So I did a kettle soured gose over the weekend and had a very interesting smell overtake my entire house. Funky as a sumbitch Parmesan cheese. I used Swanson's L. Plantarum pills and a few scoops of a yogurt containing L. Bulgaricus, L. Thermophilus, L. Acidophilus, L. Casei, Bifidus.
Hit my OG, pH numbers all landed right. When the boil got ripping the cheese odor was unbelievably intense. So much so that I nearly shut it down and sent it down the drain. I'm aware of butyric acid and isovaleric acid and their effects, but this doesn't seem consistent with either. Long story short, I went through with the boil and it's in the fermenter right now. The mysterious part is that the wort/beer smells nothing at all like cheese, chilled in the kettle and now in the fermenter. All signs point to this developing into a drinkable beer. Did the crazy cheese smell boil off? If so, was this smell a side effect of the yogurt? There's not an incredible amount of info out there on kettle souring, and even less on diagnosing weirdness. Anyone ever have this happen?
Hit my OG, pH numbers all landed right. When the boil got ripping the cheese odor was unbelievably intense. So much so that I nearly shut it down and sent it down the drain. I'm aware of butyric acid and isovaleric acid and their effects, but this doesn't seem consistent with either. Long story short, I went through with the boil and it's in the fermenter right now. The mysterious part is that the wort/beer smells nothing at all like cheese, chilled in the kettle and now in the fermenter. All signs point to this developing into a drinkable beer. Did the crazy cheese smell boil off? If so, was this smell a side effect of the yogurt? There's not an incredible amount of info out there on kettle souring, and even less on diagnosing weirdness. Anyone ever have this happen?
