sour beer

[grainy one]

do some beers sour in secondary and then clean up after a few days? or over night.
I have a 25% white wheat 75% pilsner or so, with 05 yeast, in secondary and it got tasting a little sour after I transferred it. now after 2 days it's tasting better. I'm not sure what's happening, any thoughts.

 

[Ozarks Mountain Brewery]

could be anything, sour can be an infection or just the yeast, might be the hops

 

[grainy one]

kind of thought just that, could be a lot of stuff. I'm bottling half and letting other half age some more.
I'm new with the wheat so experiments are in order. Thank for the input.

 

[Nosybear]

If it's soured, first question: Does the sample taste like vinegar or cider? If so, it has acetobacter - drink it while it's drinkable then dump it. If it's a tart sweetness - think a sweet-tart - it's lactobacillus, indicative of an infection. It MIGHT turn out nice - soured beers use lactobacillus. Again, it might be a matter of drinking it as long as it's drinkable then dumping the rest. If there are other off-flavors such as goat, sweatsocks, medicine or solvent, you have an infection of some wild yeast or bacteria. Again, you can drink it as long as you can stand the taste, then dump. And there's the rare possibility that you have some beneficial infection - they happen - in which case, save us a starter! A soured beer will not recover or get better with age, in fact, the opposite is most likely but who knows, yours might be the exception. And rest assured, it may taste like swamp water or a sweaty horse blanket but no human pathogen can grow in beer - it won't hurt you, aside from maybe violently spewing it on your significant other or something precious....

 

[grainy one]

after reading these post and researching on the web I think my use of American - Pilsner 37 66.7%
American - White Wheat 40 22.2% , the two main malts are the problem . both have high dms. also I think the OG. of 1.062 after boil was way to much (shooting for 1.055). This batch was mostly a test to see where my mash efficiency is at, and start using wheat.
efficiency was low, to low the put on the web,(whoops a newbe thing.) all said, I always freak out when the beer changes taste to the bad side and then I think infection. The old adage DWHAHB comes to mind.
With all the input from everyone I'm sure the beer will mellow in time and my first wheat ale is born. thanks.

 

[LarryBrewer]

The beer is probably just green. Most yeasts don't taste that great (S-04 is like socks and wood chips). Most young beers have off flavors that naturally go away.

At this point, allow the yeast clean up the beer for a few days. This is called a diacetyl rest, and should be done for 2-3 days at 65-68F.

If you can, cold crash it. That will cause even more yeast to drop out. Or, after the beer has been bottle conditioned, leave the bottles in the fridge for about a week and then drink. I notice this helps get some of the funky notes out.

My rule of thumb is 45 days after brewing an Ale it will be at its best, with lagers it can be much longer. Flavorful beers, like IPAs are often ready way sooner because the hops dominate the flavor and mask all the defects. I don't filter my beer, which factors into why it takes so long. If you filter, like most pro breweries do, the time is cut down considerably.

 

[Nosybear]

Larry has a point - sometimes a little patience is all it takes to fix a beer. I missed the "wheat" part - it adds some tartness, too. But my original advice holds: If it starts to taste bad, dump it; otherwise, RDWHAHB.

 

[grainy one]

well after 2 more days in secondary it's better, but a lot of the yeast has settled out, going to bottle and wait two weeks to see if it primes. I hate the guess work on the yeast , all I can do is hope they have it in them to prime up. cheers.
well time is all it needed .its now real good two weeks later. all it needed is to clean up. them yeasty are sure amazing .