Never dump your beer!!! Patience IS a virtue!!! Time heals all things, even beer!

I think people assume oxidization is a negative flavor, and then they have an 18 month old RIS and think, this tastes great, clearly it isn't oxidized, it even developed this really interesting sweet sherry-like flavor.

But maybe it won't have it, who knows. Taste it to find out.

 

But telling a nervous noob, something like oxidation is a GIVEN is never a good thing, because just because your beer may have been oxidized 1) there's no gaurentee it was just from sitting in a bucket (or that it couldn't have developed simply because of the "right combination" of dark malts or something that might be more influenced by oxygen) 2) and it doesn't mean that the next person's beer is going to be oxidized, JUST from sitting in a bucket. Too many new brewers are quick to jump on every BAD thing they read, every worse case scenario, and also buy into the old glass -vs- plastic debate.

The ENTIRE premise of this thread is for the nervous brewer to lay down any pre-conceived notion that since "x, y, or z" that they might have heard or read about or assumed might be bad happened to their beer doesn't guarantee that the beer is ruined.....

I know you were trying to be helpful, but the way you phrased it, whether you think it's a good thing or not, was like you were assuring him HIS would be oxydized.....

 

OK, attached are photos of the yeast patch, including a close-up, and my hall of shame: 3 14-month old brews that will be investigated, and possibly bottled, today.

The adventure continues.... naturally I chose deal with this, after a year-plus of neglect on a very busy holiday weekend as we are preparing for many family members arriving for Christmas (10 in all). At least we have this bonus case of IPA.

My son and I will work on these this afternoon, as I have to work tonight. I'll be in touch - should I start a new thread for this or just continue here?

Thanks all....

 

looks fine. let us know how it tastes

 

One year old beer, dry airlocks, lots of headspace........

I guess the premise of this thread is that time makes all beer better, based on one experience of a reduction in some aldehydes and esters. Which is a pretty strange premise. I'll show myself out.

 

Unless they got moved a few times they should be ok. CO2 is heavier than air so as long as they were relatively stationary they should be ok. Dry airlocks may be a problem but I doubt the headspace would be.

I would bottle them and see what happens. Worst case scenario they turn out bad and you wasted a few hours of your time and some caps. Best case scenario you have 6 cases of great beer. I would guess that odds are the beer is fine and you will at least be able to drink it.

 

Oh boy this is awesome. Going to put that old saw about leaving your beer on the yeast cake to bed once and for all! Let us know how it turns out!

 

They have not been moved at all - we have a long narrow pantry and they sit at the far end.

Since I'll be doing at least some of this with my adult son who is moving to Beijing in a few weeks - it won't be a waste of time - I'm just wishing I had dealt with this a month ago so the beer would have been available for this family gathering. Ah well.

I'll report in later.

 

OK, have dealt with all three batches - and have the photos.

The first we opened was the pumpkin ale brewed 10/3/11 - very yeasty smell and look, and the sample looked like something from a beer swamp. None of us (two of my adult sons were with me) had any desire to taste it. Dumped it, cleaned the pail.

The second we opened was the nut brown ale brewed 10/2/11 - also yeasty, but less so. Nonetheless, the sample was murky, and it did not taste good, so we dumped that one, too, and cleaned the pail. (Still wondering whether that was the right decision....)

Finally, we took a sample from the oatmeal stout, in the better bottle that I sent the photo of before - we just weren't sure about the taste, but it was clear, and so we re-yeasted it, and bottled it. This will be a three year beer - brewed in 2011, bottled in 2012, opened in 2013. We got just under 2 cases, as I was extra careful to avoid the yeasty patch on the top as I racked it to the bottling pail.

The first two photos are of the pumpkin ale, the second two of the nut brown, and the fifth just showing the color and clarity of the oatmeal stout. At last I've dealt with my procrastination brews! And then we settled in and brewed a new batch of nut brown (son #2 wanted to learn how to brew).

Thanks for the helpful advice - the pumpkin ale was intriguing enough that I think I'll try the recipe again - sometime when I'm going to be able to follow through with it! Again, thanks!

 

Hello all!

Long time lurker, first time poster. Finally had something I thought I might want to share since I'm conflicted and this thread is most relevant. That, and y'all have been a huge resource for me though your archives!

