I think i might have made a big n00b mistake...

[cb2100]

So, I have been working on an AHS All-Grain Red Stripe Clone, and after brewing we strained and dumped (pretty agressively, should have aerated well) into the primary and pitched the yeast (Wyeast 2035) and let it sit in the primary for exactly 4 weeks at roughly 58ºF (with no bubbling going on whatsoever at 4 weeks). As soon as I opened up the primary, BAM!!!, green apple smell, so much that I could practically taste it. After extensively searching this forum I thought maybe I should age it cold for a while, so I racked into a corny and threw it in the kegerator (38ºF) for a week, and just today I hooked it up to CO2 just to push some out to taste it to see if flavor went away, and it has not settled down at all. Did I mess up by racking this away from the yeast settling in the primary, and does anyone think I can fix this (repitching, aging, anything) I greatly appreciate any advice, and apologies in advance if I am just too dumb to find this exact topic elsewhere on the site.

 

[BarleyWater]

Sounds to me like you transfered to early. If you didn't find it in your searching, the smell is coming from the compound acetaldehyde, and intermediary in the production of ethanol. After the yeast is done fermenting sugar, it goes to work on the other stuff, including acetaldehyde. By racking off the yeast, you took the beer away before it could finish "cleaning house", and you are left with a little acetaldehyde instead of ethanol. Also, raising the temp before cooling is often recommended to help the yeast stay awake to finish the job of cleaning up the intermediary compounds (acetaldehyde, diacetyl, etc...).

The only remedy I can think of would be to pitch a large active starter into the beer and let it sit another few weeks, but that may not be practical, and there may not be enough yeast left in the beer to do the job themselves. It's part of the beer, and isn't something that is going to settle out, so you may just have to get used to the green apple flavor in it and drink up. I had the same thing happen when I brewed a Dortmunder Export, and some people really liked the flavor, so I let them drink the bulk of it.

 

[EvilTOJ]

Well according to this chart green apple smell is common in young beer. That's a good temp for your lager yeast. It sounds like you didn't do a diacytl rest, which is an important step in making lagers. The yeast have to warm up to clean up all their byproducts of the primary fermentation.

Lagers need more than a week of lagering. Three weeks AFTER the primary ferment is good, the longer the better. Yes, you messed it up racking off the primary because the yeast needed to clean up their mess. Take the keg out, let it warm up to room temperature for a week. Pull the relief valve at least once a day. After that put it back in cold storage for at least three weeks then try it again later.

 

[cb2100]

Thanks for the advice guys, I really appreciate it, I think I might just try to take the keg out and let it warm up and then throw it back in cold storage, hopefully there will be some yeast left in there to work some of it out. In the meantime though, I don't think I will be brewing another lager until I buy a book and read it seven hundred times and know what I am actually getting into and understand the biology behind it. (Only reason we ordered this recipe was because we were drinking a lot of Red Stripe that day and it was cheap on the AHS website... PWND... lol) We forced ourselves to drink about a half cup of this today to teach ourselves about our mistake, and so that we can recognize this problem in the future if it ever happens again. Now we are just looking forward to kegging our pale ale in a couple weeks. Thanks again guys, really appreciate it.