Debating throwing out first batch after 9 years

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pretzelb

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20 days ago I brewed 10g of the Irish Red recipe from Brewing Classic Styles using US-04. the I made the mistake of cold crashing before taking a sample and when I was going to keg I noticed the beer has a really bad taste. I'm terrible with describing the taste but at first I thought it was cidery, but today it is almost tart and cidery at the same time. Fermentation should have been good in the 66 range. In an effort to fix the beer I removed it from the chest freezer fermenation chamber and brought it into the house where we are set to 70.

Doing some quick research says if cidery I should just give it more time. I was hoping to brew some Stout and lager for St Patrick's day so I need the primary fermenters. Here are some thoughts:

  1. Dump it all
  2. Let it stay in the brew buckets at 70 and taste it every other day
  3. Move to secondary fermenters to get it off the yeast cake and keep at 70
  4. Something else?
Any thoughts?
 
10 gallons....if it were 5 I’d almost say dump and move on if it tastes that bad but 10g is a lot of investment.

Still....if is seems more than just ‘off’ and more like undrinkable, and you’ve been brewing this long....it might be time to dump.

I would spend a list of care sanitizing everything cold side....and replace all of your cold side tubing before even thinking about the next batch.
 
Tart and cidery? You just described every beer I've tried fermenting with S-04. In my experience, that yeast takes a lot of cold conditioning. I'm not a fan (though I love sours!). 20 days is not that long.
 
brownni5 said:
Tart and cidery? You just described every beer I've tried fermenting with S-04. In my experience, that yeast takes a lot of cold conditioning. I'm not a fan (though I love sours!). 20 days is not that long.
Click to expand...

I've never gotten this from S-04. I don't treat S-04 any different than any other yeast. 2-3 weeks and sometimes 4 without cold crashing. Bottles in the fridge for 24 hours or so. I never detected any difference in any bottle or keg aged longer
 
kh54s10 said:
I've never gotten this from S-04. I don't treat S-04 any different than any other yeast. 2-3 weeks and sometimes 4 without cold crashing. Bottles in the fridge for 24 hours or so. I never detected any difference in any bottle or keg aged longer
Click to expand...

Agreed. Nothing odd or requiring special handling with S04
 
brownni5 said:
Tart and cidery? You just described every beer I've tried fermenting with S-04. In my experience, that yeast takes a lot of cold conditioning. I'm not a fan (though I love sours!). 20 days is not that long.
Click to expand...
In fact the last time I brewed this recipe it was with S-04 and I vowed to never do it again because it was tart. I ended up calling it "the Irish tart" and still served it. But this seems much stronger than that last batch. Maybe it seems stronger because it isn't carbonated. And I thought if I kept the fermentation cold it would help avoid the tart taste.
 
TechFanMD said:
Agreed. Nothing odd or requiring special handling with S04
Click to expand...
I normally use S-05 and that had never given me any trouble no matter how I might abuse the temperature or the time. But S-04 has been the only yeast to give me trouble.
 
kh54s10 said:
I've never gotten this from S-04. I don't treat S-04 any different than any other yeast. 2-3 weeks and sometimes 4 without cold crashing. Bottles in the fridge for 24 hours or so. I never detected any difference in any bottle or keg aged longer
Click to expand...
Would you recommend that I let it go at room temperature longer or cold crash longer? I don't think a longer cold crash would help since it seems the yeast is the issue.
 
From the sounds of things I think it is done. If you go a few days longer and it is still bad, I would say it is unlikely that time or cold crashing will fix it. Especially since you already cold crashed.
 
day_trippr said:
Lots of threads on HBT have touched the subject. A search on just "I don't like S04 yeast" gets all of this - and those threads will invariably reference others...

https://www.google.com/search?q=I+don't+like+S04+yeast&oq=I+don't+like+S04+yeast

[edit] I'll add I use S04 on specific recipes - mostly stouts - and could be called a fan of the strain I suppose...

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I think you could find something like this for almost any yeast. I doubt it is truly a significant percentage.
 
Given what I've read on HBT over the years we'll just have to disagree. I can't think of another strain that apparently aggravates as many people as S04...

