Sad Day

[Hatchbrew]

Dumped two batches of beer today due to oxidation. Horrible cardboard and slightly metallic. Two batches of wheat gone. Darn that wasn't a fun time opening all of those bottles and pitching them. My lady offered to do it for me and spare me the endeavor, but I followed it through. Watered my hops with the wasted beer.

 

[Haputanlas]

How long were they in the fermenter and bottles?

 

[Calder]

What was the cause? I'm careful with my beers, but I do take liberties and often do things that are frowned upon, and occasionally abuse them, but rarely have a problem.

Any information you can give as to the cause to help fellow brewers avoid whatever mistakes you made.

 

[Dr. Francois]

I feel your pain!

I had two batches in primary and one in secondary when my son was born. One thing led to another and all three sat for 4 months (the one in secondary was already 6 weeks old). All three have off flavors, but my Yooper-dead-guy tastes like Amontillado sherry consumed out of an old cardboard box. Massive oxidation. The other two were wheats, and wheat doesn't seem to like age very much. Most of the character is gone.

I still bottled them, but I rarely touch those bottles. I got a keg system shortly after so I wouldn't dread bottling day as much.

 

[Hatchbrew]

Three weeks for one of them in fermentor, then I had a bottle shortage and had to wait another couple weeks to bottle the second one. Tasted them at two, three and four weeks in the bottle and they kept getting worse The problem occured during the brewing process, I had some brewing mishaps, and the wort got very aerated and sloshed around. Then when they were fermenting I had new windows installed and they were exposed to direct sunlight for probably 12 hours before I returned home to find them in that state.