Vinegar!!!

[Kat_Grant]

Hi- I have been brewing for awhile now and this is the first time that my brew has come out of the fermenter tasting slightly like vinegar. None the less, I primed it and bottled all 40 bottles. Does anyone have any advice for this situation? Am I doomed? I fermented the five gallons of nut brown ale for three weeks in one true blue plastic fermenter. I read that was OK......now I'm not so sure. They are now sitting under a black blanket in my kitchen.... Any advice/recipes for food with sour beer?

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Long John Silvers.

 

[Mischief_Brewing]

Vinegar is a result of Acetobacter. Most commonly acquired by fruit flies. If a single fly somehow made it into the batch, you could eventually end up with a whole lot of salad dressing...

Not necessarily a bad thing, just not what you were after..

 

[Kat_Grant]

It just happens that we have a million fruit flies around the house. One actually got into the air lock and was floating on top of the water- is it possible that it could have infected the batch? I thought it was impossible for anything in the air to penetrate that airlock. I guess you can never be too careful....

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Excerpt from the EPA

"Acetobacter aceti is a benign microorganism that is ubiquitous in the environment, existing in alcoholic ecological niches such as flowers, fruits, honey bees, as well as in water and soil. It has a long history of safe use in the fermentation industry for the production of acetic acid from alcohol. There are no reports in the literature suggesting that A. aceti is a pathogen of humans or animals. It also is not considered a plant pathogen. The potential risks to human health or the environment associated with the use of this bacterium in fermentation facilities are low. "

In other words. It not just on flies. It's EVERYWHERE.

 

[Mischief_Brewing]

It just happens that we have a million fruit flies around the house. One actually got into the air lock and was floating on top of the water- is it possible that it could have infected the batch? I thought it was impossible for anything in the air to penetrate that airlock. I guess you can never be too careful....

Keep in mind Gila's post above (Acetobacter is everywhere) but if you had a rapid temperature change (lower) and some of your airlock water was sucked into the fermenter, that could have been the cause. What do you use in the airlock? I tend to use vodka, because it doesn't allow anything to grow/live in it and if it's sucked back in, it only increases the ABV slightly. Many use starsan or another sanitizer in their airlocks.

Just a thought, but there's any number of ways that acetobacter could have found its way into your brew.

Drink it quick before it becomes salad dressing is all I have to say really...

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Or, enter it as a Flanders Nut Brown and take best of show.

 

[flowerysong]

Drink it quick before it becomes salad dressing is all I have to say really...

Actually, I'm not sure how worried you have to be, provided it's drinkable now. Acetobacter's metabolisation of ethanol into acetic acid is aerobic, so in an airtight environment (like a bottle) it should stop fairly quickly.