Autolysis - Meaty Flavor

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yournotpeter

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Normally I let my beer sit in a primary fermenter for 7-10 days and then rack to a secondary for 2 weeks and then bottle.

After reading many, many posts in this forum and heading the advice of many, I decided to let my last porter sit in my primary carboy for 3 weeks and then bottled today. What I got was a tremendously strong meaty/brothy smell (and somewhat in the flavor, but not as strong as the smell). After research I find that this is due to autolysis.

I guess my question is....what did I do wrong? Many people in this forum let their beer sit in primary for 3-4 weeks! Will the taste mellow with age? Get worse?

THANKS!
 
i don't think this is from siting on teh yeast cake to long. i have left beers in primary for 3 months with no issues that long is not really suggested , but 3 weeks is a great primary time i always do 2-3
 
It could be autolysis, but it could also be because of stressed yeast. Higher temperatures could help to cause it. It's not common, but I know that I've heard a few others mention "meaty" beer, "hot dog" flavored beer, etc, and that tends to be yeast related.
 
It fermented in my basement with ambient temps around 64 - my sticky thermometer on my fermenter never got above 68-70.

The reason I say autolysis is just based upon research I've done on the Web, particularly:

http://www.bacchus-barleycorn.com/PDFfiles/LearnMore/Yeast Autolysis.pdf

I'm not totally freakin' yet....I think it still tasted OK (obviously will taste much better after bottle conditioning/aging)...it was more of the meaty SMELL.
 
I have never experienced autolysis, and I've left beer in the primary fermenter for MONTHS over a wide range of temperatures and conditions. I'm not saying it's impossible, but you should rule out all other factors first (water, ingredients, infection, oxidation, etc).
 
Yuri, I remember reading your posts stating exactly that and thought I would leave it in primary for longer than 7-10 days....so when I smelled that smell and did some research, autolysis was a common descriptor for the off flavor. For all I know it is certainly something else - I'll make a final prognosis after I crack the first one for consumption!
 
What was the condition of your yeast? How much did you pitch? How old was it? What type was it? Starter? Dry? Rehydrated?

I would be amazed if you had noticeable autolysis in 3 weeks.
 
I think you are self MIS-Diagnosing green beer. You are tasting possibly an off flavor, but since you are tasting it pre bottle conditioning (minimum 3 weeks at 70 degree.)

Betcha when you come back to your beer at 4 weeks or so, you won't notice a thing.

The only way you could possible have stressed yeast enough to autolyze in three weeks would be if you perhaps were using fifth or sixth generation unwashed and pitched on top yeast.

People have sat their beer on the yeast cake for 6 months and not had any problems. Autolysis is largely a bogeyman for the homebrewer, and if you go back and re-read John Palmer's "terrifying to the new brewer" passage in How to Brew, that every new brewer panics about, you will notice a couple things;

1) He is actually talking about Lagers as being susceptible to autolysis. That is because, when you are making a lager, you are LAGERING or storing your beer for a few months to cold condition. ANd you are making a beer where any perceived flaw stands out since there is virtually no dark malt or even hop presence. If you are attempting to sit a really light beer on a yeast cake for months and months, you would possibly have autolysis occuring, but we're talking MONTHS. So that's why you secondary a lager, you take it off the yeast and store it.

2) John Palmer ends the section in HTB with this caveat, which MOST new brewers seem to miss, probably because they are already in beer is gonna be ruined panic mode.

....As a final note on this subject, I should mention that by brewing with healthy yeast in a well-prepared wort, many experienced brewers, myself included, have been able to leave a beer in the primary fermenter for several months without any evidence of autolysis.



And furthermore he says this.

Leaving an ale beer in the primary fermentor for a total of 2-3 weeks (instead of just the one week most kits recommend), will provide time for the conditioning reactions and improve the beer. This extra time will also let more sediment settle out before bottling, resulting in a clearer beer and easier pouring. And, three weeks in the primary fermentor is usually not enough time for off-flavors to occur.

So again I really really really don't think you are experiencing autolysis, since it is nearly impossible to have it happen in only three week.

More than likely, like I mentioned earlier, you are simply experiencing a green beer taste, no matter how odd it may taste. That's why I don't recommend anyone worrying about a flavor they perceive in primary or secondary, because your beer still has a journey to go through in the bottle...The race isn't over until it has bottle conditioned.

Read my blog On Patience & Bottle Conditioning for more info on the process.

I firmly believe that you won't notice the flavor in 4-6 weeks.
 
On a side note: I really wish more kits would advise to wait the 3 weeks as a coutesy to the inexperienced homebrewer; on my first batch I waited the week the directions said was necessary then I tried a couple which were flat and not nearly what I had been expecting. I went ahead and waited and the rest turned out fine but the directions were still somewhat misleading.
 
