Well it finally happened. I've been brewing for the duration of 2020 with at least 6 - 8 good batches under my belt and this last one, ugh... I first got worried when I went to dryhop it and I got a whiff of the most astringent, boozy smell it burned my nostrils. I decided to save the hops and wait for the beer to "mellow"?. Well it never mellowed. Sure the odor subsided a bit but it never went away. After about 23 days in the fermenter, I decided it wasn't going to get any better so I kegged it up with a fool's hope that it might be okay. I tried burping the keg for a few days thinking that maybe the co2 might force some of the ickiness out of solution but no luck. It was undrinkable.
The real kicker is that I have no idea what went wrong. I thought maybe infection but I didn't see the signs of infection that I found doing some searching. I started a separate thread inquiring about pitching rates but it doesn't sound like my issue was caused by yeast. One of my last suspicions in a tainted bucket. I had a fermentation get a bit hot over the summer and the resulting beer had the same hint of boozyness as the current wasted batch, but it was still drinkable. I didn't notice before I put the recent batch in, but now the bucket seems to be stained with the stink, regardless of how much I scrub. Is it possible that a plastic fermentation bucket could impart such terribleness into a batch?
The real kicker is that I have no idea what went wrong. I thought maybe infection but I didn't see the signs of infection that I found doing some searching. I started a separate thread inquiring about pitching rates but it doesn't sound like my issue was caused by yeast. One of my last suspicions in a tainted bucket. I had a fermentation get a bit hot over the summer and the resulting beer had the same hint of boozyness as the current wasted batch, but it was still drinkable. I didn't notice before I put the recent batch in, but now the bucket seems to be stained with the stink, regardless of how much I scrub. Is it possible that a plastic fermentation bucket could impart such terribleness into a batch?