Off flavor info ( personal experience)

[Ozzfest05]

Alot of us have had an issue with fruity or off flavors from yeast getting too warm during fermentation or other reasons.

I wanted to share a personal experience hopefully to help someone.

I bottled an ipa that went through a 75f fermentation wort was probably at 80.
I'm stressing the importance on A. Secondary or long primary.
B. After bottles are carbonated let them sit in fridge for a week.
C. Cold crashing, usually done in secondary a day or two prior to bottling you drop temperature down as low as you can of course do not freeze your beer.

This is to help beers that have some off flavors or esters.
A good schedule for normal gravity beers are 1-2-3. Or 3 week primary 3 in bottles.
Cold crash 24-48 hours before bottling.
Then cold condition in bottles for a week if needed.

There Is too much yeast in your beer before bottling , the cold crash and secondary allows you to reduce the amount of yeast in your bottles

The yeast adds to those off flavors a reason not to reuse yeast from a stressed fermentation.

With my ipa it had a fruity taste to it, I was only refrigerating for 6 hours or so. After three day in the fridge I cracked one and was surprised that the fruity esters are mild and tolerable .

Every beer from now on I will make sure to cold condition.

I always watch my fermentation temp , keep it below 70 for ales but if it gets away remember you can still improve the before with patience.

I'm just so happy it's not a throw away hopefully this helps someone like me.

 

[unionrdr]

Not bad,but that 1-2-3 rule isn't a very good one. We improved on that by cutting out secondary unless adding fruit,wood,etc. Getting a stable FG & allowing the beer to clean up & Settle out in primary has proven to be a good thing.
The fruity esters are from the yeast brewed at high temps,which will produce different flavors depending on the particular yeast used. After carbonating/conditioning at room temp in covered boxes for 3-5 weeks,1 week in fridge is good. But I've found 2 weeks is better for thicker head & longer lasting carbonation. I generally get beers very clear before they even go into the fridge. The 2 weeks in the fridge also allows virtually all the beer to be poured off,or close to it. Clear & beautiful. Not to mention,clean flavor. My 2 bucks worth...

 

[Ozzfest05]

Good info, anything that will help. You can do just a primary , myself my primary is a 10 gal bucket with loose fit lid so I secondary everything for 2-3 weeks and crash.

I will put a couple in the fridge and hopefully I can wait 2 weeks .

Want to check the head and carbonation changes as you mentioned. Thank you

 

[unionrdr]

Your welcome. I stumbled onto that 2 week one. Def a happy accident. I forgot about 3 different styles of hb's I left in the fridge since Labor day. They sat in the fridge for 2 weeks while we tried some craft beers my son raved about. So when two weeks were up,we cracked them & got a pleasant surprise.
But I also noticed that bigger beers seem to need that much time to carb properly. Like my Whiskely ale,for instance. In my experience,the dark colors,& resulting bigger flavors make it take longer to mature,or carb up during fridge time. Not merely the amount of ABV.