On a side note: I really wish more kits would advise to wait the 3 weeks as a coutesy to the inexperienced homebrewer; on my first batch I waited the week the directions said was necessary then I tried a couple which were flat and not nearly what I had been expecting. I went ahead and waited and the rest turned out fine but the directions were still somewhat misleading.

The directions should include a caveat saying that it's more of a guideline than strict instructions. The directions that came with my last batch said to ferment for 10 days, bottle, and drink at 14 (4 days after bottling). I did try one at 14 days but it was REALLY green. 5 weeks later and it was friggin great. I did wait until I had a steady hydro reading until I bottled though. It definitely wasn't ready to bottle on day 10.
 
The directions should include a caveat saying that it's more of a guideline than strict instructions. The directions that came with my last batch said to ferment for 10 days, bottle, and drink at 14 (4 days after bottling). I did try one at 14 days but it was REALLY green. 5 weeks later and it was friggin great. I did wait until I had a steady hydro reading until I bottled though. It definitely wasn't ready to bottle on day 10.

Yeah, even at 2 weeks it was still fairly benign in tasts and carbonation. Granted it's not a huge deal given that you learn quickly from this, I'm just saying it's odd from an instructional standpoint. It's like if model kits came with instructions that you should wait 2 days for the cement to dry but you can start playing with it after 3 hours.

Ok, not quite, but you get what I'm saying.
 
Yeah, even at 2 weeks it was still fairly benign in tasts and carbonation. Granted it's not a huge deal given that you learn quickly from this, I'm just saying it's odd from an instructional standpoint. It's like if model kits came with instructions that you should wait 2 days for the cement to dry but you can start playing with it after 3 hours.

Ok, not quite, but you get what I'm saying.

The problem comes from the fact that beginners think that the directions in the package are sacrosanct. If it says it's ready to drink in three weeks, then it's ready in three weeks and this is as good as it's going to get.

I think it's all advertising. If a beginner is looking at kits, they are going to be picking the one that says it'll be ready in three weeks, not eight.
 
Generally speaking kit manufacturers, especially kit an kilo manufacturers, are concerned with selling more and more kits NOT with the brewer making the best beer possible. They know that if they say in the instructions to wait, they may loose some people to hobbies that have more instant gratification.

They also know that the time that a homebrewer will remain buying kits is relatively short...they know that after a few kits, the brewer will either give up, start brewing extract batches from recipes in books and places like this, formulate their own recipes, or go all grain...so they want to sell as many kits as possible to the new brewer before he moves on to bigger and better things.

SO they no that even their beer will taste better if you leave it longer...but they know that in the time you wait you will be reading and learning and be less likely to buy another kit...They can sell three or four kits to you if you follow their directions in the same time frame that listening to us and waiting a month and bottle conditioning for another 3-4 weeks.

What I really wish is that John Palmer had focused on DETAILED descriptions of worst case scenarios, like autolysis, or paid more attention to the fear based psychology of the new brewer. New brewers see the section on autolysis, and don't notice that it is describing LAGERS and NOT ALL BEERS, nor do they notice the caveat I quoted at the end.

Or maybe we need a different book to push on people, one to ease the new brewer into their first few batches without the fear mongering or overly technical stuff in it.


But, as I have said over and over, I actually think the yeast autolysis might have had merit at one time...several decades ago. But not these days, unless we are making lagers.

Remember back even before 78 and the legalization of the hobby, the amount of yeast available to hobbyists were very limited, and were usually dry cakes, coming over from places where there wasn't prohibition on homebrewing.

If you've heard some of the interview with the oldtimers on basic brewing, they talk about the yeasts being very old and cakey, and not very good to begin with...

Like Palmer says as long as the yeast is HEALTHY several months on the yeastcake is OK...but back then the yeast may have not been very healthy to begin with. It could have been several months or years old with a very low viability.

And they did notice autloysis in their beers.

And Papazian was writing his book from right around that time period, when yeasts cake in dry cakes and may not have even been stored properly, and many people just placed towels and cookie sheets on their ceramic crock pot fermenters.

So he and his contemporaries influence the knowledgbase back then just like we affect and alter the brewing culture today with these ideas.

This is an ever evolving hobby...Places like this is where you find the most state of the art information/wisdom about brewing, because of the sheer number of us trying new things, hearing new things, and even breaking new ground and contributing to the body of info on the hobby...Look at some of that inventions that came out of here, and then ended up later in BYO articles by our members...

It's just a shift in the culture, it doesn't mean that beer won't be made either way...someday some enterprising brewer from here or using forums as a reference is going to write the NEXT brewing bible, and talk about long primary. and it' gonna be "beery canon" for a number of years, or it will end up as an article in Zymurgy or BYO, and people on places like this will be quoting from that for awhile...then the culture will shift from that idea...

