Brew going bad after bottling - help!

[Lost]

Hot side aeration can cause long term flavor stability problems. I haven't had this issue as I tend to drink the beer pretty quickly and I don't have enough bottles or space to have two or three batches sitting around aging. So I can't tell you exactly how "long term flavor instability" tastes.. but it might be an issue. I know I asked you this before but, are you aerating, shaking, vigoriously stirring, or pouring your beer anytime the beer is above 80 F (during brewing OR during fermentation)? The ONLY time the beer should be introduced to any air at all is when you pitch the yeast.. practically any other time in the process and you risk aeration and the resultant flavor problems.

As for light causing skunkiness that is an issue I also haven't had to deal with personally but I do know that flourescent edit: no, scratch that *incandescent* light does not react with beer the way sunlight does. Supposedly it's sunlight and the store lights that do this.. however I'm no expert. Regardless, I've taken to wrapping my glass carboys in a damp towel and placing them in a dark spot just to be safe. Brown bottles are of course preferred to green or clear because they prevent or reduce the reaction with the sunlight.. so, what color are your bottles?

If I had to guess at this point I think you're aerating your beer somehow. Good luck tracking down the problem.. and I'm impressed that you've stuck with a hobby that hasn't been as fruitful as you might have hoped.

edit: I guess bottle color doesn't matter if they're in boxes.. doh! And no, skuniness will not get better with age. If it's light or aeration that's causing the problem I doubt the beer will improve.. it'll probably get worse. Seems like the only problem that time remedies is bitterness. Of course young beers, flat beers, and very dark and complex beers all benefit from additional aging but I wouldn't charactize those issues as flavor problems - they're consumer problems

 

[Shambolic]

Don't worry; I'm not giving up!! I love brewing, so I'll just keep refining my technique until my beers are great!!

 

[drinkhomebrew]

your problem is that you are not drinking your brew fast enough.

 

[Sir Sudster]

Shambolic, I'm going to go back to your original statement of the problem. You are tasting a yeasty flavor. An infected beer won't make it past your nose. I would like to suggest you try a new strain of yeast from a completely different supplier. I am suspecting traits of the yeast strains .
The only way to isolate this is to run the same beer style with a different yeast strain with all else the same.

 

[andre the giant]

This is a stupid question, unrelated to the topic at hand, but do you have skunks in Australia? If not, how would one know what a skunky beer smells like? Does the term "skunky" when refering to a beer really help? I'd assume there are skunks in Europe, but Australia is a continent filled with crazy looking marsupials and "Australian Rules" football hooligans.

If your fermenter is in a place where it can recieve direct sunlight, I'd be willing to bet that is part of the problem. A yeasty bite can also be caused by siphoning too much sediment at bottling, not using a secondary fermenter, not letting the yeast settle out of the beer, or agitating the beer before bottling.

 

[Shambolic]

I have some theories.

My very first brew used a kit yeast (poor quality, no doubt), and 1kg of dextrose. Ouch...

My next one was an attempt at a lager - bad idea for a beginner. I used a good yeast - saflager, but again, quite a bit of dextrose in the brewing. This beer is coming up to three months in the bottles, so I'll give it another taste then, and report back.

My third brew was an attempted pilsner - another bad idea. This has developed cidery flavours rather than the yeasty bite of the first two.

Was that a theory...?

Anyway, I just bottled an ale that is very promising, and have another on the go that should also turn out well.
I think my newly-refined brewing technique (including only malt fermentables, no dextrose) should yield the results I'm after.

 

[BootYtRappeR]

I think since the problem is occurring over time it could be one of two things or a combination of them.

the first might be the oxidation of the wort during the chilling process. I'm new to brewing but I've done alot of research. I read that if the wort is not chilled fast enough (within 20 minutes) to below 80F this can result in a cardboard like flavor (or at least a taste similar to how cardboard smells as I've never tried cardboard). This combined with a cidery taste from too much conditioning sugar could perhaps result in
1.dull(cardboard) flavor
2.tangy(cider) flavor
equals...something like a yeast flavor!

possibly. it would hurt to pay particular attention to these two processes.

BT