Contamination

[cbren723]

How do you tell if your beer is contaminated?

I am 2 weeks into fermentation, and just took the gravity which was a little less than 1.03. My beer seems very thick and the clarity is awful. it tasted very strong but definetly not the taste I was expecting.

Would adding brown sugar to my boil be the cause of any of this?

 

[TopherM]

Was the brown sugar part of the recipe??

Adding brown sugar would have raised ABV and dried out the beer. This would have possibly thrown the malt balance and bitterness balance out of wack if it were not part of the original recipe. Adding simple sugars that aren't in the recipe is about the same tossing in a few shot glasses of grain alcohol. Seriously....if the recipe doesn't explicitly call for it, there is rarely a good reason to add simple sugars to any brew.

That said, leave your beer alone. It is not done. You can't judge the final taste of a chilled, carbonated beer based on a warm, pre-carbonation sample. The beer is going to change a ton between now and when it is complete. Be patient and send it through the entire process, then judge it.

If it were "contaminated" it would be souring and pellicle would start growing on the surface. It is doubtful you are contaminated, just impatient!!

Anyway, finish this one out, give it proper time to condition and carbonate, get it down to serving temps, THEN judge the beer. Even if it isn't the best beer ever, it will be beer, and anything that's a little off can be a learning experience that you can fix in your brews going forward. Trust me, it takes quite a few crappy batches to learn how to make consistently good batches!!

Good luck!

 

[cbren723]

Thanks for the feedback. I definitely do not think there is any contamination because nothing is growing on the top (maybe a tiny bit, but nothing like the pictures ive seen). This was my first time making a recipie by myself (only 4th batch ever), I put the brown sugar in there becuase I read other strong scotch ale recipies with it in there. When I tasted my beer, it seems as though the brown sugar is evident, not the taste but the texture (maybe it was something other than brown sugar). Any suggestions on tips to help fix that?

My first thought is to filter but I dont have any beer specific filtering equipment.

 

[TopherM]

That said, leave your beer alone. It is not done. You can't judge the final taste of a chilled, carbonated beer based on a warm, pre-carbonation sample. The beer is going to change a ton between now and when it is complete. Be patient and send it through the entire process, then judge it.

This....there is no "brown sugar texture," it's all dissolved. Don't filter, don't fix, just be patient and don't judge the beer by the warm, pre-carb sample!! RDWHAHB!!