Heck even the last update of Papazian was 7 years ago. Just think of all the technological changes in the last 7 years, and you'll realize that knowledge doesn't exist in a vacuum....Just look at this place....the "culture" and ideas shifts over time...like I said, places like this, we, you and me and everyone else here, are the cutting edge of brewing....

Those of us who opt for the long primary usually do it because of what we have read, but mostly because we have noticed an improvement in our beers from other methods.

I joined the long primary camp, precisely because of my contest scores last summer....I kept getting feedback and higher scores for the beers that long primaried....They were described as "jewell like" and "crisp and clean tasting."

As opposed to the beers that I entered using the more traditional means. I mean I had some of the same recipes I brewed that overlapped, like my amber ale, and Dead guy clones, and I could tell that the version 2's of my batches, the longer primary tasted and looked much better....
 
I think it should be mandatory for all beginners to start with a specialty grain extract wheat. Most can go from brew to mouth in 4 weeks. Great beer to learn patience with and is very forgiving during the fermentation process. This was my first brew, apart from the abominations that were produced from a Mr. Beer kit. I still do them when I want a quick beer while waiting on my more serious beers to condition.
 
What was the condition of your yeast? How much did you pitch? How old was it? What type was it? Starter? Dry? Rehydrated?

I would be amazed if you had noticeable autolysis in 3 weeks.

My yeast was WL002 and I made a starter - fermentation in the starter kicked off right away...I think it was in good condition (got from LHBS straight out of the fridge)
 
Meaty is a flavor descriptor for autolysis.
It may be the flavor descriptor for other things as well.

I wouldn't rule anything out.

Did you over pitch? Recipe? Process?
 
I'm sorry if reviving this thread is inappropriate, I'm a fairly new homebrewer and although I've frequented this site a lot, I've never posted here before.

I have experienced a meaty flavor in the two darkest beers that I've brewed (all 5 gal. batches, brewed at ~65 - 68 F, with reasonably meticulous temperature monitoring):

1) The first was an extract-based Robust Porter, and I chalked it up to the addition of molasses and not knowing precisely what I was doing (it was my third or fourth brew). The beer was a 1.076 OG (7.4% ABV), pale extract with both chocolate and black patent specialty grains. Used Wyeast 1056 liquid yeast, not old. It sat in the primary for two weeks, and in the secondary for 10 days. Definitely got worse with age (as I've noticed extract beers that I've made tend to do). Saved one 22 oz. for 2 months after bottling, and all I could taste was soy sauce / A-1 sauce.

2) The second was one I have just brewed, an all-grain Russian Imperial Stout. It was also high gravity, 1.094 OG (8.1 % ABV), again with chocolate malt, and also both roasted barley and flaked barley. I also included 1/2 lbm lactose. Used Wyeast 1084 (Irish), with a 1 L starter. This beer sat in the primary for ~6 weeks, and was then bottled. Granted, it's only spent a little over 2 weeks in the bottle, as I drink it right now. It tastes fine, and would even taste good if not for the minerally meatiness.

That being said, I'm not quite sure how this meaty "umami" flavor can be attributed to yeast autolysis. My hunch is that it has something to do with darker specialty grains, although I'm really not sure (this doesn't really make sense to me). I have never experienced this flavor with any of the other batches I've brewed, which pretty much run the gamut of SRMs and styles. Perhaps it's the quality / mineral content of my water (Seattle tap water), coupled with these darker grains?

Any input is appreciated. Thanks.
 
DMS? anyone?

how'd you cool your wort? did you boil your wort for excessive periods of time with its lid on?

coriander can give off hot dog flavors. i doubt you used coriander in your porter though.
 
That being said, I'm not quite sure how this meaty "umami" flavor can be attributed to yeast autolysis. My hunch is that it has something to do with darker specialty grains, although I'm really not sure (this doesn't really make sense to me). I have never experienced this flavor with any of the other batches I've brewed, which pretty much run the gamut of SRMs and styles. Perhaps it's the quality / mineral content of my water (Seattle tap water), coupled with these darker grains?

Any input is appreciated. Thanks.

would you describe it as being similar to soy sauce? There's a local brew - Capn' Bastard's Oatmeal Stout - which has always had that flavor and aroma lingering in it, and my brother made an "irish red" that had it as well.
 
TimpanogosSlim said:
would you describe it as being similar to soy sauce? There's a local brew - Capn' Bastard's Oatmeal Stout - which has always had that flavor and aroma lingering in it, and my brother made an "irish red" that had it as well.

Yes, soy sauce flavor in the porter. I chalked it up to inferior extract.
 
forcenc said:
Yes, soy sauce flavor in the porter. I chalked it up to inferior extract.

Ah. Well the makers of capn' bastards are sometimes accused of being an extract shop but there are two 30 yard roll-offs for spent grain outside their brewery.

I know my brother is an all-grain guy like me.

Protein in the wort perhaps?
 
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