Infection or something else?

[greg_anderson]

Hi!
We have gotten some bad results with our beer lately.
Hoping someone could shine some light on whats going wrong.

1. Been brewing for many years. Everything has always come out nice. A bit of wet yeast, a bit of dry yeast. All kind of styles. Never any brett. Target PH at 5.3-5.6 every time.

2. This summer we got some WLP029 Kölsch yeast that was sitting too long in the fridge, made 7 beers in a row with it after harvesting yeast from our conical fermenters.

3. The beer came out with notably darker color then it should. Also the hops were totally missing in the taste even though one of them was with over 2 grams per liter in dry hop. It just felt a little dead and not fresh at all.

4. We've cleaned all our equipment many times since, but now other beers with other yeasts have started acting the same way.

So, dear forum, what could this be?

A bacterial infection?
Wouldn't it taste much more off then? And would it stop at 1012 FG if there was bacteria?

Unhappy yeast?
But what changed, since we've been doing the same for many years and its been great?

I would love some insight to this if you could help out!

 

[porterpounder]

I've seen some issues lately with changes in the water source as we're in a pretty deep drought. Have other beers also come out darker? May be a change in you base ingredients from the maltster.

 

[greg_anderson]

I've seen some issues lately with changes in the water source as we're in a pretty deep drought. Have other beers also come out darker? May be a change in you base ingredients from the maltster.

Our water should be good, but I also thought it might be something there (when beer acts funny you start to question EVERYTHING in the universe).
Water looks like this:

pH 7,30- 7,70
Conductivity 9,60-10,2 mS/m
Alcality 0,58-0,64 mmol/l
Color 4 – 6 mg Pt/l-scale
Turbidity 0,07 – 0,16 FTU
Lime 15,2 - 16,8 mg Ca/l
Hardness 2,1 – 2,4 ºdH

It could be bad malt or malting, but we've been using new malt and the grinding is the same as it's always been. I'm getting around 70 % eff.

 

[porterpounder]

Muting of yeast character is usually yeast derived or oxidation, which can also lead to darkening of the beer. Is there another process change that may have introduced oxygen post-fermentation?

 

[greg_anderson]

Muting of yeast character is usually yeast derived or oxidation, which can also lead to darkening of the beer. Is there another process change that may have introduced oxygen post-fermentation?

Could definitely be oxidation, but not sure how that would happen..
We put pure O2 in from a bottle when transferring from boil, could it be to much at that stage? I thought that was nearly impossible and only helped fermentation. Hot side aeration or too much O2, would that result in a oxidized beer?

The beer goes darker and has the off flavors in the fermenter after reaching FG, shouldn't be any O2 in contact at all at that point...

 

[greg_anderson]

Would lack of cleaning do this to a beer?
We clean everything out with natrium hydroxide and hydrogen peroxide between every time, but with electrical pumps, plate chillers, tubings and other nooks and crannies there might still be old gunk hidden away.
We are in the process of picking everything apart and cleaning it, but if it is a type of infection in the fermentors, a speck of gunk in a tube shouldn't matter. My question would be: if you have, say, a dirty plate chiller, is your beer gonna taste sour or dank or any other specific weird taste?

Have anyone had this problem before?
Slight darkening of beer (hint of brown-ish color in a pils e.g)., lack of hop flavor and smell, not bad but definitely not as alive of a taste as it should have.

 

[greg_anderson]

This is how a pilsner with only 9 % cara light malt looks like.
As you can see it has a dull brown touch.
If not oxidation, what could cause this?

 

[Jwswig]

This is how a pilsner with only 9 % cara light malt looks like.
As you can see it has a dull brown touch.
If not oxidation, what could cause this?

I've been having this problem for months. Whereas my beers were fine for my first year of brewing when I was less careful. It's most extreme in my IPAs. Nothing I do seems to help. Most recently I switched to RO water, adding minerals, to rule out my water source. A friend with a keg and co2 came over to help me minimize the effects of oxygen uptake and room temperature storage (I normally bottle condition), but six days later it had gone from golden to exactly what your's looks like. I've found numerous mentions of this online but no real answers as to its cause