I'm scratching my head on this one, gents. I followed the "enjoy by" clone recipe on bertusbrewery.com and somewhere along the way something went quite wrong. Maybe as a group we can narrow down what it could have been.
I followed the recipe almost exactly, minus one or two hop substitutions. Monitored all my temperatures, checked gravity, everything was pretty smooth. This was my first time using fermax, and I followed the directions on the bottle (1tsp per gal), which I now know to be way too much. That being said, I can't find anything online that overuse of fermax could ruin a batch.
When racking from primary I tasted a sample and it had a "hot" flavor, which I chalked up to tasting a room temperature sample of a 9.5% hop bomb. It assumed it just needed time to calm down.
I took yeast from that cake and pitched it into an RIS, which fermented quickly, attenuated fully, and tasted great coming out of primary. I added espresso and bottled when it tastes right to me. Last night I pulled the first few glasses from the now-kegged enjoy by and it tastes HORRIBLE. I scanned the list of off flavors and medicinal is the only one that comes close to what I'm getting. It's gross. I've never tasted anything like it.
Now I'm scratching my head because the RIS turned out so well. I guess it's possible that if it was infected from primary that my RIS (which is a week younger) will also turn to crap. I won't know until it's carbed in a few weeks. I saved some of the enjoy by trub intending to use it in another beer as well but now I'm thinking it's gonna have to get tossed.
Any thoughts? Could going overboard on the fermax have ruined it? Infection in secondary? I'm really at a loss, and of course my first ruined batch has to be the most expensive thing I ever tried to make...blah.
I followed the recipe almost exactly, minus one or two hop substitutions. Monitored all my temperatures, checked gravity, everything was pretty smooth. This was my first time using fermax, and I followed the directions on the bottle (1tsp per gal), which I now know to be way too much. That being said, I can't find anything online that overuse of fermax could ruin a batch.
When racking from primary I tasted a sample and it had a "hot" flavor, which I chalked up to tasting a room temperature sample of a 9.5% hop bomb. It assumed it just needed time to calm down.
I took yeast from that cake and pitched it into an RIS, which fermented quickly, attenuated fully, and tasted great coming out of primary. I added espresso and bottled when it tastes right to me. Last night I pulled the first few glasses from the now-kegged enjoy by and it tastes HORRIBLE. I scanned the list of off flavors and medicinal is the only one that comes close to what I'm getting. It's gross. I've never tasted anything like it.
Now I'm scratching my head because the RIS turned out so well. I guess it's possible that if it was infected from primary that my RIS (which is a week younger) will also turn to crap. I won't know until it's carbed in a few weeks. I saved some of the enjoy by trub intending to use it in another beer as well but now I'm thinking it's gonna have to get tossed.
Any thoughts? Could going overboard on the fermax have ruined it? Infection in secondary? I'm really at a loss, and of course my first ruined batch has to be the most expensive thing I ever tried to make...blah.
