help! Cheesy hop smell/taste developing in IPA

[milholen]

I tried a bottle of my first all-grain IPA tonight and to my dismay it had a distinctive cheesy hop aroma and taste. NOt in a good way at all. Has anyone else ever experienced this? What can I do in the future to avoid? All the hops were vacuum sealed and frozen so I can't imagine it would be a hop freshness issue.

The hops I used were Centennial, Columbus, Cascade, and Centennial.

Odd thing is that I had a bottle of this on Sat night and it was great -- no cheesy aroma or anything. The beer is not even 3 weeks old yet. Will aging change this or is it mold or something?

Thanks for the advice!

 

[pericles]

How old were the hops when you brewed with them? A cheesy aroma is usually the hallmark of stale hops.

On the other hand, a recently developed off-flavor in beer is usually a sign of infection. What was your sanitation process like? Is it possible you picked up some wild yeast? Alternatively, if you're bottling, is it possible that just ONE bottle is infected?

 

[milholen]

I don't know how old the hops were -- all I can say is that I bought them a few weeks ago at my LHBS and they've always been frozen in airtight mylar bags. The weird thing is that none of the other bottles I've tasted had this cheesy off taste.

One thing I noticed with this beer though is that it had a greenish tint -- I also noticed some hop residue in the bottom of the bottle that had been sucked up from the primary fermenter. I was brewing with my dad and he mistakenly shoved the racking cane down into the yeast cake at one point so a few of the bottles were filled with yeast and hop residue a bit.

I wonder if this could be the cause or if maybe something else is going on like an infection? My sanitation efforts were tantamount to operating room clean so I can't imagine that. I even mop the floors with a strong bleach solution before I brew now.

 

[Dogphish]

was the layer of yeast in the primary or secondary? are you racking straight to bottle from the fermenter, or do you use a bottling bucket?

 

[milholen]

the layer of yeast was from the primary. I used a bottling bucket, but when racking from the primary to the bottling bucket, my dad shoved the racking cane down into the cake and pulled over a lot of yeast and trub into the bottling bucket. So there's more yeast and hop residue in the bottles than I would have liked. The beer is fairly green though -- just pushing 3 weeks old. So I hope that aging will mellow the flavor. Weird thing is though -- I didn't pick up this overwhelming cheese/foot smell/taste in the other bottles. This bottle did have a lot of yeast and hop residue in it though -- so much so that the beer had a slight greenish tint under fluorescent lighting.