IPA disaster

[Grizzly299]

But can I ask has anyone ever made an IPA that was totally undrinkable at the stage they were about to keg/bottle it? I couldnt even swallow quarter of a mouthful of it vile. I cant believe (although I live in hope)
That this will work out and be fine. Anytime in past I have always been able to quite easily drink the beer/stout/lager from my test jar but not this time. Should an IPA be any different and are the hops a factor in this or.shouldnt they make any.difference.

IPA should be consumed reasonably fresh. Before hop flavour and aroma dissipates.

The duration in the primary fermenter is not an issue at all(not at 5 weeks anyway), as long as no bacteria or wild yeast get in. I've moved away from bucked style fermenters.

I'd say it got infected somewhere along the way.

 

[henteaser]

Something about your process still doesn't sound right. You may have accidentally made a 100+ IBU beer!

1. You say you "boiled the hops for 5 min" did you do this seperately (in plain ol' tap water?) or in the full batch of wort once you had mixed the kit?

2. How did you then cool this mixture? Did you use some kind of wort chiller, or just leave the hopped wort to stand until it had cooled (naturally) before adding yeast?

 

[MiddleRoom]

I remember my first AG brew - I tried to brew a Best Bitter. The only thing it was probably 'best' at was making me gag. I thought I could try and save it, but it just didn't take - even after a month of conditioning. I still tried though.

Like the others have said, package it and see what happens. The worst that can happen is that you have to pour it down the drain, or over your garden... If it turns out well then it's a bonus.

 

[mancer62]

Henteaser..This was a Coopers Brew A IPA kit. I made it on Monday 3rd April.
I made 21 L
I put 6 pints water in a pot when warm I stirred in 500g light spray malt and 1kg brewing sugar and stirred.
After boil break I added 25g of Cascade & 25g of Citra and boiled for 5 mins.
I then poured this into the FV along with the tin of Coopers Brew A IPA + a further 1 pint warm water used to clean out the inside of the tin.
I then stirred for approx. 10/15 mins to reduce the temp for the yeast.
I then pitched the yeast at 20C/68f.
The OG was 1042 and the FG was 1008.

 

[BeerCat]

This is a lager i made that got infected. http://cdn.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=5580&stc=1&d=1463400749

 

[henteaser]

Henteaser..This was a Coopers Brew A IPA kit. I made it on Monday 3rd April.
I made 21 L
I put 6 pints water in a pot when warm I stirred in 500g light spray malt and 1kg brewing sugar and stirred.
After boil break I added 25g of Cascade & 25g of Citra and boiled for 5 mins.
I then poured this into the FV along with the tin of Coopers Brew A IPA + a further 1 pint warm water used to clean out the inside of the tin.
I then stirred for approx. 10/15 mins to reduce the temp for the yeast.
I then pitched the yeast at 20C/68f.
The OG was 1042 and the FG was 1008.

I'm assuming the 50g of hops went in to the FV too, yeah?

And that you "topped up" the FV with cool tap water to get to 21L?

You essentially did a 5 min boil, a 20 min hot "hop stand" then a further 1 month "cold" hop stand! :)

So I'm willing to bet that if there's no other visual clues to infection (mold, scum, fur) the "sour" flavour is astringency from the 5 week contact with all the hops.

If you dump it now, you'll learn absolutely nothing.

My advice would be to bottle, condition for a month, then taste again. If the beer's OK after that you can put it down to experience and that not all beers taste great pre-conditioning.

If it still tastes bad, try and get one of the bottles to someone who may be able to detect exactly what the off flavour is :thumb:

 

[mancer62]

Beer cat was just looking at the pic of your infected lager...I still don't know how to send a pic on this thing. But I would say my IPA didn't have all the stuff at the top going on like yours but I did notice that biggish white blob on yours I had one medium sized one of those and two smaller ones and that was it. Are those white blobs infected? what are they?