beer gone bad

[Mike's Brew and Brat]

I am not sure what happened but...
I brewed a Hefeweizen on the 4th of June. Everything went fine. I let it sit in the primary for 6 days. Then racked to secondary. I check the gravity a found it had it had only gone from 1.048 to1.026. I repitched some dry yeast and nothing after a week. I went to my HBS and they told me it was a stuck fermentation and wasn't much I could do. Told me maybe champagne yeast may get it started. Still nothing and then it started to smell bad. It tasted like vinegar and smelled worst.

I end up duping it this morning. Oh well 7 good batches and 1 bad.

I will try again.

 

[user 574]

Sounds familiar to my last Porter. Slow ferment, rack to secondary - wierd smell, not tasty. Check it two days later and it smells even worse. Dumped the whole thing down the drain and about gagged on how nasty it smelled. 1st offiical bad batch from about 50 (another I dumped as it just wasn't tasty).

Hopefully you've hit your quota of bad batches for a while. I'm nervous to test my porter I did this weekend now though - what if it happens again . New yeast, and replaced all my hoses however. Can shake your confidence though...

 

[Sir Sudster]

Are you guys using a starter? Did you aerate your wort? Sounds like weak or insufficient yeast count. The vinegar was from bacteria.

 

[user 574]

Yep & yep. It was 3rd gen saved slurry that I think went bad. Hard to say but my suspicions.

 

[Genghis77]

Clean, sanitize, clean, sanitize. Overdo this before your next brew. You don't want a repeat with a vinegar producing yeast. As one that has experienced loss, I grieve for your loss. The thought of 5 gallons going down the drain literally brings tears.

 

[david_42]

I haven't had to dump a batch since moving, but knowing it will pass through the septic tank and eventually end up feeding the D$%^ gophers riles me!

 

[Beer Snob]

I think I have been fairly lucky in regards to "bad batches". I can't really report any batch that has been "bad"... there has been a few that I did not like. My past roomates would drink anything....

 

[fa1321tx]

I just had 2 bad batches at the same time! One to mold in bottles and the other because the water in my airlock evaporated!

 

[makingitgood]

desertBrew- U tasted it, aww man that takes balls, i have smelt that stuff be for and i almost puked, me and my stupid experiments with sugar water and yeast, and barly.. The smell is hard to get out of the carby

 

[Monk]

Mike's BnB:

I had the exact same scenario with a hef. I just ended up dumping the last bottle of it last night. Brewed wort as usual; probably insufficient aeration when I dumped it into the carboy; 2 weeks=1.050-1.024; then the next month brings about no drop in gravity. I even took half of the wort and added raspberries to it. There was vigorous fermentation for a couple days, then back to normal and the grav is still 1.023. I gave it another month in the bottle, tested it last night, shook my head in dismay and dumped it. Oh well. Hard lesson learned for me--AERATE.

 

[user 574]

desertBrew- U tasted it, aww man that takes balls, i have smelt that stuff be for and i almost puked, me and my stupid experiments with sugar water and yeast, and barly.. The smell is hard to get out of the carby

It was kind of like being on Fear Factor.

 

[Mike's Brew and Brat]

Monk,

The guys at Stienfillers said the same thing aeration problem. And I must have gotten some contaminants in there as well.

Oh well, live and learn. I will be doing another in a couple weeks.

 

[homebrewer_99]

Mike's BnB:

I had the exact same scenario with a hef. I just ended up dumping the last bottle of it last night. Brewed wort as usual; probably insufficient aeration when I dumped it into the carboy; 2 weeks=1.050-1.024; then the next month brings about no drop in gravity. I even took half of the wort and added raspberries to it. There was vigorous fermentation for a couple days, then back to normal and the grav is still 1.023. I gave it another month in the bottle, tested it last night, shook my head in dismay and dumped it. Oh well. Hard lesson learned for me--AERATE.

