infected beer (yeah, it's really infected) - rant.

straight up powdery pellicle sitting atop my belgian pale ale. i literally cracked it open to bottle after 4 weeks in primary and i have NO IDEA what happened.

smells like nail polish remover (acetate), wouldn't dream of tasting it and i am PISSED OFF!!! i've had infected beers before but i always knew what caused it - i'm just stunned on this one - this batch went perfect, i mean really, acetate?!?!?!?. as an aside, i think i'm going back to iodophor - i've never had any problem with it and star san just doesn't do it for me. ARG!!!

sucking down an imperial belgian wit to calm my nerves, but it took every ounce of energy to not throw the whole bucket into the f***ing street... i capped it, and let it sit - not sure why, it's trash.

the only thing i can think of that was different was i ran out of lids and used a lid that doesn't have an airtight seal, but fermentation started like a rocket and i checked gravity a week ago (with sterile equipment) and it was just fine - the other thing was we had a heat wave and the beer got warm for sure, but it was all post fermentation - it had hit final gravity well before the heat.

and everything else is fine... ack!

sorry, had to rant... not happy... i was stoked about this beer because i did continuous saaz hop additions every 60 seconds for the last 15 minutes...

i knew the heat was going to be a problem... damned heat wave. there's about three weeks out of the year i can't brew here, and that week was one of them... damn.

pictures?

i can see the pissed... hop additions for the last 15 minutes done every minute...

Get a keg, dedicate it to lambic brewing, throw it in there, add some lambic dregs, maybe some oak chips, it'll be great in a year or two.

i knew the heat was going to be a problem... damned heat wave. there's about three weeks out of the year i can't brew here, and that week was one of them... damn.

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This wouldn't have anything to do with the beer being infected.

Taste it.

I wouldn't assume it's bad just by smell alone. You have to taste.

i'm afraid to taste it... lol... i will, it's still sitting there.



it's mixed up a bit now so it looks like it's just yeast rafts, etc. - it was dry and powdery and reeks of acetone. no way i can intentionally sour this, the BUs are too high and if it went sour, it would taste horrible... i'm gonna RDWAHAHB, but in the meantime i'm just disappointed that something got in there.

went through my notes, and nothing strange happened...

i'm going to let it sit in primary for another week at least and see what happens - and taste it. if no change, i'll let it sit for another week or two...

Throw some extra bugs in there and try to go full sour.

Want to hear my past winter's line-up?

Pale Ale - Stuck fermentation at 1.020. Refused to budge. Bottled, but it sucked.
Dogfish Head 90 Minute clone: Stuck fermentation at 1.040. Smelled strongly of vinegar. Dumped.
Dark Chocolate Stout: Tastes like old tires. Taking up some of my nicest bottles, as I want to dump it but can't bring myself to do so.
ESB: Tastes and smells strongly of sulphur. This one is probably the most repulsive beverage I have ever created before.
Dogfish Head 60 Minute clone: Sour smell and taste. Dumped.
Another ESB: Smells strongly of green apple. Been sitting in my primary for months because I was hoping it would get better. Probably should dump it or something.
Arrogant Bastard clone: Green apple strikes again. Bottled this one to see if it would get better in bottles.

And finally:
SNPA clone: Smells and tastes quite nice. I'll bottle it soon.
Belgian Dubbel: In bottles now, tastes excellent.

I think most of these issues were due to poor temperature control, as without the windows open my apartment approaches 100F in the winter. I did leave my windows open, but this means that I got wild temperature swings which the yeasties probably didn't like too much.

So if you ever think you get a streak of bad luck, just think about what I went through.

yikes dude... i feel a little better, thanks... lol...

Sorry to hear. I just dumped a Red Bitter I had made. It was neither red or bitter, tasted terrible. I kept in the keg for months, hoping and finally dumped it. There was a bunch of sediment at the bottom of the keg! How that got there, I don't know, but I'm sure it's what was giving me the bad flavors.

Take heart, the next one will be better, or the one after that.

