[Uvolnit]

West Coast IPA BIAB 5 Gallon brew with the Ahtanum hops received free from the AHA for renewing.  I know those hops aren't the magical Citra or Mosaic but figured they'd be a nice big dry hop addition to a WCIPA.
Issue:
After 2 weeks of a kegged beer, threw first and second pour away due to trub, the rest of the beer is horrible.  Definitely not a west coast IPA.  Tastes more like a cardboard version of an amber ale with some bittering and nasty aftertaste.  So, what is the culprit of my issue?  The body is great; light and fine waiting for the hops.  It's more light then an astringent and nasty amber taste followed by the natural bitterness.  No floral, fruity, tropical hop tones...those are all gone, disappointingly. 
What I think is the main issue is the yeast.  I harvested WLP-001 from an IPA I brewed 10 months ago, refrigerated for a few months.  Cleaned the yeast a few months back then made a starter for this beer with the same yeast.  No way for me to tell for sure but based on my research this is the main off-flavor.  Whether I was not 110% clean and sanitized to keep my yeast or whatnot. 

The only other issue is that my strike water temp was too low and my grain temp was only 137°F after 60 min so my grains didn't sac all sugars as needed.  I aimed at 148° but it dropped too fast so I should have done a longer mash rest.

The other potential issue is the Ahtanum dry hop.  Based on the online character of these it should have imparted a nice IPA character to the beer.  It was far from that.

Any opinions?  Very much appreciated!

[dmtaylor]

Might just be a yeast thing.  I know I've experienced a lot of problems reusing yeast older than 8-9 months.  Once it hits 8 months old in the refrigerator, I don't care what yeast it is (liquid yeast anyway), it goes into the trash.  Even old unopened Wyeast or White Labs yeasts are very risky when they're that old, in my experience.  It's just not worth the risk.  Other people won't agree with me and that's fine, but that's my experience.

[Robert]

Cardboard and loss of hop character scream "oxidation."  Not that the other concerns aren't valid too.  May be a perfect storm of problems.

[ethinson]

The flavor profile certainly fits oxidation, but after only two weeks in the keg? Did you purge the keg? Maybe run out of CO2 halfway through, something like that? Did you siphon into the keg or transfer with gas? I had a crack in my autosiphon one time that was letting air in and my bottle conditioned beers would turn pretty quick.

What was your final gravity? That will help determine if it was a yeast or mash issue. Did you hit your targets?

[BrewBama]

Did you siphon or rack thru a fermenter valve?  When is the last time the valve was completely disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled?

How did you wrangle your yeast?  What did you store them in?  How did you wash the yeast?

How did you fine the beer?

How do you serve your beer?  When is the last time you completely disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled your keg, Quick disconnects, lines, Tap etc?


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[Uvolnit]

Might just be a yeast thing.  I know I've experienced a lot of problems reusing yeast older than 8-9 months.  Once it hits 8 months old in the refrigerator, I don't care what yeast it is (liquid yeast anyway), it goes into the trash.  Even old unopened Wyeast or White Labs yeasts are very risky when they're that old, in my experience.  It's just not worth the risk.  Other people won't agree with me and that's fine, but that's my experience.

I'm thinking it's at least partially, if not all, the yeast issue.  I did wash it once and remake a starter with it in attempt to revive it, before refrigerating long term again.  But, I've read a lot that it's an iffy thing to do when not in a lab environment.
What is the common mutated/bad yeast attribute to the beer?  Does it sound like the issue I explained?  I wouldn't expect it to down out all the hops unless it was infected with bacteria or whatnot.

Cardboard and loss of hop character scream "oxidation."  Not that the other concerns aren't valid too.  May be a perfect storm of problems.

I can't say it's 100% cardboard, but similarly "bready" tasting if you know what I mean.  It's a hard taste to explain.  It's for sure not the clean, lightly malty, WCIPA I intended.  Not that it can't be an oxidation issue but this was my 18th brew in the past 2 years and I've never had an oxidation issue, until bottling.  This beer was kegged after only 10 days and was only in a primary glass fermenter, in the dark. 

The flavor profile certainly fits oxidation, but after only two weeks in the keg? Did you purge the keg? Maybe run out of CO2 halfway through, something like that? Did you siphon into the keg or transfer with gas? I had a crack in my autosiphon one time that was letting air in and my bottle conditioned beers would turn pretty quick.

What was your final gravity? That will help determine if it was a yeast or mash issue. Did you hit your targets?