Cheers!
 
day_trippr said:
Given what I've read on HBT over the years we'll just have to disagree. I can't think of another strain that apparently aggravates as many people as S04...

Cheers!
Click to expand...
Still this is news to me. And I am not new to brewing.
How about Windsor and stalled fermentations.. That was the yeast that caused the only one I caught. There may have been others that corrected themselves before I got around to bottling/kegging.
 
I never meant to imply that there is something wrong with the strain, just that in my experience (4 brews with the strain - enough for me to learn what I need to know about it), it produces a beer that is borderline undrinkable until about 6 weeks after packaging - after that, I think it comes around. I don't mind waiting that long for a beer to mature, but if I do, It's not going to be a British ale.

I think the OP should wait it out. Of course, as impatient as I am in the rest of my life, I can wait out a brew. I just dumped a Tripel that tasted like I forgot the bittering charge - I tasted that thing once a month over the past 8 months and it never got better. Finally cut my losses. Of course, those were bottles, not tying up a keg...
 
kh54s10 said:
Still this is news to me. And I am not new to brewing.
How about Windsor and stalled fermentations.. That was the yeast that caused the only one I caught. There may have been others that corrected themselves before I got around to bottling/kegging.
Click to expand...
When I first had issues with S-04 it didn't take me long to find others who knew about the problem and other posts. If it wasn't for the fact that I sometimes get cocky and I think I'm a better brewer than I really am, I should never stray from US-05. It never seems to fail me.
 
I have used S-04 in probably close to 10 of my 104 batches in 7 3/4 years and never got anything negative at all from it. It does give something quite different from US-05. But it should..... I have always gotten very good beers using S-04 IMO, it might be that there is a very vocal minority........
 
kh54s10 said:
I have used S-04 in probably close to 10 of my 104 batches in 7 3/4 years and never got anything negative at all from it. It does give something quite different from US-05. But it should..... I have always gotten very good beers using S-04 IMO, it might be that there is a very vocal minority........
Click to expand...

I don't believe S-04 is a "bad" yeast, but some just don't care for it. I've tried it several times and just prefer other yeasts. Just a matter of taste.
 
day_trippr said:
fwiw, it seems a significant percentage home brewers are decidedly not S04 fans...

Cheerss!
Click to expand...

ncbrewer said:
I don't believe S-04 is a "bad" yeI ast, but some just don't care for it. I've tried it several times and just prefer other yeasts. Just a matter of taste.
Click to expand...

I never said it was a bad yeast and I never said it was the best yeast. I use it because it is dry, for when I don't have time to make a starter. I prefer using liquid yeasts to more closely match the style I am trying to brew in a lot of cases.

I questioned that it was wide spread disliked. I had not heard that before.

This top quote spurred me to start a poll. On it there are now: Like = 69.9% neutral = 16.3% dislike = 13.9% I wouldn't call that a significant percentage.
 
day_trippr said:
Given what I've read on HBT over the years we'll just have to disagree. I can't think of another strain that apparently aggravates as many people as S04...

Cheers!
Click to expand...

You have to consider this -of the hundreds (thousands?) of yeasts commercially available, the ones likely to see the most complaints are the ones that are most commonly used. Just because you find ta lot of threads with people having issues with a yeast doesn't mean it is actually having more issues.....it just may be used more. I had trouble with Windsor and found hundreds of other people with my issue. I was researching Nottingham...same thing. S05.....tons of posts with people having issues (admittedly not a lot considering that it is probably one of the most used yeasts by percentage).

You won't see as many complaints with lesser used ones like Munich or BE134 because fewer people use them overall. Same with liquid yeasts...because there are so many options the complaints are spread across them.
 
So I took a sample to my LHBS and they found it to be a combination of sweet and tart like I was suspecting. The owner thought it was due to something in the fermenter and mentioned the "beer stone" effect which was something I had seen in my Brew Buckets but I thought I had cleaned. I think maybe I didn't let them dry enough to check again for that beer stone film so maybe it is sanitation. I am pretty aggressive with my PBW and StarSan but if I have a build up it might require me to get the more caustic cleaning materials out and treat the Brew Bucket as if it were brand new.

