I posted about this a couple weeks back, and still no change, and I still have no idea what caused this. I threw together a fairly unremarkable APA recipe from leftovers I had laying around. I had a weird-looking fermentation and had a difficult time getting the yeast (US-05) to clear -- but I didn't think that much of it, because a) no fermentation is like any other, and b) I've heard of people having trouble getting US-05 to clear, and even though that had not been my experience up until now, I figured it wasn't unexpected.
When I tasted the hydrometer samples, they were good but occasionally something seemed a bit off. I alternately recorded it as a sweet or a citrus taste in my notes.
After bottle-conditioning, it tastes sickly sweet -- basically undrinkable, and let me tell you, my criteria for "undrinkable" is a lot more stringent it seems than some other forum members here (my 2nd batch I fermented way too hot and had runaway phenol production, and then sanitized the bottles with C-Brite and didn't rinse all of them well enough so some of the bottles even had a Band Aid-like chlorophenol taste... and I drank all of 'em eventually). It's been in the bottles like 4 or 5 weeks now, and it's not improving. There's a LOT of sediment in the bottles, but even if I pour it clear, it's got that nasty sickly sweet taste.
An infection would both explain the undrinkability as well as the weird fermentation, but I didn't know any type of infection could make it sweet tasting.... maybe some kind of weird wild yeast? I dunno...
Yooper suggested that fermenting US-05 down around 60F, as I did, can create apricot flavors, but this is not subtle. Like I say, it's basically undrinkable -- and that's a mouthful coming from me. In any case, most of the rest of my beers have used US-05 fermented in the same conditions, and I've never tasted anything remotely like this flavor.
Any thoughts? It's really hard to accept this batch is ruined and I don't have any idea what's wrong with it...
When I tasted the hydrometer samples, they were good but occasionally something seemed a bit off. I alternately recorded it as a sweet or a citrus taste in my notes.
After bottle-conditioning, it tastes sickly sweet -- basically undrinkable, and let me tell you, my criteria for "undrinkable" is a lot more stringent it seems than some other forum members here (my 2nd batch I fermented way too hot and had runaway phenol production, and then sanitized the bottles with C-Brite and didn't rinse all of them well enough so some of the bottles even had a Band Aid-like chlorophenol taste... and I drank all of 'em eventually). It's been in the bottles like 4 or 5 weeks now, and it's not improving. There's a LOT of sediment in the bottles, but even if I pour it clear, it's got that nasty sickly sweet taste.
An infection would both explain the undrinkability as well as the weird fermentation, but I didn't know any type of infection could make it sweet tasting.... maybe some kind of weird wild yeast? I dunno...
Yooper suggested that fermenting US-05 down around 60F, as I did, can create apricot flavors, but this is not subtle. Like I say, it's basically undrinkable -- and that's a mouthful coming from me. In any case, most of the rest of my beers have used US-05 fermented in the same conditions, and I've never tasted anything remotely like this flavor.
Any thoughts? It's really hard to accept this batch is ruined and I don't have any idea what's wrong with it...