Is there any hope for my beer?

[cafen8ed]

Im trying to figure out what is wrong with my first batch. It is a black ale and has been in the bottles for three weeks. I opened a bottle last night and it is very sour. I realize i have made a couple mistakes now that I am reading your posts. I put the bottle in the dishwasher with soap but i thought that the no rinse sanitizer would clean the bottles efffectivly. I also forgot to pour the priming sugar mixture in the bottom of the fermenter before racking so I poured it on top and stirred it in. Will age get rid of the sourness, or should I pour the rest down the sink and start over?
Thanks for any guidence.

 

[GodsStepBrother]

Once the beer has started to sour it will usually get worse with time. Is it over carbonated? Be careful, as this bacteria takes hold of the beer more you might get more carbonation and might have possible bottle bombs.

The priming sugar being added to the top of the beer would not lead to sourness, unless there was a problem with sanitization. It is recommended to add it to the bottom of the bottling bucket so it has a chance to mix in well with the beer and you do not get some carbonated beer and others that aren't.

Open another bottle and make sure it was not just that one bottle that soured. Put all the beers in the fridge as well to slow the process of souring and never use soap in the dish washer, it is very hard to take off. Just make sure after you drink a beer rinse it out well so that no grime will build up in the bottles. Then you put them in the dishwasher on the sanitizing cycle with no soap. No rinse sanitizer will not clean grim off bottles or soap. It is meant to sanitize not clean, in more concentrated solutions it can clean but it will then need to be rinsed as well.

On your next batch try cleaning the bottles with PBW or Oxy if they are dirty then sanitize with sanitizer or the dishwasher without soap. Give the beer some time see what happens, but for now bleach bomb all your equipment and get started on another batch.

Hope this helped.

 

[Beerens]

All great advice.

 

[Yankeehillbrewer]

When I used to bottle I would give all my bottles a couple hour soak in a bleach solution to clean them(1/2 cup in 5 gallons), then rinse the hell out of them. Then I would dunk them in Sanitizer allowing them fill all the way up, dump em' out and then place them on a sanitized dishrack. It's a little more labor intensive, but it gave me the piece of mind that my bottle were good to go.

Did you taste a sample before you bottled it?

I also agree that once it has started to sour, it will just continue to get more sour.

 

[damnitbeavis]

A sour beer, while perhaps unintended may still be drinkable, as long as it doesn't taste bad. Call it a gueze, chill those bottles, drink it if you can, and then make another batch.

 

[cafen8ed]

I did taste it before bottling and it seemed fine. I would love to drink it but it is too bad to finish (worse than Meister Brau). I will give it a week and if the same or worse I will dump it. Thanks for the recipe for cleaning , I will definetly do that next time.

 

[cafen8ed]

Thank you so much for the advice. I tried a different bottle and the same sourness. Its weird, a friend of mine used soap in the dishwasher and his beer turned out great. I better get another batch going soon before I get discouraged
Thanks again

 

[Beerens]

The reason not to use dish soap on your bottles is that it will decrease head retention.

 

[GodsStepBrother]

When it comes to brewing anybody can get lucky and usually even when we do mess up bad things still turn out okay. The idea is why even risk it. Read this thread.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

Don't let it discourage you, it happens to everybody once.

 

[damnitbeavis]

The reason not to use dish soap on your bottles is that it will decrease head retention.

I agree. The dish soap probably isn't causing your sour beer.

 

[cafen8ed]

What do you think is causing it then? Could it be I just have not given it enough time to age? My malt extract was a couple weeks old before I brewed could that have something to do with it?

 

[yessri]

Souring a beer when the wort tasted sweet is almost always a sign of infection, not age of extract or soap used in cleaning. Fermented in plastic? Something not sanitized made contact with the wort? Think through your process for where contamination might have occurred, and design a fix before starting another batch. It happens to everybody - my first three batches su(ked!