IPA turned Sour?

[ideal2545]

Hi,

I was hoping someone could help us understand what happened to our IPA.

So we recently did a BIAB with an IPA recipe that was shipped from Austin Homebrew to Southern Cali. We did the BIAB thing, we put it in the fermentor and threw in the liquid yeast. About 2 days in, the fermentation stalled.

Unfortunately I was on a business trip and we weren't able to do anything about until I got back about 4 days later. 4 days later, we went to check the gravity, of course it was miles off the mark and so we put the airlock back on it and waited another day for some yeast energizer to show up in the mail.

However, after we put the airlock back on, about two hours later there was sign of fermentation and a day later another layer of krausen showed up. We figured maybe sticking the turkey baster in to grab a sample introduced enough O2 to kickstart the process. Anyways, it fermented for another 4/5 days and a week later we dry hopped it with whole leaf cascade hops.

Anyhow, we just racked and kegged it, while checking the FG, it hit about 1.025 from 1.065, not the best attenuation but we knew something may have been up with this batch. While checking the FG we noticed a strong sour smell off the top of it and we tasted it and it is definitely sour tasting, reminds me a cider, a sour cider almost.

A couple of things, when we got the liquid yeast, the box had been sitting in the sun for 5/6 hours, the icepack had melted and was even warm-to-almost-hot to the touch.

We didn't notice any white layer of infection of any kind and we are very good about sanitation. While I know it happens, I really don't think it was an infection just because there were never any signs.

I keep reading about a beer having acetlhyde(sp?) perhaps that happened here? But, the ferment temps were kept at about 70-72 the whole way through.

Any theories or suggestions to maybe prove a point of some kind would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jon

 

[WileECoyote]

Hello Jon, not sure where to start with this, so starting with Austin's, I order from Austin's often, they are one of the best places you could order from, when ordering liquid yeast from Austin's If I place an order later in the week than tuesday, I ask them to hold my order and ship it on the next monday so my yeast isn't sitting on a UPS truck over the weekend, they will happily do this for you, In-fact they are the only place I know of that will do this.

Ok brew time, it seem that your beer has not finished fermenting out before you kegged it, you should check hydrometer readings for 3 days in a row and then if stable for 3 days its finished unless its stuck, also if it is infected, some infections do not have any signs what so ever, and most infections will finnish your beer much further than they should finnish out to.

So Im wondering if your beer is just very young and you are mistaking green beer for sour beer, its easy to do this, some beers are sour smelling when young and kinda sour tasting too.

Yeast, from your description, the yeast should have been fine.

Where you are now, I would let that kegged beer sit at 70 deg for 3 weeks to a month to finnish, you can de-gas the keg 2 times a day for a week or so and let it ferment out, I have done this and it dose work when your in a pinch.

Next, I would highly recommend checking that brew for infection before hooking it up to any of your equipment, 1 = sanitize turkey baster, 2 = de-gas keg, 3 pop lid of keg, 4 take sample of beer with turkey baster, 5 put sample in chilled glass, 6 = let sit for 1 min to chill and taste.

if its still sour by this time, it's probably infected.

Now What? I have found 1 sure way to kill off an infection in my equipment, If it is infected do not use any plastics or equipment that came in contact with that brew on your next brew, it will also become infected, the only way I have found to reuse my plastics/keg (after a nasty infection) is to soak in a 50/50 mix of hydrogen peroxide and water for 3 full days.

Hope this helps

Good luck and Cheers

 

[WileECoyote]

How is the brew doing?