Ruining a beer with lactose

bobofet

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I made a beer with 8 oz of lactose (5 gallon batch) added with 10 minutes left in the boil. The beer was a chocoate cherry stout i got from a ski resort over the winter and the beer was black but not heavy. it was a stout for sure but one that was light feeling in the stomach, i had a 24 oz stein with a meal and had no problem going out to snowboard the rest of the day.

anyways i found a recipe to brew and it had lactose in it. I made the recipe and after i bottled it and opened one the lactose floated to the top of the glass. It is terrible to drink. the beer tasted really bad. I have had it sitting in an 80 degree room for a couple months to let some of the bad cherry flavor die down, which is working and I found if you drink it from the bottle and tilt the bottom above your lips you dont get lactose in your mouth.

Has anyone had lactose float to the top like this?
 
Also the recipe called for 5 pounds of purreid cherries that I added in the boil with like 5 minutes left, which after tasting this beer i would only recommend using a concentrated cherry juice based on recommendations of others on other threads. there was a specific brand that was best. If you inquire here I will look it up and post it.
 
Are you sure that was lactose that floated to the top? Lactose added with 10 minutes left in the boil should have dissolved completely. Sounds more like an infection to me.
 
Yep lactose should add sweetness to the stout maybe its something to do with the cherry.
 
And lactose is completely soluble in water - it won't stratify.
 
Pictures might help, cause yeah that doesn't sound right.
 
Sounds pretty awful to me. :eek: Definitely not lactose. Something's dreadfully wrong. ;)
 
You know it could be some krausen from refermentation in bottle. There may be a noticeable ring around the neck of the bottle that stuff dont taste nice.
 
I wasnt sure it was lactose but I imagined that it what it must have been. there is a noticeable amount of the stuff around the top of the bottles. Im not sure if its an infection because im still a beginner but I imagine infected beer to taste undrinkable, during fermentation it looked identical to my non infected batches. This was before i got a hydromete but i gave it 3 or 4 weeks in primary, my notes dont say exactly. I had incomplete fermentation in one batch before botteling and if it was not cooled (sometimes i drink them warm because of fridge space) it would foam all over when opening but this warm did not foam.
 

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It was not a cheap batch and im too stingy with money to dump it. If i get a slight buzz i can easily drink it down, its damn near 8% according to beersmith so a little goes a long ways for me.
 
You know that looks like a wild Scoby or something. Is it vinigary by any chance?
Looks like an infection of some sorts.

Never mind make the next brew simple i would like a SMaSH beer but your call for sure.
 
Im not sure if its an infection because im still a beginner but I imagine infected beer to taste undrinkable,
Now you can be sure. ;) You've got a beer that's become inoculated with bacteria or wild yeast. Infected is very seldom undrinkable and there shouldn't be anything in the fermentation that would make you sick (though you may experience flatulence in techincolor. :D )
Take apart every tiny part of everything that touches your beer (buckets, spigots, bottling wand, tubing), especially if it's plastic and soak it in hot PBW and then use a really good sanitizer. Work towards getting clean fermentation and carbonation and you'll be rewarded with something that you don't have to compromise your taste buds with . :)
 
That was my second batch and the third came out really, really good. But between the batches i think i did buy a new siphon hose and i submersed everything in a batch of starsan before transfering to carboy and bottle bucket and bottles. Glad to know what it was, but no there was not vinigery taste I detected.
 
it's a good practice to dunk or spray everything in star-sans right before use, it's never let me down
 
I'm pretty liberal with my star san. I keep a lot of it around just in case.
 

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