10 days primary then in to keg.  Used autosiphon.  The corny keg was my 2nd time using it and the first kegged beer was fantastic.  After emptying the first keg I rinsed it with water and put about 1 gallon of PBW solution to sit in there.  Once I was ready to rack into the keg for this beer I drained the PBW, rinsed with water, then filled with Starsan solution and shook and let sit for a few minutes.  PBW'ed and Starsan'ed autosiphon, all equipment, and keg parts.  Autosiphon is quite new and I don't see any cracks.  Did purge keg with CO2 once filled with beer.  Even force carbed it and pulled the blow off a few times so there should have been zero O2 in there.
OG was 1.050.  FG 1.002.  Didn't hit OG target as I'm fairly new to all grain BIAB and like in the original post, I didn't hit my temp target so definitely didn't sac all the sugars.

Did you siphon or rack thru a fermenter valve?  When is the last time the valve was completely disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled?

How did you wrangle your yeast?  What did you store them in?  How did you wash the yeast?

How did you fine the beer?

How do you serve your beer?  When is the last time you completely disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled your keg, Quick disconnects, lines, Tap etc?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I took the yeast/trub cake from a previous home brew ~10 months ago.  Put in large Ball jars (boiled the jars and lid components to sanitize) then the fridge.  A few days later once it settled in the fridge, I boiled some tap water and let cool to room temp and drained beer/liquid off jars, dumped the yeast layer into other sanitized jars, and topped off with the new, sanitized water.  2 days before this brew day I took out that yeast and made a starter as usual.  It looked and smelled normal.

I did not fine the beer.

This is the 2nd beer I am kegging in a Corny keg.  I put cleaner through that line, quick connect, and faucet, right after I took the previous empty keg off.  As mentioned above, I put PBW solution in that keg and shook and let sit in it until ready to fill again.  On fill day I emptied the PBW, rinsed with water, then shook with Starsan solution along with putting the lid in cleaner and sanitizer and spraying down the external ball lock fittings.

[Uvolnit]

I kept this yeast in Ball jars again, assuming it was still good to use.  I just took them out of the fridge to pitch and wanted to smell and try the beer that settled.  It smells and tastes very similar to a weissbier yeast.  Huge notes of banana and a little bready.  Can taste some of the hops, a slight Amarillo comes out in the taste. 

[dmtaylor]

Might just be a yeast thing.  I know I've experienced a lot of problems reusing yeast older than 8-9 months.  Once it hits 8 months old in the refrigerator, I don't care what yeast it is (liquid yeast anyway), it goes into the trash.  Even old unopened Wyeast or White Labs yeasts are very risky when they're that old, in my experience.  It's just not worth the risk.  Other people won't agree with me and that's fine, but that's my experience.

I'm thinking it's at least partially, if not all, the yeast issue.  I did wash it once and remake a starter with it in attempt to revive it, before refrigerating long term again.  But, I've read a lot that it's an iffy thing to do when not in a lab environment.
What is the common mutated/bad yeast attribute to the beer?  Does it sound like the issue I explained?  I wouldn't expect it to down out all the hops unless it was infected with bacteria or whatnot.

Fresh yeast adds a tartness and can add a bready and a low brothy flavor.  Very old yeast that has begun autolysis (cannibalism) will turn even more brothy, metallic, and add also a flavor like that of a burnt match.  If any of that sounds familiar, it could be a yeast problem.  If not... then maybe it's just an oxidation thing as others are mentioning.

[ethinson]

10 weeks is a long time to sit on trub.  That could also be part of why you're losing your hop aroma. Was there a reason to leave it in that long? Most beer is finished in 8-12 days.

Also, 1.002 is a very low finishing gravity, especially for a hoppy beer, you would want at least a little bit of residual sweetness to balance the bitterness, so that could be the cause of some of the "nasty" harsh taste.  Super low gravity could also be an indicator of a wild yeast infection, but I don't see any other indicators.

As mentioned earlier I think this might be a "perfect storm" where several things went wrong as once.  Yeast seems to be an issue, oxidiation seems to be a possible issue, mash temp seems to be an issue, cleanliness of the keg (although it sounds like you cleaned it well).. sometimes these things just happen.

[Uvolnit]

10 weeks is a long time to sit on trub.  That could also be part of why you're losing your hop aroma. Was there a reason to leave it in that long? Most beer is finished in 8-12 days.

Also, 1.002 is a very low finishing gravity, especially for a hoppy beer, you would want at least a little bit of residual sweetness to balance the bitterness, so that could be the cause of some of the "nasty" harsh taste.  Super low gravity could also be an indicator of a wild yeast infection, but I don't see any other indicators.

As mentioned earlier I think this might be a "perfect storm" where several things went wrong as once.  Yeast seems to be an issue, oxidiation seems to be a possible issue, mash temp seems to be an issue, cleanliness of the keg (although it sounds like you cleaned it well).. sometimes these things just happen.

10 days, not weeks.  My fault for mistyping. 
I agree in that the FG was really low, that also tells me there is a yeast issue with infection or mutation.

[goose]

Did you siphon or rack thru a fermenter valve?  When is the last time the valve was completely disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled?

How did you wrangle your yeast?  What did you store them in?  How did you wash the yeast?

How did you fine the beer?

