Vinegar smell

I left a couple of 1-gallon SMASH brews sit in the primary for 52 days. They were done BIAB-style on my kitchen stove and I used only Munich malt.

I finally got around to gearing up to bottle them today and they smell very strongly of vinegar. There is no visible sign of infection that I can see; there is no scum or bubbles floating on the surface, the layers of sediment at the bottom look normal.

I was going to bottle them, but now I'm thinking they're dumpers since they've apparently been attacked by the same bacteria that turns wine into vinegar. I doubt any amount of bottle conditioning will resolve this, but maybe Revvy will show up here and tell me to go ahead and bottle them and stick 'em in the closet for 6 months.

I dumped them. I had one poured into my bottling bucket and it was making the kitchen reek.

Hmm, I smelled my 5 gallon fermenters.

12/20 Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone - smells normal
12/28 Bee Cave Porter - smells a bit like vinegar
1/17 Amarillo Pale Ale - smells normal
1/24 Amber Ale - smells normal

I think the only thing I share between my 5-gallon scale equipment and my 1-gallon scale equipment (at least, up until bottling) are my 3-piece airlocks.

Acetobacter most likely caused by excessive oxygen exposure. Was there an oil slick on top (this is a common appearance) with acetobacter?

The surface of the beer in the fermenter looked totally clear, no oily texture, no bubbles, no floating solid matter.

I took a taste test of my porter and I can't really taste vinegar, so I'm going to go ahead and bottle that one tonight. I think the scope of the infection was limited to just these two.

I did eight 1-gallon batches over the span of two weeks in December and only these last two got infected. I used all new glass jugs, new stoppers, and new airlocks for all of them. They all needed little blow-off tubes which I cut from new, clean tubing. They all had comparable head space and I followed the same method for all of them:

- BIAB mash on the stove in the 148 to 156 range for 60 min, no sparge
- 60-minute boil with additions at 60 and 15
- Immediately chilled with an immersion chiller
- Poured into fermenter via a funnel

So, after the boil was over, this is all the equipment the beer was exposed to:

- Immersion chiller coil
- Funnel
- Fermenter
- Airlock/stopper?

Only other difference was the time each spent in the primary. First two were bottled after 34 days, second pair after 45, third pair after 38. These spent 52 days.

Did you use the same funnel for all the batches? If so may want to replace it or give it a good bleaching. Do you see vinegar flys around your fermenters?

Want2Brew said:

Did you use the same funnel for all the batches? If so may want to replace it or give it a good bleaching. Do you see vinegar flys around your fermenters?

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No flies. I did use the same funnel for all the batches. I may have neglected to properly clean it, and maybe some acetobacteria set up camp in between brewing batch #6 and batch #7.

I bottled the porter earlier tonight. A taste test reveals only a very slight tinge of a vinegar taste which I suspect is all in my head. I've brewed this porter recipe before and I remember it tasting the same.

Also, I bought a pack of Full Sail Pale Ale today and they all taste kind of tangy and vinegary. I think the overpowering smell of that tainted beer from earlier today has had a long-lasting effect on my senses.