RIT_Warrior said:

as without the windows open my apartment approaches 100F in the winter.

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Really??

i can only imagine how hot it gets in the summer.

kpr121 said:

Really??

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It is an older apartment that has those big cast-iron radiators. It also has steam pipes running through it that go up to radiators the floor above me. The radiators get really hot even when you close the valve, and the steam pipes get very hot regardless...meaning I get a hot apartment and nasty beer.

Want to hear my past winter's line-up?

Pale Ale - Stuck fermentation at 1.020. Refused to budge. Bottled, but it sucked.
Dogfish Head 90 Minute clone: Stuck fermentation at 1.040. Smelled strongly of vinegar. Dumped.
Dark Chocolate Stout: Tastes like old tires. Taking up some of my nicest bottles, as I want to dump it but can't bring myself to do so.
ESB: Tastes and smells strongly of sulphur. This one is probably the most repulsive beverage I have ever created before.
Dogfish Head 60 Minute clone: Sour smell and taste. Dumped.
Another ESB: Smells strongly of green apple. Been sitting in my primary for months because I was hoping it would get better. Probably should dump it or something.
Arrogant Bastard clone: Green apple strikes again. Bottled this one to see if it would get better in bottles.

And finally:
SNPA clone: Smells and tastes quite nice. I'll bottle it soon.
Belgian Dubbel: In bottles now, tastes excellent.

I think most of these issues were due to poor temperature control, as without the windows open my apartment approaches 100F in the winter. I did leave my windows open, but this means that I got wild temperature swings which the yeasties probably didn't like too much.

So if you ever think you get a streak of bad luck, just think about what I went through.

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There is an easy solution for all of your problems. Sanitize better, pitch the correct amount of yeast, and invest in a fridge to ferment in. Luck doesn't really have anything to do with it.

MachineShopBrewing said:

There is an easy solution for all of your problems. Sanitize better, pitch the correct amount of yeast, and invest in a fridge to ferment in. Luck doesn't really have anything to do with it.

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I don't think anyone would find fault with my sanitation. Switched from starsan to iodophor temporarily to see if that was it, but it didn't help. I always pitched the correct amount of yeast (besides the dubbel, but that was deliberate and that tastes great anyway). A fridge to ferment in isn't really an option for me, at least not in this apartment. Now I have the AC in my bedroom keeping things at about 65ish or so at all times, so the temperature (and my beer) has improved. Unfortunately this isn't an option in the winter.

Smelled strongly of vinegar

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Sour smell and taste

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I'm not trying to be a dick, but those two statements would indicate infection.

jtakacs,

I see your in Santa Rosa. What part? I was born and raised there (Bennett Valley). Stationed at Ft Campbell now, your so damn lucky being close to the Russian River Brewery. Well sorry for your loss, I just dumped 5 gallions of my chocolate raspberry panty dropper (broken temp gauge so all of my grains were at 190 instead of 155 for an hour). Oh well, enjoy the Pliney!

MachineShopBrewing said:

I'm not trying to be a dick, but those two statements would indicate infection.

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I never said they weren't infected. Just because you practice good sanitation does not mean you will never get an infection. With both of those batches I was using older buckets to ferment in, so after the second one I replaced those buckets and the sour problem went away.

cabal09 said:

jtakacs,

I see your in Santa Rosa. What part? I was born and raised there (Bennett Valley). Stationed at Ft Campbell now, your so damn lucky being close to the Russian River Brewery. Well sorry for your loss, I just dumped 5 gallions of my chocolate raspberry panty dropper (broken temp gauge so all of my grains were at 190 instead of 155 for an hour). Oh well, enjoy the Pliney!