How do you serve your beer?  When is the last time you completely disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled your keg, Quick disconnects, lines, Tap etc?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I took the yeast/trub cake from a previous home brew ~10 months ago.  Put in large Ball jars (boiled the jars and lid components to sanitize) then the fridge.  A few days later once it settled in the fridge, I boiled some tap water and let cool to room temp and drained beer/liquid off jars, dumped the yeast layer into other sanitized jars, and topped off with the new, sanitized water.  2 days before this brew day I took out that yeast and made a starter as usual.  It looked and smelled normal.

I did not fine the beer.

This is the 2nd beer I am kegging in a Corny keg.  I put cleaner through that line, quick connect, and faucet, right after I took the previous empty keg off.  As mentioned above, I put PBW solution in that keg and shook and let sit in it until ready to fill again.  On fill day I emptied the PBW, rinsed with water, then shook with Starsan solution along with putting the lid in cleaner and sanitizer and spraying down the external ball lock fittings.
[/quote]


_____________________

My question here is why did you remove the yeast from the beer and replace it with sanitized water?  I have always heard that you should store the yeast in the fermented beer until you are ready to use it.  Then warm it up, decant off the beer, and add fresh cooled wort from you brew to rouse it.  I put mine on a stir plate to get it going before pitching it.  If you don't have one, just swirl it around a few times.

Others may have ideas that disagree with me on this, but my hunch is that the yeast started to autolyze (die) in the water which has less osmotic density on the cell walls than the fermented beer (even though your FG was 1.002) which may have led  to off flavors to the new beer.

[Uvolnit]

I used the water to help add liquid to the jars of yeast so they could sit and separate the trub to yeast.  When I first collected the yeast from the fermenter a lot of trub came with it.  So, I then poured bits of the yeast/trub into multiple jars and topped with water to let settle to then pour off just the yeast layer into 1 final jar with very little trub.  Make sense?

Based on more yeast care research, it's not recommended to reuse yeast after even 2 weeks, being refrigerated.  I should have not used it.  Now I know. 

[Robert]

Yeast can be used after much longer storage than 2 weeks.  It depends on the methods of storage and handling.  It should be stored under the beer it made.  Never rinse yeast.  This raises the pH,  making it vulnerable to infection,  and adds oxygen, causing the yeast to attempt to begin their metabolic cycle.   But in the absence of wort to consume, they just deplete their reserves and starve, or autolyse, and if repitched don't have the reserves needed to start a healthy fermentation,  allowing further opportunities for abnormal fermentation and infection.   Generally, homebrewers are in a better position than commercial brewers when it comes to yeast storage.   Yeast in a small jar, or even the bottom of a carboy, are not subjected to anything like the hydrostatic pressure and heat buildup that exist in the cone of a commercial vessel. And when in doubt,  make a starter.  This also gives you the chance to smell and taste the starter beer for off flavors.   In your case, you mention a strong banana ester.  That does suggest some contamination if your original yeast did not produce this. 

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[ethinson]

10 weeks is a long time to sit on trub.  That could also be part of why you're losing your hop aroma. Was there a reason to leave it in that long? Most beer is finished in 8-12 days.

Also, 1.002 is a very low finishing gravity, especially for a hoppy beer, you would want at least a little bit of residual sweetness to balance the bitterness, so that could be the cause of some of the "nasty" harsh taste.  Super low gravity could also be an indicator of a wild yeast infection, but I don't see any other indicators.

As mentioned earlier I think this might be a "perfect storm" where several things went wrong as once.  Yeast seems to be an issue, oxidiation seems to be a possible issue, mash temp seems to be an issue, cleanliness of the keg (although it sounds like you cleaned it well).. sometimes these things just happen.

10 days, not weeks.  My fault for mistyping. 
I agree in that the FG was really low, that also tells me there is a yeast issue with infection or mutation.

That makes more sense. Thanks for the clarification.

[goose]

Yeast can be used after much longer storage than 2 weeks.  It depends on the methods of storage and handling.  It should be stored under the beer it made.  Never rinse yeast.  This raises the pH,  making it vulnerable to infection,  and adds oxygen, causing the yeast to attempt to begin their metabolic cycle.   But in the absence of wort to consume, they just deplete their reserves and starve, or autolyse, and if repitched don't have the reserves needed to start a healthy fermentation,  allowing further opportunities for abnormal fermentation and infection.   Generally, homebrewers are in a better position than commercial brewers when it comes to yeast storage.   Yeast in a small jar, or even the bottom of a carboy, are not subjected to anything like the hydrostatic pressure and heat buildup that exist in the cone of a commercial vessel. And when in doubt,  make a starter.  This also gives you the chance to smell and taste the starter beer for off flavors.   In your case, you mention a strong banana ester.  That does suggest some contamination if your original yeast did not produce this. 

Sent from my SM-J727V using Tapatalk

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