this beer as I entered it in the NHC.

Burton Ale lets off a lot of unique smells when fermenting,; similar to a guy who posted on White's FAQ/Review page for the strain, I notice a lot of sulfer/sour smells when I use it. (Though it really is becoming my favorite yeast by far.) It cleans up fine though, and none of those sour tastes are in the final product.

The Burton Ale strain is meant to give an authentic english ale style, which includes a lot of complex fruity esters and a touch of diacetyl. I'm not exactly sure why you would have chose it over a more neutral strain if you're worried about esters, but that hardly matters now that you have it in the fermenter.

This is just my opinion of course, but just let it ferment out (giving it a long primary for the yeast to soak back up some diacetyls), condition however you were going to, and see what the final product turns out like. Then you can adjust the recipe from there. Adding in a new neutral yeast to try and have it eat up esters in the bottle seems questionable to me.

In case you may not know, White Labs has all their yeasts listed with info on the yeast, and user reviews. I highly recommend reading the user reviews on any strain you might be interested in using, as they're usually highly informative of what you can expect with the strain.

http://www.whitelabs.com/beer/homebrew_strains.html#ALE_YEAST

I wanted some Esters to be sure....but other people not on the white labs website have stated that they get a lot of sour apple and sour pear flavors in their finished products. I'm sure that there are many fine ales and porters brewed in Burton, but maybe the water profile has to be correct. Anyways, it's in there now like you side...I'll probably give it a little taste on bottling day after a good 2-3 day cold crash, if it tastes too tart I'll probably bottle condition with a neutral yeast.

I think you might end up surprised, after a 2 week bottle conditioning, the brown I used Burton in cleaned up really nice, the ester notes that were there were fairly subtle, and it's only gotten better as it has aged a bit. (Natch of course.) But if you drink your brew green, you will notice the esters a lot more, so even if you don't like it at first, I recommend at least give one or two bottles the chance to age a bit without putting new yeast in there, and see if you don't comer around. I certainly did.

I may hold off the Cali yeast for another reason as well....not knowing the degree to which it may attenuate further in the bottle on starches will lead to an unknown in terms of the amount of priming sugar to add. Since I want to bottle age this guy with bourbon soaked oak juice and vanilla syrup I can't keg it and I don't want either under carbed beer or bottle bombs. I'll wait and post how it goes. I'm finishing it up around 70 degrees right now about 10-11 days post brew...It'll probably be ready for a cold crash in a couple days.

Update...so yes, the esters cleaned up very nicely with the Burton Ale Yeast, and the porter is fantastic. The mouthfeel is very smooth and full bodied with a malty/toasted caramel backbone and moderate ester profile but nothing sour at all. Just a nice mellow pear and perhaps hint of honey flavor. It's 8% ABV before I added the wood aged Makers Mark (one month) and 1 tbs. of Thai Vanilla Bean Paste Syrup. I added this straight to the keg and it's a good idea because 2 tbs. would have been too much (it says on the back that 1tbs. = one whole vanilla bean)....it's a great product and I'd recommend it to anyone. I'm going to bottle off the keg and enter it in the NHC first round as piss the bed porter.