One bottle burns like rum?

My son emailed that the bottle of Alt he was drinking burned and tasted like rum. The bottles I have had have been good, and he agrees the other bottles I gave him were good.

What explains one bottle being so off in this way?

Thanks

didnt clean that one bottle quite good enuf and the bad bacteria took over during finishing.

I agree with Gildog in his analysis... It's not terrible uncommon to end up with one or two bottles out of a batch that somehow didn't get sanitized and go all wonky...

Bad bacteria isn't likely to add fusels. That 'hot' flavor is fusel alcohol that if consistent is usually a sign of too high of fermentation temps, but if this was just one bottle of many then the culprit it could be an accidental overdose of priming sugar.

If you dissolved priming sugar in your batch when you bottled it could be a case of the sugar not being equally distributed or not fully dissolved and that bottle happened to be one of the last ones bottled and had a little more sugar in it. If you used carb tabs or similar chalk it up to an anomaly.

Generally speaking when there is one inconsistent issue with anything in the brew process, it is extremely difficult to pin point the cause. You will likely change something unnecessarily and create more problems. I try to avoid making wide sweeping process changes unless I notice something that is systemic.

Thanks. I thought it was possibly due to priming sugar not being mixed evenly, but I didn't know if that would account for the effect.

Very helpful
Regards

I still would not count out a wild yeast contamination. You would have to get a whole heck of a lot of extra priming sugar in that one bottle to get to the point of burning. A typical priming addition only raises the batch SG by a couple points.

Since the other bottles are good, it just doesn't add up. I suppose there could be a flat bottle or two in the batch, but the simpler explanation is a dirty bottle. No matter what the actual cause is, you ought to mind both your sanitation and your mixing for priming sugar.


TL

Well that is it all over.
I thought of priming but thought it would take a lot
I thought of sanitation but I'm a StarSan soaker and pretty diligent about cleaning.

I hadn't thought of wild yeast.

I'll certainly pay extra attention to sanitation but still I'm puzzled.