Yeast bay farmhouse sour got too hot, will bad flavors mellow with time??

Subject says it all... I had a vial of the yeast bays farmhouse sour that was firstly a little old but still within useable date, and when fermenting it stared around 76 and went up past the 80*F marker. I am guessing it hit somewhere around 85*F. The beer is nicely tart but has this medicinal weird funk that just ruins the overall flavor. I am guessing this is due to the high fermentation temps. It is now about 4 months old and has been in the bottle for just under two weeks. The bottle i sampled was flat and not fully conditioned but this flavor has been present since the first time i took a sample before transferring to secondary. A friend of mine said that with time it should mellow out and become better but I was wondering what you all thought. It would be a real shame to end up dumping this beer after aging for 3 months and then having spent the time bottling the whole batch. Ugh...

It will not likely age out, but only time will tell. Leave it alone for a few months if you have the space. Worst case scenario is you'll have to dump it in a few months. Best case, it ages out and you'll get to enjoy it instead!

could it also be from under-pitching?

i made a starter with mine and i had the flask on a heat pad for a week. im sure temps hit in the 80s, the starter tasted fine, nice and sour too.

The saach in it is 2 saison strains and saison yeast can handle higher temps just fine. id guess its the french strain and the dupont strain in it.

that yeast blend (and every other saison yeast ive tried) can safely be taken into the 90s without off flavors. I agree it was probably due to underpitching or stressing the yeast too much

you may have pitched a bit high. I start my saisons at 65, but they are in the 90s 36hrs later. But ive read others doing fine pitching even in the 80s

Thanks for your feedback guys. I guess it is because the vial was getting close to its expiration date? The beer was of moderate gravity (under 1.060) so if it were fresh i doubt that would have been under-pitching. I didnt want to make a starter since it is a blend, but I guess that will be my course of action next time. Its going to be such a shame having to open and dump each and every bottle.

"Medicinal" sounds like it could be chlorophenols. In any case, I agree, I don't see it aging out. So, keeping it to see just depends on if you can spare the carboy. If it is chlorophenols, though, that should be addressed before you do anything similar again.

My water has chloramine. I brewed for a couple years without ever noticing anything off, myself. Not until my first sour/Brett beer. Then I noticed a medicinal off flavor. Researched, ID'd the problem, and now I treat all my brewing water with campden tablets.

j1n said:

could it also be from under-pitching?



i made a starter with mine and i had the flask on a heat pad for a week. im sure temps hit in the 80s, the starter tasted fine, nice and sour too.



The saach in it is 2 saison strains and saison yeast can handle higher temps just fine. id guess its the french strain and the dupont strain in it.

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Definitely could be from pitch rate (there are fewer cells in the blend than in our Sacch only blends), but I agree that medicinal sound like it could also be chlorophenols.

Also, neither strain is the French or DuPont strain. We try our best to stay clear of the cookie cutter yeast company mentality of just culturing strains that are already widely available, as proving yeast that is already available adds no real value to the brewing community (imo). These are two unique isolates, sure to please the palate

Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I'll be using a fresh vial of the same strain (Yeast Bay's Farmhouse Sour) in a 1.070 sour saison this weekend. I planned on just pitching the vial, as everything I read suggests to not do a starter for a fresh vial of bugs, so as to not throw off the sacc/bug balance. However, this discussion of off flavors (potentially) due to underpitching has me concerned. Especially in a batch with a larger OG.

What are people's thoughts/experiences on this? Or with sour blend strains in general?

My vote is to make a starter. I think a big part of my off flavor situation was that the vial was almost past date and there wasn't enough viable sacch. I just got a new vial and 100% plan on making a starter. Especially at the gravity you are aiming for...

Bisco_Ben said:

My vote is to make a starter. I think a big part of my off flavor situation was that the vial was almost past date and there wasn't enough viable sacch. I just got a new vial and 100% plan on making a starter. Especially at the gravity you are aiming for...

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I second this! Definitely make a starter.

How did the beer turn out? Had a commercial brewer recently send me a beer he made with the Farmhouse Sour Ale that was really nice, barrel fermented saison with apricot!

My beer was a dumper. I attribute that to an old vial/under pitch and perhaps too high of a fermentation temp. I have a beer going with it now that i plan to hit with hibiscus so well see on that. All i have to say, if the vial is old make a starter!

Bisco_Ben said:

My beer was a dumper. I attribute that to an old vial/under pitch and perhaps too high of a fermentation temp. I have a beer going with it now that i plan to hit with hibiscus so well see on that. All i have to say, if the vial is old make a starter!

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How high was the fermentation temp? This blend can typically go pretty high and a lot of the commercial folks using it are pushing it into the upper 70's.