Oxidized beer, now what?

[technicoloraudio]

I racked my biere de gardish to secondary today and tasted a after taking a gravity reading. Very almond. Strong benzaldehyde.

It's a ten gallon batch split between two carboys, brew day was totally normal, with the exception of a long cool down phase prior to racking it into a 2nd gen YB Vermont Ale cake that beautifully handled the first and previous pitch. I shook to aerate instead of using my diffusion stone and I had powerful krausen in 16 hours. Had to go blow off tube on one of the carboys.

Either way, there was no introduction of additional oxygenation post fermentation.

Almonds. Like ameretti cookies, almond extract, disarrono on the rocks almonds.

I threw some jester king boxer's revenge dregs into one of the secondary fermenters today just for kicks, but I'm not ready to give up on it.

Any advice?



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[Demus]

If you're confident there was no post ferment oxygen why do you assume oxidation? If you're correct there was no additional oxygen, oxidation is by definition impossible. Look up almond-like off flavors and see what the cause could be...


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[Demus]

Ok, looked it up myself and one possible oxidation chemical can indeed have the flavor of almond. It results from oxidized melanoidens so is common in rich, malt heavy styles. What wrote above is true though; no oxygen, no oxidation. So if it is in fact oxidation, there has to be a source of oxygen you aren't aware of...


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[technicoloraudio]

After researching with the google, I found the almond aroma and flavor to be the sign of benzaldehyde production which is caused by oxidation, and I guess what I should have said was that:

This is the first beer that has ever had this problem and nothing unusual or out of the ordinary occurred post fermentation that would have caused addition oxidation as far as I know.

It also seemed odd that both carboys displayed the off flavor in unpleasant amounts which leads me to believe that it would have had to be something that occurred before the batch was split, as I see it even more unlikely that both fermenters suffered a leak in like manner.

To answer the question posed to me:
I believe the problem was oxidation because that's what the internet told me to believe.


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[Demus]

If you're right the answer to the original question is nothing. Once oxidized, there's no going back...
Sorry...


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[k1ngl1ves]

Did your gravity readings show that it is done?

Oxidation becomes worse over time. Do you keg? If it's done fermenting, force carb it quickly and find lots of people that like almonds...

 

[ASantiago]

racking it into a 2nd gen YB Vermont Ale cake that beautifully handled the first and previous pitch. I shook to aerate instead of using my diffusion stone and I had powerful krausen in 16 hours.

Have you considered the possibility of fermentation problems? Over-pitching? Unhealthy yeast?

 

[technicoloraudio]

I don't think it was a yeasting issue, my mosaic pale was very low gravity, basically just a big drinkable starter for this biere de garde.


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