Fixing/masking off flavor with keg dry hop

[Echoloc8]

I've got an Irish Red ale on which I wound up undershooting the OG on brew day, so I made up a post-pitch DME addition (this method), as I have for a few other brews, which have all turned out decently.

Long story short, when adding the new mini-wort to this beer I wound up wiping down a measuring cup with an old (stinky) sponge and not discovering the problem until I was cleaning up after adding the new wort to the fermenter. I did use StarSan after the wipe (always!), but the resulting kegged beer now has an off flavor which seems to be coming from an infection. It definitely reminds me of that sad time time years ago before I really got my sanitization technique down.

The off flavors have lessened over time (Revvy's dictum never to dump a batch is being proven good), but I am growing impatient. This was a beer I made to pump up my pipeline, and while I am making more to fill it in, this means I've got an empty keg (my keg of EdWort's IPA kicked WAY fast ) and this off keg.

To sum up: I'm considering masking the problems by dry-hopping this off keg with a healthy amount of EKG or something similar, and I wanted to solicit advice: will this be likely to work, or just add hoppiness on top of the problems?

-Rich

 

[TopherM]

Hop aroma isn't really going to mask that type of off-flavor. You're just going to have beer that smells nice and tastes pretty much like it does now.

Coffee and/or vanilla are VERY good at masking off-flavors. Coffee doesn't sound good in an Irish Red, but a bit of vanilla might work. Just a couple capfuls of the grocery store extract masks the off-flavor nicely.

You could also always blend it with another beer.

I've even fixed some off-flavors by dumping a 6-pack of a similar commercial beer into the batch. Maybe some Killians or even Yeungling?

Just some suggestions that have worked for me!