Skunky beer?

[skunkfunk]

I brewed a weizenbock not too long ago, and some weird stuff is happening. I bottled it about 12-13 days ago. Last night, I stuck one in the fridge for a couple of hours, and when I opened it, the foam very slowly creeped up the bottle. I poured it before it got out of hand, and the head was a bit tall, but not alarming.

The smell was somewhat unpleasant, and the taste was as well. Reminded me of a single bottle from a few batches ago that tasted badly (the rest of that batch was fine.)

Tasted about like it smelled. Beer, drinkable, but unpleasant. I got out my refractometer to check the gravity, and it was lower than when I bottled it. Brix 10 upon bottling, 9.2 now. According to the spreadsheet, that means the gravity was 1.019 when bottling, and now is 1.016. I degassed it before checking.

Well, that didn't seem right, so I checked it with the hydrometer - 1.021. Now, according to the calculator, with brix 9.2 and gravity 1.021, the OG was approximately 1.059, while what I measured pre-fermentation (with refractometer) was 1.072.

I fermented it with WLP351, and the first few days I got horrible rhino fart smells. I'm told this is normal with this yeast. Fermented at ambient temperature 63-66 degrees.

tl;dr: My beer is a bit skunky, and my gravity readings seem weird. Do I need to dump it?

 

[CCericola]

I brewed a weizenbock not too long ago, and some weird stuff is happening. I bottled it about 12-13 days ago. Last night, I stuck one in the fridge for a couple of hours, and when I opened it, the foam very slowly creeped up the bottle. I poured it before it got out of hand, and the head was a bit tall, but not alarming.

The smell was somewhat unpleasant, and the taste was as well. Reminded me of a single bottle from a few batches ago that tasted badly (the rest of that batch was fine.)

Tasted about like it smelled. Beer, drinkable, but unpleasant. I got out my refractometer to check the gravity, and it was lower than when I bottled it. Brix 10 upon bottling, 9.2 now. According to the spreadsheet, that means the gravity was 1.019 when bottling, and now is 1.016. I degassed it before checking.

Well, that didn't seem right, so I checked it with the hydrometer - 1.021. Now, according to the calculator, with brix 9.2 and gravity 1.021, the OG was approximately 1.059, while what I measured pre-fermentation (with refractometer) was 1.072.

I fermented it with WLP351, and the first few days I got horrible rhino fart smells. I'm told this is normal with this yeast. Fermented at ambient temperature 63-66 degrees.

tl;dr: My beer is a bit skunky, and my gravity readings seem weird. Do I need to dump it?

There's really two things - you could've bottled too young in which case the yeast is doing more work in the bottle or the other option, and what I think is more likely given the off flavour, is that it's infected.

In either case, you should open a few samples to see if it's isolated to one bottle or the whole batch. If it's the entire batch, you should either drink them very quickly or dump them. If you decide to keep them, you should probably chill them immediately as they have the potential of becoming bottle bombs.

 

[skunkfunk]

Great. So there's a chance this infection is a gusher?

 

[CCericola]

Great. So there's a chance this infection is a gusher?

Yes - it could be something like brett that's just nomming away on those sugars and gassing up those bottles into bombs.

 

[skunkfunk]

Opened another bottle last night. Seemed ok.

It was only in the refrigerator for a couple of hours, and when I opened it, the foam rose out of the bottle after about 5 minutes. I think it's alright for now, will check again in a week.

 

[JLem]

A refractometer is not accurate once fermentation is underway - the alcohol throws of the reading (since it has different refractive properties than wort)

It sounds like it may have been bottled too soon. The off flavors seem to indicate a possible infection as well, but that is usually hard to determine this early.

Btw, which yeast strain did you use? At what temp? An for how long?

 

[skunkfunk]

I used WLP351. Forgot do a starter, realized that mistake sometime after I had already started mashing. Fermented in primary at 63-66 degrees ambient for three weeks. While I was unable to accurately measure FG using refractometer, I did verify that the reading did not change for three days.

The bottles have been conditioning for 2 weeks, at 55-63 degrees.

 

[JLem]

That is a very low flocculating yeast, so some of the off flavor might be "yeast bite" from the yeast still in suspension. Also, even if you get stable readings 3 days in a row, it doesn't mean the beer was ready to bottle. If the fermentation was stuck, you could end up kickstarting it by bottling - stirring things up, introducing a little oxygen, keeping the bottles warm, etc. Especially with such a low flocculating yeast like this - there will be plenty of yeast in the bottle to start help with the renewed fermentation.

 

[flars]

I used WLP351. Forgot do a starter, realized that mistake sometime after I had already started mashing. Fermented in primary at 63-66 degrees ambient for three weeks. While I was unable to accurately measure FG using refractometer, I did verify that the reading did not change for three days.

The bottles have been conditioning for 2 weeks, at 55-63 degrees.

55° to 63° is a rather low temperature for bottle conditioning. Move 6 bottles to a warmer location, 70° to 72°. Leave them for two weeks. At the end of two weeks chill two of the bottles for three days. Check the results.

Just in case you do have an infection, put the 6 bottles in a protective container.

Good luck.