What to do with a very "Chlorophenol Forward" beer

[AHR]

I was not sure whether to post this in general discussion or here so feel free to let me know if that is the case.

I recently brewed a relatively simple sour that was akin to a berliner weisse with a slightly more complex grain bill, I used a german ale yeast and pedio. My original plan was to bottle a gallon of the the six gallon batch and then rewrack the rest to do an extended age and potentially introduce more bugs. On bottling I found the beer soured well but unfortunately tasted strongly of pool water and bandaids. I brew in NYC and regularly top off with tap water and had yet to have any problems until now. I think this is a case of the NYC water having a higher chlorine content on that day, but I'm not ruling out any weird interaction with the pedio etc.

Anyways, so this beer is trashed and I have a decent amount of it. It soured well and if you can get past the pool it seems like it would be great, its surprisingly tolerable for tasting like pool. I know that you cant really get rid of a chlorophenol flavor in beer but I'm not ready to throw it all out just yet so I've been trying to think of ways to re-purpose it that might make it palatable.

Has anyone tried turning a beer like this into a vinager? alternatively what about throwing a ton of weird bugs in it and aging for a long period? Any other approaches people might have tried out to make a beer like this usable, give it new life?

and finally, not that I will do this since its illegal, but if you distill a beer like this will the chlorophenols carry through to the distilled product

 

[dstar26t]

Searching for boiling points of chlorophenols leads to most being over 175ºC. The compound in a beer spiking kit I found is 2,6-dichlorophenol which has a boiling point of 219-220ºC. If you distill, it should stay behind but try heating, cooling and tasting a sample first, it should still be there. Please delete this post if it's inappropriate.

 

[beer_expert]

I was not sure whether to post this in general discussion or here so feel free to let me know if that is the case.

I recently brewed a relatively simple sour that was akin to a berliner weisse with a slightly more complex grain bill, I used a german ale yeast and pedio. My original plan was to bottle a gallon of the the six gallon batch and then rewrack the rest to do an extended age and potentially introduce more bugs. On bottling I found the beer soured well but unfortunately tasted strongly of pool water and bandaids. I brew in NYC and regularly top off with tap water and had yet to have any problems until now. I think this is a case of the NYC water having a higher chlorine content on that day, but I'm not ruling out any weird interaction with the pedio etc.

Anyways, so this beer is trashed and I have a decent amount of it. It soured well and if you can get past the pool it seems like it would be great, its surprisingly tolerable for tasting like pool. I know that you cant really get rid of a chlorophenol flavor in beer but I'm not ready to throw it all out just yet so I've been trying to think of ways to re-purpose it that might make it palatable.

Has anyone tried turning a beer like this into a vinager? alternatively what about throwing a ton of weird bugs in it and aging for a long period? Any other approaches people might have tried out to make a beer like this usable, give it new life?

and finally, not that I will do this since its illegal, but if you distill a beer like this will the chlorophenols carry through to the distilled product

You might want to try some activated charcoal. Take a clean funnel, add a
coffee filter and fill with activated charcoal. Pour beer slowly through funnel. It may be a slow process. If paper filter clogs up too quickly you might want to try cheesecloth. Try it with a small amount first to see if you like the results.
This should make your 6 gallons palatable :rockin:and choice again. You can easily source activated charcoal.

 

[ajdelange]

There's really not much you can do here. GAC might grab the objectionables but it will also grab a lot of desireds as well. Can't hurt to try it though.

Dilution might work but how much dilution you would need would depend on how many times above threshold the chlorphenols are. If they are 10 times threshold you would have to dilute 9:1 to get them to threshold and you would, of course, have a beer whose other flavors were mostly determined by the beer you used to dilute. If you are lucky and the bad stuff is only twice threshold then 1:1 will do the job. In any case you will have to brew another batch of the same or very similar beer. If you are lucky and 1:1 dilution works (test with a small quantity) then you have effectively 'saved' the bad batch. If you are not at least you have a replacement for it.

 

[AHR]

I will have to try these out next time I have a weekend off. Will post here with the results.

I had thought about dilution but I really have no idea how far over the threshold I am, and a simple search is not really giving me much in the way of cheap test strips ha.
In the meantime I'm going to try and do a little research on any microbiological processes that can break it down while surviving in the beer and not producing something that kills me as a result .
There definately are bacteries and fungis that will break it down, Section 4.2 here has a little info http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wat/wq/BCguidelines/chlorophenols/bcchlorophenol-10.htm
This is probably a dead end but hey something to look into while I ride the subway.