Not another is my beer ruined thread...

So I brewed a Hefeweizen last tuesday and stuck it down in my basement and after 4 days of no activity in the airlock i opened it up Friday evening. Upon opening it up it stunk...bad. It had a cidery smell to it and it tasted...Aweful, well i did a gravity reading and as i suspected it didn't move, i did some research and by all acounts i thought i had an infection. I was miffed and pissed at myself for not being more dilligant in my sanitation methods (plus this was SWIMBO's first beer and she was bummed) Long story short i was going to dump it out Saturday and when i went downstairs to do the unimaginable i noticed the airlock was going crazy!! So my question...WTF???? I'm going to see it through now i just need some advise to see this beer through, is it salvageable? I will be racking it onto 4 lbs of Blueberries so would that help? And what exactly happend to the beer? Any help to shed some light on this unique turn of events would help.

What yeast did you use initially?

It was a Dry Wheat yeast (whatever came in a Brewers Best Hefeweizen kit)

Taste it before you prep the blueberries, just in case.

I'm guessing the yeast was just mostly dead, since a lot of times the kits sit at room temperature for an unknown amount of time. Then eventually it reproduced enough to get going. Next time you might consider a fresh packet of refrigerated yeast to go along with that kit.

Yeah i tried it again yesterday its ruined Sadness

Beer at that early of a stage usually does not taste very good. I would see it out until the end unless it just tasted extremely harsh like vinegar. Chances are you will be pleasantly surprised.

Vineger would be the best way to describe it. Or an even more descriptive "Satans *******" taste. Its really bad, the sad thing was i smelled pretty good but it tastes horrible and no amount of aging could save it. I orginially thought it was an infection but after it started fermenting i thought i had salvaged the beer unfortunatly i didn't. Well chalk it up to lesson learned.

On the same topic how does everyone sanitize there fermentation bucket? I put four gallons of starsan in it and mix it around really good with lid on for 3-4 minutes to ensure everything came in contact with the star san. Then before i put the lid on it I dump star san all over it. Anything i should change?

I would still see it out until at least the 3 week mark before tossing it, but that is just me. I took a hydro sample of my kolsch after a week and it tasted horrible. Now at 3 weeks it tastes more like what I was expecting. I'm sure after cold crashing and bottle conditioning, it will taste exactly like it's supposed to.

As far as sanitation goes, typically what I do is mix up my starsan solution in the fermenter (1oz per 5 gallons of water) then I put the lid, air lock and anything else that will come into contact with the wort into it and let it soak during my boil.

Don't use dry yeast that comes with kits unless you can positively identify production date. You should also rehydrate the yeast to make sure it is viable and give it a head start. When you buy the kit ask them to swap out the yeast and give you a break on the better stuff. For the most part the LHBS's around here rarely sell any kits and will try to talk you out of buying them.

Your sanitation sounds fine, although with starsan all you need to do is wet the inside surfaces of the bucket which a cup or so sprayed on is more than enough. Your problem would seem to be the yeast did not take off and overwhelm any other life forms.

I had a similar experience a couple years ago. No activity, and a sulphur smell in the closet where I had my primary fermenter. I was going to throw it away, so I moved it out of the closet, then got distracted and left it alone. When I went back to it the water in the lock was bubbling away. Only thing I could figure was the temperature change between the closet and the new spot. Long story short with a happy ending: it ended up being my best batch yet.

So its been a week in the primary, if i gave it another week or two could it possibly be salvaged if it were an infection or something? If it was due to bad yeast would it taste that bad?

If it were infected with something the sugars available would have been consumed by bacteria to produce the off flavored bi-products/metabolites that make the beer taste nasty. If that sugar is consumed then the yeast will have to compete for the remaining sugar vs bacterial contaminants that already have a foothold. In short time wont make it taste less bad if it was infected.