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i'm in rincon valley... my office is one block from RRB - keep up the good fight at ft campbell! :rockin:

Hey .. so let's learn from this. Walk me through your sanitation practices and how you ferment (air locks, blow off tubes, foil, straight up air)...

everything is separate - at this point i don't even keep sours anywhere near regular beers.. sanitation was really good, the only "slip up" is i have one lid that doesn't fit the bucket well and this was it (i thought i threw it away) so it has zero seal, but i'm not sure that's the culprit - still have no idea what happened.

i left this alone to see if anything would happen good or bad, nothing so far - just a nasty ethyl acetate aroma... likely undrinkable but i'm going to have some fun with it - i'm going to feed it brett-b and fruit and forget about it (again)... i figure another $10 on ingredients isn't going to kill me and i may as well have some fun.

Do you have scratches in your plastic fermentor buckets? those things can hold guests that are not welcome.

I got out of homebrewing for about 1.5 years because of a couple of bad batches. My 1st was a dunkelweizen I was using a candy thermometer to get a ballpark figure mash temp but read it way wrong and ended up with a dark, thin and very bitter beer. My 2nd was a Hefe that got infected. I know what happened there were scratches in my ail pale. The dunkel is losing its bitterness while not great is getting drinkable while the hefe still tastes like sour ass.

damn Jay, that sucks.

mcarb said:

damn Jay, that sucks.

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Ya I was a little heartbroken but I came back with my 1st brew a barleywine. Its still pretty young right now let it sit in the primary for 1.5 months and has been bottled about a month now. I've tried a couple and they are good but still pretty young. I ordered the stuff to make an Imperial Stout today then after that I want to make a Bourbon barrel imperial porter. Trying to get all stocked up on some beers to keep me warm and fuzzy inside this winter.

-e-
Wait you were talking to the OP werent you lol.

mcarb said:

damn Jay, that sucks.

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my only bad one, scrot...er... mcarb. lol...

Jsamp said:

Ya I was a little heartbroken but I came back with my 1st brew a barleywine. Its still pretty young right now let it sit in the primary for 1.5 months and has been bottled about a month now. I've tried a couple and they are good but still pretty young. I ordered the stuff to make an Imperial Stout today then after that I want to make a Bourbon barrel imperial porter. Trying to get all stocked up on some beers to keep me warm and fuzzy inside this winter.

-e-
Wait you were talking to the OP werent you lol.

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Yeah, but that's fine. I'll talk to anyone. Even if they are not real.

jtakacs said:

my only bad one, scrot...er... mcarb. lol...

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LOL

this wound up getting tossed on several pounds of mashed cherries back in august... created a starter of brett-c and forgot about it.

tasted it today and i'm not much happier... it is overwhelming cherry and slightly acetic tasting but i think the cherries are just masking the acetone taste/aroma and making it taste sour -

it smells like cherries sitting in alcohol. i think i'm going to peel off a six pack's worth, condition, bottle it and see what happens. i still think it's trash, but we'll see. not much i can do at this point, i've tried everything to save this, but a bad beer is a bad beer.

Id say wait more. Are you hurting for space? If not, you might have an un-reproducable gem in a year

With you bros-I have three batches since my return to brewing. Gonna throw them all out. Same medicinal, astringent, bitter taste in all. Guys here are blaming it on the water. Never had that happen before I stopped brewing, but the water may have changed. Got new brewing buckets in any case and campden tabs and we'll see I guess. Commiserations.

I would give them at last a month if it's medicinal. I did a pecan porter that was undrinkable from the astringent taste but it mellowed each month and was fantastic @ 3-4 months. I blamed it on chloramines -- which campden will take care of.

rhamilton said:

I would give them at last a month if it's medicinal. I did a pecan porter that was undrinkable from the astringent taste but it mellowed each month and was fantastic @ 3-4 months. I blamed it on chloramines -- which campden will take care of.

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Thanks. That's my read too. Unfortunately it has been nearly that now and when a brown ale, an IPA, and a mild ale all taste the same......we have a problem Houston.

i'd definitely wait it out.. i've been hanging onto this POS for 10 months now... and no, not crushed for space so it'll be stored w/ my lambics/flanders/sours for a while longer. i will condition and bottle some of it.. i'm going to take a gallon, cold crash the hell out of it and see... what happens.

after all the reading i've done i'm convinced it was heat related. no pellicle, etc...