I have a bit of an experimental batch that I would appreciate some advice on, a failed lager. While it's winter that doesn't mean anything here in aflorida, and my condo doesn't have unseated areas anyway, so I was stuck with workaround lager for this. I mainly wanted to see if I could keep things cool enough with the cooler+frozen soda bottle trick.

I did an IPA lager after a friend told me an interesting anecdote, about 3 gallons of a 6 gallon batch split for standard yeast/temp and lager yeast/temp. I used a White Labs California Common harvested from a previous brew with a big (for this batch) starter, figured it'd be forgiving. Fermented around 55-58 for 3 weeks, diacital rest was probably jarring to the yeast as I just left the cooler open a couple days with no new ice (up to 68*) then did straight ice.

Problem is I'm not getting this temperature controlled and the maintenance of it is beyond my ability. I haven't dumped a thing yet and it's worked out great, but what would the best course of action be for this situation? At this point the ice has melted and I haven't replaced it for a couple weeks due to lack of time/forethought.

If it weren't for the hops I'd throw some brett and lacto in it and leave it in a closet for a year, but my reading indicates the good old hops are going to inhibit the bugs. I'm not dead set on making it sour, but it's been the my back of the mind plan B for a failed beer.

Any ideas from the ever informed and creative masses of HomeBrewTalk.com?

 

Okay here's one for you, I brewed a batch of APA before I left to visit family over the new year (which by the way was way darker than it should have been, a question for another thread I suppose). When I left super early on Dec 26th there was little to no sign of fermentation munch to my chagrin. It was brewed on Dec 22 (i live at 8750', my fermentations seem to lag), but I hoped to be through the thick of it before I left and was going to keg on my return. Well, apparently some time after we left the house fermentation went gang busters as it blew the stopper right out of my carboy On return to the homestead on Jan. 5 I found my beer with a thick, dried foam around the carboy opening (almost completely capped itself off, but not quite), I'm guessing it spent about 7 days like that. .... so, I'm wondering, do I siphon this off to a secondary & wait to see if anything nasty grows?, do I dump a couple of Lambics in there and try to sour it?, do I keg it & hope for the best in a couple of weeks?, or should I bottle it & forget it for a year?....any thoughts?

 

should be fine. clean up the best you can and proceed as though the top hadn't been blown off.

i would think looking into an o2 system for aeration would be wise. oxygen is important to yeast and you have about 30% less than those of us at sea level.

you have a great natural environment for cold crashing and lagering. i used to live over black bear pass from you. i did some interesting experiments with insulated boxes outside.

 

Actually, to date, there are 324 pages of overwhelming evidence that age improves most homebrewing flaws unrelated to infections. I suppose if you want to nitpick, you can challenge the title of "time heals all things...", but really, that's just arguing for the sake of arguing.

If 300+ pages of testimonials aren't enough to convince you, then your initial bias is clearly too strong. You might as well leave, as you're demonstrating a complete lack of objectivity.

 

don't worry, i am absolutely not discussing the premise of the thread.

 

My guess is that you're probably OK, although that is a bit of time for the airlock to be off...I would take a quick taste just to see if you can detect any souring. But otherwise I would proceed as normal. If it does seem to be infected, you can rack, bottle and drink as quickly as possible, or you could try to sour it on purpose and see what happens. My guess is it's probably OK though. If the lid blew off due to strong fermentation, the environment was pretty inhospitable to outside contaminants at least until the fermentation subsided, at which point the alcohol level would help to inhibit bacteria growth somewhat. Worst thing is you might have some oxidization issues, but no way to know that until you taste it. Best o' luck and let us know what happens.

 

Clean it up and proceed as normal. Don't worry until you have some reason to do so.

There are tons of tales here on HBT about undetected explosive fermentations that yielded great beer.

 

This is a great idea, and one of those times where I think 02 systems make a lot of sense.

 

Certainly. You mashed your grains at 190 degrees for the entire hour, it's never going to improve. You cleaned your bottles with bleach and forgot to rinse them, it's never going to improve. You added four pounds of lactose at bottling time without accounting for it in your recipe, it's never going to improve.

That's not what this thread is about, nor did it ever pretend to be. This thread is about people who get off flavors from the normal beer process due to normal issues that homebrewers often face; those flaws often DO fade or completely disappear, given enough time.

