pHBTa
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- Joined
- Oct 4, 2014
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Alright, Sherlocks of the homebrew world: Help me figure out why different crates of my bottled beers taste differently.
I made a Voss Pale using a Festa Brew Pale Ale kit and adding Voss dry yeast. Hot fermented up to 38 C. Tasted good. A bit intense and tannic in the mouth, but got that orange flavour and a bit of a roasted flavour (bitter orange?). Quite drinkable for me, though intense. I bottle conditioned three square milk crates full. The first crate tasted pretty good. The second tasted even better (last night) (no surprise, with aging and all). In fact, my first beer last night was the last bottle of crate 2 and it tastes less like burnt orange and more fruit and off sweet - so good. I ate a breakfast oatmeal bar with chocolate sauce inside of it. Then...
I drank my first bottle from the 3rd crate, and it tasted QUITE odd, no orange flavour as expected, but more like soap or cleaner and a cheap vodka flavour. It felt like the oatmeal bar change my perception of flavour, but things kept tasting off the whole time. Even a saltine cracker couldn't change my perceptio of the flavour. I drank the whole bottle, agaisnt my better judgement -- woke up at 3am with a terrible headache. I can only imagine it must have had a bunch of fusel in it. I've had a few acetobacter infections in the last year that affect the whole batch over time - and this tastes and shows up different than that.
Tonight I tried a few more sips from the next 4 bottles from the 3rd crate, from various corners, and they all have that same soapy taste. I don't think I need to try the next 11 to know that something happened to this crate that didn't happen to the others. How strange is it that one day apart, the flavour changed so much?
Because this can't be chalked up to what happened in the fermenter, I deduce it must have something to do with the way each crate of bottles was treated after priming with sugar and bottling. Here are other details for sleuthing about:
- I condition them in the crates on the mainfloor, where the temperature fluctuates 19-20 C.
- I stack the crates vertically; so perhaps the top one could sit warmer while the lower one colder on the tile floor?
- The top crate would get more light than the bottom ones. - I bottle in green Grolsch or brown swingtops. I haven't bothered keeping them away for light in a few years.
- I finished priming in the basement where the temperature goes between 12C and 16C this time of year. The top crate on the main floor is usually the first to go down, so could have been the bottom, and 3rd crate in the basement? (I moved them around a few times, not sure this was actually the case, but it's worth considering.
- I doubt the age of the beer is the problem, since the tastes changed so much just overnight when getting into the third crate.
- I rack off the yeast into a new bucket, add dextrose and then, (forgive me!), stir well before bottling through a racking cane. IF there was contamination in my fermenter origianlly, it should have gone into every bottle, no?
Questions I am having:
- Did something settle out during racking that was in higher concentration in the final crate?
- Did I leave some residue that contaminanted one whole specific crate of bottles? I only use Starsan in hot water for everything now, and rarely any soap, certaily not during sanitizing. I have a process for purging as much of the Starsan foam before bottling. I sanitize 48 bottles in one 5 glass batch.
- Have you had any experience with Starsan not doing a sufficient job sanitizing previous infections from glass bottles?
Any other ideas? This is boggling me. And it sucks that my third and final crate is going to get dumped just when I thought the beer was getting tastier than ever.
I made a Voss Pale using a Festa Brew Pale Ale kit and adding Voss dry yeast. Hot fermented up to 38 C. Tasted good. A bit intense and tannic in the mouth, but got that orange flavour and a bit of a roasted flavour (bitter orange?). Quite drinkable for me, though intense. I bottle conditioned three square milk crates full. The first crate tasted pretty good. The second tasted even better (last night) (no surprise, with aging and all). In fact, my first beer last night was the last bottle of crate 2 and it tastes less like burnt orange and more fruit and off sweet - so good. I ate a breakfast oatmeal bar with chocolate sauce inside of it. Then...
I drank my first bottle from the 3rd crate, and it tasted QUITE odd, no orange flavour as expected, but more like soap or cleaner and a cheap vodka flavour. It felt like the oatmeal bar change my perception of flavour, but things kept tasting off the whole time. Even a saltine cracker couldn't change my perceptio of the flavour. I drank the whole bottle, agaisnt my better judgement -- woke up at 3am with a terrible headache. I can only imagine it must have had a bunch of fusel in it. I've had a few acetobacter infections in the last year that affect the whole batch over time - and this tastes and shows up different than that.
Tonight I tried a few more sips from the next 4 bottles from the 3rd crate, from various corners, and they all have that same soapy taste. I don't think I need to try the next 11 to know that something happened to this crate that didn't happen to the others. How strange is it that one day apart, the flavour changed so much?
Because this can't be chalked up to what happened in the fermenter, I deduce it must have something to do with the way each crate of bottles was treated after priming with sugar and bottling. Here are other details for sleuthing about:
- I condition them in the crates on the mainfloor, where the temperature fluctuates 19-20 C.
- I stack the crates vertically; so perhaps the top one could sit warmer while the lower one colder on the tile floor?
- The top crate would get more light than the bottom ones. - I bottle in green Grolsch or brown swingtops. I haven't bothered keeping them away for light in a few years.
- I finished priming in the basement where the temperature goes between 12C and 16C this time of year. The top crate on the main floor is usually the first to go down, so could have been the bottom, and 3rd crate in the basement? (I moved them around a few times, not sure this was actually the case, but it's worth considering.
- I doubt the age of the beer is the problem, since the tastes changed so much just overnight when getting into the third crate.
- I rack off the yeast into a new bucket, add dextrose and then, (forgive me!), stir well before bottling through a racking cane. IF there was contamination in my fermenter origianlly, it should have gone into every bottle, no?
Questions I am having:
- Did something settle out during racking that was in higher concentration in the final crate?
- Did I leave some residue that contaminanted one whole specific crate of bottles? I only use Starsan in hot water for everything now, and rarely any soap, certaily not during sanitizing. I have a process for purging as much of the Starsan foam before bottling. I sanitize 48 bottles in one 5 glass batch.
- Have you had any experience with Starsan not doing a sufficient job sanitizing previous infections from glass bottles?
Any other ideas? This is boggling me. And it sucks that my third and final crate is going to get dumped just when I thought the beer was getting tastier than ever.
