Hi all,
I have a question regarding a couple of brews I did last fall. I plan to brew in the next week or so, and want to avoid running in to the same problem.
I had made a couple batches successfully with my friend (an experienced brewer) and they tasted fantastic (some variants on English bitter ales). I then attempted to brew on my own, and up until the point of bottling everything seemed great. The beer fermented as expected, my OG and FG numbers were on par for what I expected, but there was a weird sour taste in my beers. Hard to pinpoint what it was, but I made a stout and an IPA all of which I had to dump. Not sure if it was acetaldehyde or not, I’m unfamiliar with how odd that would taste. I was sure that everything was sanitized well (over sanitized if anything). The only issue was I may have rushed the process and didn’t secondary ferment.
So my question is, was this perhaps an issue of not using a secondary or giving the beer enough time, or contamination? Could it have been a water pH issue (I didn’t measure). Just wondering if there are precautions I could take for the next batch.
I’m still a newbie, so any advice is appreciated.
Cheers!
I have a question regarding a couple of brews I did last fall. I plan to brew in the next week or so, and want to avoid running in to the same problem.
I had made a couple batches successfully with my friend (an experienced brewer) and they tasted fantastic (some variants on English bitter ales). I then attempted to brew on my own, and up until the point of bottling everything seemed great. The beer fermented as expected, my OG and FG numbers were on par for what I expected, but there was a weird sour taste in my beers. Hard to pinpoint what it was, but I made a stout and an IPA all of which I had to dump. Not sure if it was acetaldehyde or not, I’m unfamiliar with how odd that would taste. I was sure that everything was sanitized well (over sanitized if anything). The only issue was I may have rushed the process and didn’t secondary ferment.
So my question is, was this perhaps an issue of not using a secondary or giving the beer enough time, or contamination? Could it have been a water pH issue (I didn’t measure). Just wondering if there are precautions I could take for the next batch.
I’m still a newbie, so any advice is appreciated.
Cheers!