A couple of months ago I made a partial mash pilsner. I had a 72 hour lag time before fermentation took off. During the fermentation the fridge had a sour milk like stench to it. Never brewing a lager before, I figured it was normal. I let it lager for 6 weeks at 34 degrees. Bottled and let it sit for another 2 weeks. I tasted it the other day and it smells and tastes pretty bad. I cannot put my finger on it...kinda like a plastic, chlorine, DMS, taste. It doesn't even taste like beer. I don't think any amount of aging will fix it. There are two things that I can think of that went wrong...I obviously under pitched (lesson learned, always make a starter) or at one point when the lager was put into the fridge after pitching, the carboy sucked in some water from the blowoff container...since it was a gallon milk jug, maybe it was no clean enough and sucked in some nasty milk bacteria and thats why it smelled sour? I don't know...but I can't think of anything else to do but open all 40 or so bottles and dump them. I need the bottles.
Egad! My lager tastes like crap!
- Thread starter dgez
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Evan!
Well-Known Member
Sorry, dude...that's painful. Not quite as painful as accidentally emptying your best batch ever into the bottom of your keezer, but still...sh1tty.
It sounds like some phenolics. 'Nasty milk bacteria' wouldn't give you that plasticy, chemical taste. I've had that happen before---unless you've actually leeched the flavors from a non-foodgrade plastic container (doesn't sound likely), it's an issue with yeast health and pitching rate, in all likelihood. When you're doing a lager, especially one that is very clean and naked like a pils, you really need to pay extra attention to pitching rates and health. I brewed 10 gals of german pils recently. I started with probably 2 cups of harvested/cleaned WLP838 slurry. I pitched that into half a gallon of starter wort, put it on the stirplate, let it ferment out, decanted off the spent beer, added more new wort, let that ferment out...then decanted the spent beer again, and added one last wort batch. And at the end of the day, it's a very clean, flawless brew. I cannot stress enough how important it is to get your pitching rates high when you're brewing light lagers. Next time...next time do what I did, or something akin to it.
I'd say you're right, though...aging won't solve this one. Actually, it'll only get worse with time. Save a few bottles just to see what happens, and hum the taps as you dump the rest.
It sounds like some phenolics. 'Nasty milk bacteria' wouldn't give you that plasticy, chemical taste. I've had that happen before---unless you've actually leeched the flavors from a non-foodgrade plastic container (doesn't sound likely), it's an issue with yeast health and pitching rate, in all likelihood. When you're doing a lager, especially one that is very clean and naked like a pils, you really need to pay extra attention to pitching rates and health. I brewed 10 gals of german pils recently. I started with probably 2 cups of harvested/cleaned WLP838 slurry. I pitched that into half a gallon of starter wort, put it on the stirplate, let it ferment out, decanted off the spent beer, added more new wort, let that ferment out...then decanted the spent beer again, and added one last wort batch. And at the end of the day, it's a very clean, flawless brew. I cannot stress enough how important it is to get your pitching rates high when you're brewing light lagers. Next time...next time do what I did, or something akin to it.
I'd say you're right, though...aging won't solve this one. Actually, it'll only get worse with time. Save a few bottles just to see what happens, and hum the taps as you dump the rest.
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