This is my second batch, and I'm 99% sure its infected 
Bottled today, and it smelled quite funky. It smelled exactly like a rotten tomato. Tasted it and yep, rotten tomato. My recipe was as follows:
3.3 lb wheat LME
1.0 lb light DME
1.0 lb honey
1.0 oz german spaltz hop pellets (3.5%)
1.0 oz orange zest
Safbrew WB-06 yeast
I boiled the honey (spare me the "don't boil honey" speech for now) and the orange zest the last 5 minutes of the boil, and used a strainer to get the zest out before going into my primary.
Fermentation went normally, I kept the temperature down between 60-70, and left it for two weeks. The FG was spot on at 1.010. The yeast cake looked normal after bottling. The krausen looked a bit weak, only half an inch tall, but this might be normal since my fermentation wasn't very violent.
The infection took me by surprise because during my first batch, I made so many mistakes, but it came out fine.. my second batch went much better because I had learned a lot, and yet here I am sitting with infection. The rotten tomato smell is suspicious to me... when I brewed this batch, I had just received fresh tomatoes that had a few rotten spots on them. I know its probably a stretch, but could my beer be infected by that? If not, was it my orange zest somehow?
Bottled today, and it smelled quite funky. It smelled exactly like a rotten tomato. Tasted it and yep, rotten tomato. My recipe was as follows:
3.3 lb wheat LME
1.0 lb light DME
1.0 lb honey
1.0 oz german spaltz hop pellets (3.5%)
1.0 oz orange zest
Safbrew WB-06 yeast
I boiled the honey (spare me the "don't boil honey" speech for now) and the orange zest the last 5 minutes of the boil, and used a strainer to get the zest out before going into my primary.
Fermentation went normally, I kept the temperature down between 60-70, and left it for two weeks. The FG was spot on at 1.010. The yeast cake looked normal after bottling. The krausen looked a bit weak, only half an inch tall, but this might be normal since my fermentation wasn't very violent.
The infection took me by surprise because during my first batch, I made so many mistakes, but it came out fine.. my second batch went much better because I had learned a lot, and yet here I am sitting with infection. The rotten tomato smell is suspicious to me... when I brewed this batch, I had just received fresh tomatoes that had a few rotten spots on them. I know its probably a stretch, but could my beer be infected by that? If not, was it my orange zest somehow?
