IPA smells like applejuice?

[Projectfdw]

Hey guys, love the site. Hoping for a little help.

Just put my 3rd batch into secondary. Midwest Octane IPA LME kit. Had a good 2 litre starter and used wyeast witbread. Everything went pretty smooth but I did scorch the wort just a bit. Had it in primary for 3 weeks and just moved to secondary and it has a very sweet almost applejuice type smell. Had it in a swamp cooler for the first two weeks with a pretty steady 68 degree temperature and the third week I took it out (OG was a bit high, so I thought if I raised it to ambient room temp it would help bring down the gravity-72 degrees). Any thoughts on this smell? Esters? Will it calm down. It's currently sitting with 2 oz chinook and an oz of wood chips. Going to bottle in 2 weeks. Am I going to be stuck with a slightly hoppy alcoholic applejuice? Please make me feel better. Going to be my last batch for a bit with a kiddo coming in a few weeks so I was really hoping for this to be great.
Thanks.

 

[Projectfdw]

Also, it is much darker than I expected. Looks similar to the porter I just brewed.

 

[bjl110]

The smell is probably acetelahyde (sp?), a byproduct found in young beer. It will go away in a couple weeks or so. No worries. The scorching probably added a bit to the color, as well as beer looking darker than it actually is when still in the fermenter. 5 gal looks much darker than 12 oz. You'll be fine. RDWHAHB!

 

[bjl110]

Congrats on the baby as well! My first just hit 9 months. He grabs at beer bottles whenever he sees them. My SWMBO is less amused, but daddy sure is proud!

 

[Dogphish]

this happened to me one time.

i did not aerate before pitching a vial of liquid yeast, no starter, and fermentation went on for over a month in the cool garage, maybe 65 degrees. after 5 weeks, i opened the bucket and there was still only a vials worth of yeast because without oxygen, the yeast couldn't multiply.

the stress on the yeast made the beer smell like apple cider. i dry hopped the 5 gallon batch with 3 ounces of whole leaf Centennial hops, and the apple cider smell/flavor was completely hidden/gone.