Good news and Bad news ;(

I was kegging two beers last nite, one that I'd left to bulk age a bit longer due to some weird off flavors, and my dubbel. The dubbel tastes wonderful, that's the good news, I didn't keg the pale ale, it smelled of mold when I first opened the carboy top, and tasted 5x worse than it did when I decided to bulk age it longer in the secondary. It was bad, but went much worse. First time I've thrown away beer, and it was a sad day indeed, I think this was because it was my first time reusing my washed yeast. I did that all wrong, I'm pretty sure I know why.

1. I didn't wash the yeast after it was done in primary, I did it in secondary, which makes me think it wasn't enough yeast, so the poor yeasties were working too hard the whole time, and maybe weren't even enough to do the job well. I only did a simple 1000mL starter.

2. I think my temps were to high for them as well.

3. the wort I used was some leftover off the previous batch, and it may have been a bit weak anyway, say 1.020-30...

Anyone want to chime in on the probable causes here, correct false ideas etc?

1) Yeah, you always want to harvest from the primary. If you harvest from the secondary/bright, you're going to be "selecting" for poorly-performing yeast, since the general rule is that most of the better-performing cells flocculate quicker than the poorer ones.

2) What strain, and what temps?

3) It's actually better to start off with a lower-gravity batch and then step up to a higher-gravity batch the second time around. High gravity and alcohol tends to stress the yeast. Also, on that note, remember that highly hopped beers also tend to hurt the performance of yeast in subsequent batches, because the hops oils coat the cells (this is why hops act as a preservative...they coat the bacteria/wild yeast cells and effectively shut them down).

Wow evan, that was perfectly related! 1. makes perfect sense... 2. It was wyeast american ale, temps were like 72-74 at time, my basement can be good most of the time, near 68 but sometimes it gets too hot... I watched that one spike pretty bad. 3. I did harvest it from a highly hopped IPA, so that makes even more sense.

Thanks!