Another thing is make sure your beer is good before wasting fruit and money...

 

[andre the giant]

I only had one bad batch... some of you may remember... I made a spiced strong english ale and the yeast was dead. Or so I thought. When I think back on it...

It seems like I smacked the pack on the yeast, then a few days later opened the package to make a starter and the inner packet hadn't burst. Stupid me... I thought the inner packet was the nutrient/wort and the stuff in the foil pouch was the yeast. So I pitched the foil stuff into the wort and pitched the little packet in the trash. Since then, I've learned that the inner packet is the yeast, so the only thing in my starter was wort. I thought I had a "stealth ferment" on the starter, and so I pitched half of it into the fresh wort and bottled the rest for another batch of beer. When fermentation didn't start, I pitched the bottled "culture". Then I went out of town for a week, and then went on vacation. It took about 3 weeks for the beer to become vinegar, which tells me that I had some pretty good sanitation.

if only I had pitched some yeast into that beast. When I rebrewed it, it came out tasting fantastic. So raise a glass to the lost batch. May the beer gods enjoy.

sniff, sniff

 

[bikebryan]

I only had one bad batch... some of you may remember... I made a spiced strong english ale and the yeast was dead. Or so I thought. When I think back on it...

It seems like I smacked the pack on the yeast, then a few days later opened the package to make a starter and the inner packet hadn't burst. Stupid me... I thought the inner packet was the nutrient/wort and the stuff in the foil pouch was the yeast. So I pitched the foil stuff into the wort and pitched the little packet in the trash. Since then, I've learned that the inner packet is the yeast, so the only thing in my starter was wort. I thought I had a "stealth ferment" on the starter, and so I pitched half of it into the fresh wort and bottled the rest for another batch of beer. When fermentation didn't start, I pitched the bottled "culture". Then I went out of town for a week, and then went on vacation. It took about 3 weeks for the beer to become vinegar, which tells me that I had some pretty good sanitation.

if only I had pitched some yeast into that beast. When I rebrewed it, it came out tasting fantastic. So raise a glass to the lost batch. May the beer gods enjoy.

sniff, sniff

Hmm.

If you were using Wyeast XL packs, you DID pitch the yeast. The stuff in the little plastic pouch is the nutrient; the stuff directly inside the foil pouch is the liquid yeast. I know this - I've pitched an XL pack once where the inner pack didn't break. Within 14 hours I had a vigourous ferment going, and it turned out fine.

 

[Spyk'd]

Ok, ok, confession time. I've never had a bad batch per se, but I made a fatal error on my second batch ever. I was formulating my stout recipe from scratch and came across a grain called CaraPils, which lends body and head retention to beers. Hey, I thought, I want some real good body in my stout! Well I must have skipped over the part where it talked about the nonfermentables and made a recipe of 2 pounds of DME and 5 pounds of CaraPils, along with the rest of the stout grains. To add insult to injury I forgot to order my grains crushed, so spent about an hour crushing all the grains with a rolling pin. The actual brewing went off without a hitch and off to the fermenter.

When transferring to the secondary the sample tasted sweet, but this being my second batch, I gave it more time. And then some more, and then more. After about six weeks I researched and found my answer: it had fermented all the available sugar and was done. It had a really good stout flavor, but was overly sweet, like "Stout Soda". 'I' screwed up.

I didn't dump it though, oh no. I cooked with it. Made some pretty awesome chili with it too. Apparently I made my own lemons!

Relax, won't worry, have a home brew (or three).

 

[andre the giant]

Hmm.

If you were using Wyeast XL packs, you DID pitch the yeast. The stuff in the little plastic pouch is the nutrient; the stuff directly inside the foil pouch is the liquid yeast. I know this - I've pitched an XL pack once where the inner pack didn't break. Within 14 hours I had a vigourous ferment going, and it turned out fine.

Now I'm back to feeling less stupid. What a roller coaster ride of emotions.......