My APA tastes like a hef = stressed yeast?

[kombat]

Three weeks ago, I brewed a simple APA (2-row, Vienna, Carafoam, and Zythos hops) and pitched a packet of rehydrated US-05. It took a couple of days to get started. I just had it in a plastic fermentation pail, sitting on the floor in my basement.

I kegged it tonight, and it has a very strong Hefeweizen character. I get strong banana and clove from the beer. I'm disappointed, as I don't actually like Hefeweizens and was just hoping for this to showcase the Zythos hops.

What was my mistake here? Was my yeast stressed? Is it because they took 2 days to get started? Maybe my temperature was too low/high? What causes US-05 to impart a Hefeweizen character?

 

[mscott5205]

My guess would be it fermented at higher temps.

 

[Horseballs]

Weirdly enough, I had to dump a batch of a zythos pale ale that I made with BRY-97. I fermented it cool and even so I got a weird almost banana-y spicy kind of flavor and yeasty bite. Even when the yeastiness went away that weird flavor stuck around and I dumped the batch. I had chalked it up to old oxidized hops, but perhaps it is just a case of some palates responding differently to certain hops and hop blends.

 

[diS]

If US-05 took couple of days to start my though would be insufficient aeration, poor vitality yeast or/and temperature issues.

 

[kombat]

The more I think about it, the more I believe it was aeration. I didn't aerate the wort at all. In fact, I didn't even get the usual froth produced when transferring into the fermenter, because this time I used a plastic pail, and the transfer hose was touching the inside wall of the pail during transfer (thus trickling calmly down the wall instead of splashing into the middle). I thought this would be a non-issue because of the (admittedly controversial) information from Danstar that aeration is unnecessary with dry yeasts. I've come to suspect that perhaps it's only unnecessary with THEIR dry yeasts (this batch was a Fermentis US-05).

I had intended to wash and re-use the yeast, but after transferring the beer, the remaining yeast cake was significantly smaller than usual (less than half what I was expecting), and smelled of hefeweizen, so I dumped the yeast instead.

The think the "root causes" here were, in order of importance:

1) Total absence of any wort aeration whatsoever
2) Fermenting slightly too warm
3) Improperly rehydrated dry yeast

It's disappointing, because I was really looking forward to this batch. Oh well, my wife likes hefs, so maybe she'll eventually work her way through this batch. At any rate, I have a few things to work on for my next batch.

 

[kombat]

One more clue that I just remembered: The beer finished quite a bit higher than I was expecting. The F.G. was 1.018 (it's an all-grain recipe that usually finishes around 1.008 - 1.010). It really seems like the yeast just ran out of steam, probably due to lack of aeration. I was just wondering if anyone can confirm that a hefeweizen character from US-05 is an indicator of oxygen-starved yeast, or if it means something else.

 

[NateW]

Last summer I made the Centennial Blonde with US-05 and ended up with rather apparent (but pleasant) ester aroma. I think it was fermented on the warm side (low 70's). It was a pleasant surprise, but then again I wasn't looking to showcase any hop aroma.

 

[TopherM]

I've fermented S-05 high in the past, and I would describe it's ester production more like tropical fruit than banana/clove. Clove is also generally a phenol flavor, and not associated with high fermentation temps.

 

[TriggerFingers]

I use S-05 pretty much exclusively. Only once, have I had the flavors you describe from that yeast--I attributed it to pitching too warm.

Since then, I have always made sure my wort isn't warm to the touch and never had an issue.