Lager fermentation out of hand so easily?

[kanzimonson]

I made a kinda experimental lager recently with 100% Franco-Belges Vienna malt and a big dose of Santium to finish. I guess it's something of a hoppy marzen. I had never used either of these ingredients and it's only my second legit lager so I'm dealing with a lot of unfamiliar flavors. The beer came out much fruitier than I had hoped and I'm trying to figure out what the culprit is.

I feel mostly confident about yeast health and pitch rate - it was a harvested slurry but about one month old. I made a 1gal starter a week in advance, and another 2L starter on brew day.

Temp control had some problems. Pitched at 46, 48 on day two, 50 day three, 52 day four, and then a big jump to 57. I was reluctant to play with my controller to cool the batch for fear of disturbing the yeast so I just let it ride at the plateau of 57. As it slowed a couple days later I boosted to 62-65 to finish strong for a week. I then crashed for three days and kegged. 1.055-1.012

So it's not an ideal fermentation schedule, but I was hoping that at least the first several days at good temps would be enough to still make a pretty clean lager. It has a nice lager character, tasty malt and hops, but there's just this intense fruity flavor. Kinda cantaloupe/melony/gourdy that I'm not enjoying too much.

The strain is something proprietary I got from a pro-brewing friend. Nothing super special, still relatively neutral, but it's from a Czech brewery.

 

[giraffe]

How much is a big dose of hops? Im not familiar with santiam except it is supposed to be noble-ish, but many american noble-ish hops have weird undercurrents.

Its not green apple ish? How long has it been cold conditioning, it may just be young. Hows the clarity? any diacetyl?

 

[kanzimonson]

In a 12gal batch it was 4oz of santiam at flameout, for a 20min whirlpool. The hop character is noticeable, and it's definitely in the herbal/spicy noble range.

The off flavor isn't green apple related, but I've done some more searching about acetaldehyde and saw some descriptions like "fresh cut pumpkin" and I could maybe see this. I'm not sure I've ever clearly tasted acetaldehyde, but I'm definitely familiar with diacetyl since I use an English strain in most of my ales. I did a diacetyl force test to see if it was finished, and since I didn't detect any I just went ahead with packaging.

At this point it's been cold for a couple weeks, and has almost dropped clear. The flavor has actually become a little more pronounced as other "green beer" flavors have cleared up.

I'm going to bring it to a friend at a pro brewery and see if I can't get it diagnosed a little more clearly.