uh oh... here comes the juicy fruit beer.

I am brewing a hefe for my wife and my fears are becoming a reality. I often hear about people that brew wheat beers and they and up tasting too much like juicy fruit gum. Well, it's been about 6 days in the primary and I decided to hover my nose over the airlock and low-and-behold it smells a lot like juicy fruit. Just so I knew it wasn't all in my head I had one of my friends smell it (I didn't give him any hints about the smell, I just told him to whiff it). His reaction was like "hmm... i've definitely smelled this before. It sorta smells like gum or something, I can't quite put my finger on it." so I said "sort of like juicy fruit?" and to my dismay he replied with "EXACTLY! That's exactly what it smells like!"

Ugh.

I had a little folly which may be the source of the problem. On the second day, when I woke up, the temp of the brew was at 76 degrees. I quickly covered it with a wet towel and by that afternoon it was around 70 and it's been below 70 ever since. I am just afraid that there are too many esters now from that day when it got pretty high in temperature.

Oh well, we'll see how it turns out.

Curious on what kind of hops you used?

I had some hops out the other day during the Pliny brew that smelled JUST like juicy fruit gum. I'm thinking it was amarillo?

I used hallertauer.

I try not to get too upset about things like this until I actually try the beer...it's amazing how much it can change. If it's still not up to snuff then I just let it age a bit.