Well Chadwick you have to tell the story now. You can't give a hint like that and not tell.
Ok, so the airlock dried out while I left the beer unattended longer than I should have. The airlock was one of those "S" shaped ones that has the little cap on the end. I lost that cap long ago.
Weeks prior to when I did get around to bottling this beer I was busy dealing with a gnat invasion in the house. It was hell. Gnats everywhere and I spent a week trying to find the source without success. As it turned out, the teenage daughter used some potatoes in a science experiement and she tossed the rest of the potatoe bag under her bed and forgot about it. That was the source. Once I found it I removed the problem, damn it was nasty, and over the course of the next week I clean up the rest of the house of gnats.
Once all of that was out of the way it was time to bottle my beer. I was a bit concerned when I discovered the airlock was completely dried out. But heck, there is a CO2 blanket over that right? Take in mind, this beer needed bottled about 4 months ago. I open up the lid and I see what looks like wax floating around on the surface of the beer. I know it's infected at this point. But I taste it and think about what I'm going to do. I pull a small sample from just under the surface of the "wax" and give it a taste. Hmmm......apples, fruit, beer, eh....it'll age out to be pretty good.
So I bottle it.
3 weeks later I open up a bottle and check to see how it turned out. It carbonated perfectly. It poured a wonderful golden clear. Little lacing, but whatever. It smelled of fruit and apples. I tasted it and the the immediate sensation was one of fresh green apples and fruit. Nice. Unfortunately, that quickly gave away to an aftertaste of mouth puckering tart and something that I can still not really describe other than you don't want that taste in your beer.
I poured the rest of the glass and figured that perhaps some age would make it better. After all, even I am amazed at how much age can improve a beer.
One year later I open another and give it another go. The tart tamed down, the apple flavor is still dominate, all in all it isn't terrible, but not what I intended to make at all. Then I noticed something in my glass.
At first I thought is was hop residue. I see this sometimes with my mega hopped beers. A small cluster of hops floating around in the glass. I fished out the floaty and examined it closer.
It was a mass of dead gnats. Frantically I start opening more beers and pouring them looking for these gnats. They are in just about every bottle. It's gnat lager.
I set back the rest of the batch. Never to tough them again myself. Occasionally I have a friend I tried to introduce to home-brewing take a turn to the dark side and become a pure beer bum. I gift them my gnat fortified lager and tell them this is what I'm into now. It works magically, they never return.
Sorry man, when it rains it pours.
