SlitheryDee
General Manager
I had a combined brewing/bottling day Saturday, and I had a few wheat beers from a previous batch throughout the course of it. It was a long day, so I don't doubt that I had a few more than I should have, but that's not really the problem.
I woke in the wee hours of the morning with perhaps the most excruciating headache I can remember having. It was so bad that I couldn't do anything but writhe and gasp for a while. A little later I paced around the house, cradling my head, dripping with sweat, alternating between the couch and the bathroom because I was convinced I was going to upchuck from the sheer agony of it. Eventually it began to ease a bit. Perhaps it was because of the 3 advils I had taken earlier, perhaps not. At some point I went to sleep again.
I awoke with absolutely no pain at all, and proceeded about the rest of my day more or less fine. Maybe I had a slight ghost of a hangover, but nothing to write home about really.
Now my first thought was fusels in the beer. I've heard these can cause killer hangovers, and this one was unlike anything I've ever experienced before, both it it's transient nature and intensity. It makes sense that I might have exposed myself to a compound that I haven't taken in before.
This beer was brewed before I had real temperature control, so I wouldn't be surprised if it got up to around 76-80F at the height of fermentation. When it came time to bottle it, I noticed that it had a very sharp bitter note to it. At the time I assumed that it was just the Willamette hops, which I had never used before, but now I wonder if it wasn't fusels. By the numbers this should have been an extremely low IBU beer. Brewer's friend has it at 5.24, so even allowing for error it should be quite low. I don't think the hops really can account for that intense bitterness it had early in. I don't have enough experience tasting homebrew to even know what fusels taste like though, so I'm just positing a theory at this point. In any case, that sharp note had mellowed a great deal after bottle conditioning for a while and the beer was very enjoyable by Saturday.
The only problem with that theory is that the beer I brewed before that (a cream ale) was fermented under the exact same conditions, with the same yeast (safale us-05) and exhibited none of the questionable aspects that the wheat beer had. No sharp bitterness, and no headaches after consuming. So I'm wondering it this is something unique to wheat beer. Any ideas?
I woke in the wee hours of the morning with perhaps the most excruciating headache I can remember having. It was so bad that I couldn't do anything but writhe and gasp for a while. A little later I paced around the house, cradling my head, dripping with sweat, alternating between the couch and the bathroom because I was convinced I was going to upchuck from the sheer agony of it. Eventually it began to ease a bit. Perhaps it was because of the 3 advils I had taken earlier, perhaps not. At some point I went to sleep again.
I awoke with absolutely no pain at all, and proceeded about the rest of my day more or less fine. Maybe I had a slight ghost of a hangover, but nothing to write home about really.
Now my first thought was fusels in the beer. I've heard these can cause killer hangovers, and this one was unlike anything I've ever experienced before, both it it's transient nature and intensity. It makes sense that I might have exposed myself to a compound that I haven't taken in before.
This beer was brewed before I had real temperature control, so I wouldn't be surprised if it got up to around 76-80F at the height of fermentation. When it came time to bottle it, I noticed that it had a very sharp bitter note to it. At the time I assumed that it was just the Willamette hops, which I had never used before, but now I wonder if it wasn't fusels. By the numbers this should have been an extremely low IBU beer. Brewer's friend has it at 5.24, so even allowing for error it should be quite low. I don't think the hops really can account for that intense bitterness it had early in. I don't have enough experience tasting homebrew to even know what fusels taste like though, so I'm just positing a theory at this point. In any case, that sharp note had mellowed a great deal after bottle conditioning for a while and the beer was very enjoyable by Saturday.
The only problem with that theory is that the beer I brewed before that (a cream ale) was fermented under the exact same conditions, with the same yeast (safale us-05) and exhibited none of the questionable aspects that the wheat beer had. No sharp bitterness, and no headaches after consuming. So I'm wondering it this is something unique to wheat beer. Any ideas?