The interesting thing is the owner didn't think it was a bad taste. He thought I could save the beer if I just called it something different like an Apple Tart or some such.
 
I put 5g into a keg and turned on the Co2 for a few days (the other 5g were put into a carboy for aging) and while doing a deep clean on my equipment I decided to get a taste. It doesn't taste anything like an Irish Red but I have to say it isn't bad. I almost think it is very similar to the other batch I made that I called "Irish Tart". I did a deep clean on everything in my brewery but I am not 100% sure if this was S-04 or something else.
 
TechFanMD said:
You have to consider this -of the hundreds (thousands?) of yeasts commercially available, the ones likely to see the most complaints are the ones that are most commonly used. Just because you find ta lot of threads with people having issues with a yeast doesn't mean it is actually having more issues.....it just may be used more. I had trouble with Windsor and found hundreds of other people with my issue. I was researching Nottingham...same thing. S05.....tons of posts with people having issues (admittedly not a lot considering that it is probably one of the most used yeasts by percentage).

You won't see as many complaints with lesser used ones like Munich or BE134 because fewer people use them overall. Same with liquid yeasts...because there are so many options the complaints are spread across them.
Click to expand...

How does any of that word salad change my point?

Cheers!
 
kh54s10 said:
I never said it was a bad yeast and I never said it was the best yeast. I use it because it is dry, for when I don't have time to make a starter. I prefer using liquid yeasts to more closely match the style I am trying to brew in a lot of cases.

I questioned that it was wide spread disliked. I had not heard that before.

This top quote spurred me to start a poll. On it there are now: Like = 69.9% neutral = 16.3% dislike = 13.9% I wouldn't call that a significant percentage.
Click to expand...

LOL! Seriously? I mean, leaving aside the defects in the poll thread and the fact that it's all of a few weeks extant (vs years of HBT posts) what's your threshold, then?

Cheers! :drunk:
 
day_trippr said:
LOL! Seriously? I mean, leaving aside the defects in the poll thread and the fact that it's all of a few weeks extant (vs years of HBT posts) what's your threshold, then?

Cheers! :drunk:
Click to expand...

OK, how would you do it? I have been on HBT since 2011 and may have seen a thread. But I certainly did not see all these YEARS of posts that you describe. So I asked. I feel that it is you that have a problem with the yeast. So what that my poll is recent. It certainly bears out that there is no where near the dislike that you profess.
 
kh54s10 said:
OK, how would you do it? I have been on HBT since 2011 and may have seen a thread. But I certainly did not see all these YEARS of posts that you describe. So I asked. I feel that it is you that have a problem with the yeast. So what that my poll is recent. It certainly bears out that there is no where near the dislike that you profess.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure what you are debating but I just looked at the folder for yeast and it didn't take long to find a post on US-04.
 
I put 5g in a keg and the other 5g in a carboy where I'm going to add oak chips. Tasted the keg and it isn't bad. A very faint tart taste. I'm not sure if sanitizing was the problem but I gave everything a huge scrubbing yesterday and today I'm brewing a stout so we'll see. Maybe I'll try a red ale again but use a different yeast.
 
pretzelb said:
You are correct. It should say S-04.

Two quick links on S-04 in the top 25 or so.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/fermenting-s-04-cleanly.340647/

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/s-04-good-or-bad.661418/#post-8500911
Click to expand...

So what is your point?

In the first link, I read the first few and the discussion was that you need to use S-04 at the right temperature. Not that they don't like it. The other one is the poll that I started to try to find out how widespread the dislike is. The results so far are pretty much that it is pretty well liked overall.
 
kh54s10 said:
So what is your point?

In the first link, I read the first few and the discussion was that you need to use S-04 at the right temperature. Not that they don't like it. The other one is the poll that I started to try to find out how widespread the dislike is. The results so far are pretty much that it is pretty well liked overall.
Click to expand...
I'm answering your request for links. And I think you are confusing me for someone else who you started to debate. My original statement on S-04 was when I first had a problem and did some research it did not take me long to find others who also had issues. This was probably more than 2 years ago. I don't feel the need to go back and find those posts if that is what you are asking, but again, I don't think I'm the one you were debating.
 

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