 

I have a question for you guys. I brewed a nut brown ale from NB back in august. After the process of moving into an apartment and my homebrew stuff being packed away and deciding to switch to bottling from Kegging, I am just getting around to bottling it now. It is still in the primary fermenter, no gunk or funkyness on top of the beer or anything, airlock has never been low and vodka has always been used on it.

Do you guys forsee any problems I will run into? Will there be enough yeast left to carbonate the bottles?

 

Odds are, it's great beer. Probably not a huge ABV, so the yeast will likely be just fine... might be a little slow to carb, but might not.

 

Awesome! Do you suggest adding any yeast in just in case? Or anything that might help male sure it carbonates correctly?

 

ignore. i thought i was replying to someone else.

 

That's up to you. You might consider a packet of neutral dry yeast, sprinkle a couple of grains in each bottle... but I honestly think that you won't have any issues with the yeast as is.

I brewed an imperial nut brown ale (8.66% ABV). ~4 weeks in primary, ~4 months in secondary. No issues at all with carbing - and I had clearly left the yeast cake behind when I racked to secondary.

There's likely a lot more yeast in solution than you realize.

 

Agree that time can make a big difference.

I brewed a Vanilla Porter back in the fall that didn't come out well at all. I'm pretty sure I ruined it with the Vodka-Vanilla Bean tincture I added to the secondary.

Let the keg sit for three months and checked it again this past weekend. The off-flavors I didn't like have disappeared and it's now a very nice beer.

Time:1 Lost Cause:0

 

Ageing is an amazing thing.

 

Similar, I brewed a whiskey stout, 4 weeks primary, 8 months bulk aged over oak and whiskey. Bottled without adding any additional yeast, carbed up just fine.

 

Sounds great, guys! I can't wait to bottle it now!

 

Nice. If there's ever been a case for "you have plenty of yeast", this is it.

 

Be sure to let us know how it turns out!

 

yanks, what I might consider doing in this case is krausening--BrauKaiser has a great article on it here, and that would make sure that you've got enough active yeast to do the job. Plus, it's fun to do. You would just need to make a mini-batch of the brown ale you did in August (or some reasonably close approximation) since I assume you haven't saved some of it in the freezer. But that will be cheap and pretty easy, particularly if you use extract. It is extra work, but if it were me this is what I'd do to be sure that my beer carbonated in the bottles, although I suspect the others are right and that you'll be fine either way. Let us know how it goes, and cheers!

 

Fun! Were you living in Silverton? That's where we moved from for a 'milder climate' . Love the idea of cold crashing lagers, I'll have to look into it & thanks for the tip on the O2, I was just wondering if that was my lag problem & looking at an aeration pump at MoreBeer! earlier this afternoon, makes total sense & I hadn't thought about how much more we're lacking up here!

 

I will thanks!

 

The trick will be to cold crash without freezing it solid. It will probably work better in April than in January! A good cold crash will turn the yeast cake somewhat solid, making it very easy to rack from, and give you nice clear beer.

 

how much priming sugar did you use?

 

I've got a brown ale I've debated on dumping for awhile. I somehow forgot to add the chocolate malt to the mash and the beer basically has no flavor. I've just been adding different things to it to try and get it to give me something. Added some macadamia chocolate ground coffee, some brown sugar and 2oz of chinook hops to it yesterday. If I still can't get any flavor, I think it'll be dumped.

 

How did you add it to your beer? How long had your beer been in the primary?

 

2 weeks is way to soon to check carbonation.

 

Whoa there tiger. Back away from the case of beer. Let it sit for three weeks, then try one. If it's still flat (it won't be), then start to worry. But DON'T dump it!

 

Are you kidding? Have you not read any of the hundreds upon hundreds of threads that state that three weeks at 70 degrees F is the baseline for bottle carbing? High gravity beers or lower temps can take longer to carb.

If you added sufficient priming sugar, and mixed it properly, the beer WILL carb. Just give it time.

If you dumped solid sugar into the bottling bucket, as opposed to boiling the sugar in a little water and mixing that solution in, you'll get uneven carbing. Some bottles will be flat (no sugar in them), where some may literally explode (too much sugar causes excessive pressure).

 

^^^This. And if the beer is sitting in a closed closet on an exterior wall, it might be colder than the normal 70 degrees. Mine stays about 65 degrees in the winter - takes about five weeks to condition, more or less.