forkmantis
Member
I still consider myself a brewing n00b. I just started my 12th batch this weekend. I'd say that batches 4-8 ranged from acceptable to almost good, but then batches 9 and 10 dropped in quality, and batch 11 is what prompted me to write this message.
I took one bottle each from batches 9 and 10 to the homebrew store I deal with (we live 2 hours away and usually mail order, but were on a weekend trip, so we had a chance to drop by the store). They said the estery/fruity flavors I was getting were probably due to higher fermentation temperature (at the time, the temperature in my house was around 75 degrees on average).
At their suggestion, I lowered the temperature of my house a few degrees, and filled up a my bathtub full of cold water (68 deg F) and fermented batch 11, a red ale, in the cool water to maintain a low and constant temperature. I bottled it a week ago, after a week in the primary and 2 weeks in the secondary. I took a taste of it then and it seemed pretty good.
This weekend I was showing a friend how to homebrew. I wanted him to have a chance to taste something, so I cracked open a bottle from batch 11 for a preview. I didn't expect it to be great, since it has only been in the bottle for a week, but I was really surprised when we tasted it. It was horribly tart. I've never tasted anything like from any of my batches. I did some reading before the post, and am seriously hoping that I'm tasting the Acetaldehyde flavor describe here: http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html. The thing that surprised me the most is that this sour flavor was not present on the day I was bottling. My hope is that a little more time in the bottle is all I need. My fear is that I've somehow gotten an infection or have screwed up in some other way and have ruined the batch. This is by far the worst thing I've ever tasted from any of my batches of beer, so I'm not sure how to judge what's going on. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone locally who brews, and I won't be near my homebrew store for a while, so I was hoping that someone here could help me understand how to figure out what's going on with this batch of beer.
I took one bottle each from batches 9 and 10 to the homebrew store I deal with (we live 2 hours away and usually mail order, but were on a weekend trip, so we had a chance to drop by the store). They said the estery/fruity flavors I was getting were probably due to higher fermentation temperature (at the time, the temperature in my house was around 75 degrees on average).
At their suggestion, I lowered the temperature of my house a few degrees, and filled up a my bathtub full of cold water (68 deg F) and fermented batch 11, a red ale, in the cool water to maintain a low and constant temperature. I bottled it a week ago, after a week in the primary and 2 weeks in the secondary. I took a taste of it then and it seemed pretty good.
This weekend I was showing a friend how to homebrew. I wanted him to have a chance to taste something, so I cracked open a bottle from batch 11 for a preview. I didn't expect it to be great, since it has only been in the bottle for a week, but I was really surprised when we tasted it. It was horribly tart. I've never tasted anything like from any of my batches. I did some reading before the post, and am seriously hoping that I'm tasting the Acetaldehyde flavor describe here: http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html. The thing that surprised me the most is that this sour flavor was not present on the day I was bottling. My hope is that a little more time in the bottle is all I need. My fear is that I've somehow gotten an infection or have screwed up in some other way and have ruined the batch. This is by far the worst thing I've ever tasted from any of my batches of beer, so I'm not sure how to judge what's going on. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone locally who brews, and I won't be near my homebrew store for a while, so I was hoping that someone here could help me understand how to figure out what's going on with this batch of beer.