elchicharron
Member
Hey everyone. My name is Justin and this is my first post here. I'm glad to have discovered this site; it's a great source of information.
My brother, a friend and I recently started homebrewing, and we've encountered a problem: Our beers are turning sour.
We put together an Irish dry stout for our first batch. It tasted great in the fermenter, but three weeks after it was bottled, it's become pretty sour. Maybe three weeks is still a bit early to be judging it, but this is so sour I don't see it going away with more bottle conditioning. It's definitely drinkable though. It's a lambo-stout I guess
Our second batch was a California common. It's been in the fermenter for about three weeks, and only in the past couple of days did the fermentation seem to finally quit. I pulled a sample for a gravity reading (1.020) today and tasted it. It's developed the same sour flavor as the stout, which is a bummer because, until this point, it was wonderfully smooth and clean tasting.
I'm a bit flummoxed because there are no strange smells and the beers look fine. There are no weird growths or slimes or films. The California common is crystal clear.
To get to the point, we were going to start a Belgian wit this weekend, but I don't want begin another beer if I've got a source of infection in our equipment somewhere. I thought we had been doing a good job of sanitizing things, but maybe we missed something. I'm kind of suspicious of our autosiphon.
Thanks in advance for your advice. Until then, I'll just RDWAHA(S)HB.
My brother, a friend and I recently started homebrewing, and we've encountered a problem: Our beers are turning sour.
We put together an Irish dry stout for our first batch. It tasted great in the fermenter, but three weeks after it was bottled, it's become pretty sour. Maybe three weeks is still a bit early to be judging it, but this is so sour I don't see it going away with more bottle conditioning. It's definitely drinkable though. It's a lambo-stout I guess
Our second batch was a California common. It's been in the fermenter for about three weeks, and only in the past couple of days did the fermentation seem to finally quit. I pulled a sample for a gravity reading (1.020) today and tasted it. It's developed the same sour flavor as the stout, which is a bummer because, until this point, it was wonderfully smooth and clean tasting.
I'm a bit flummoxed because there are no strange smells and the beers look fine. There are no weird growths or slimes or films. The California common is crystal clear.
To get to the point, we were going to start a Belgian wit this weekend, but I don't want begin another beer if I've got a source of infection in our equipment somewhere. I thought we had been doing a good job of sanitizing things, but maybe we missed something. I'm kind of suspicious of our autosiphon.
Thanks in advance for your advice. Until then, I'll just RDWAHA(S)HB.