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Beer came out sour and bitter! undrinkable!!

h4brewing

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Hi,
    I brewed a German style beer with the best ingrediants.  It came out horrible!  So bitter and sour that you couldnt drink it.  It was also a cloudy collor and had some kind of stuff floating on top when i opened the container from fermenting for two weeks! what went wrong???
 
Sounds like you had an infection to me. I had one batch get infected. It was watery and tasted like sour apples. Make sure you sanitize everything really well, check the date on your yeast and hopefully you'll never see this again. Stinks when this happens.
 
It is unlikely to be bad yeast.  You likely had some sanitation issues and possible some wild yeast though the little information we have, is sounds more like an infection.

The mantra repeated time and time again is sanitation, sanitation, sanitation.  Everything in the proximity of your wort must be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized. 

Cool wort (below 160F) must be protected from  infection by airborn particles.  So, cover your kettle and protect your fermentation vessel.

 
ok i used white labs liquid yeast! is it possible this yeast was bad because i may have left it out of refirgetation when it was first shipped by accident!
 
It is not very likely that it was the yeast.  It is most likely a sanitation issue.  You might have had a little mold in your racking tubes or something.  Clean everything really, really well and sanitize the daylights out of "everything".  This includes taking apart any valves on your boil pot.  You need to get every little nook and cranny cleaned and sanitized.  I even take the ball valve off of my boil pot after each brew and then take it apart and clean and sanitize it.
 
+1

Use PBW and then Star San on all your equipment.
 
I just had my first batch come out bad.
A smoked porter experiment.  Sort of a tangy off flavor.  A little sour.
I figured I had to have picked up an infection.
I brewed at a buddies house to show him the process so who knows.

The only fix I know is to have a buddy who will drink anything and leave the keg there.
That and sanitize the hell out of everything.
 
I have had yeast go bad one time but it was shipped in the heart of summer and sat out on my front porch for hours in direct sunlight. Very hot to the touch even with two ice packs. But this is rare. I agree with all the above. Sanitation is most likely the issue.
 
yea, cooked yeast would be dead yeast, and a probably slow/dead fermentation.  But an active/normal ferm with these issues would likely be caused by different germs in the wort. 

And sour, cloudy and floaties all together are fairly strong indication of infection. 
 
Yea as of now I am sure it is a infection.  This beer was simply not drinkable no matter how "tuff" you are.  My freind with a shaved head and beard spit it up.  I am sure if you drank it somehow you would get badly sick!...If it does it again im going to assume the liquid yeast went bad due to not refrigerating it for a couple days...dry yeast next time!!
 
I am sure if you drank it somehow you would get badly sick!..

Assuming that you've got something spoiled that at one point had yeast growing in it making alcohol, it may cause some gastric distress but that's it. One thing that's magical about beer is that between the hops and the alcohol, no known pathogens will grow in it. Pathogen being something that causes a disease.  Spoiled beer may make you barf or give you the trots, but it will not send you to the hospital.
 
You should have seen the lengths I went to to try and make my "Tart Apple" Oktoberfest palatable.  It really did taste like tart apples, so I figured, "let's make it like cider" so I spiced it with cinnamon sticks, and cider spices.  STILL terrible.  The whole thing ended up going down the drain after about 6 weeks of endless "effort" on my part.  I'm 99% sure my problem was dead yeast thought because it had a HUGE lag time (3+ days) and I think a wild yeast finally took over, because after those three days it went CRAZY, smelled different than ANY previous fermentations, and apparently it ate EVERY last drop of sugar.  High ABV, but zero body (consistency of water) and horrible flavor.
 
h4brewing said:
...My freind with a shaved head and beard spit it up.  I am sure if you drank it somehow you would get badly sick!...

So, this defines good or bad beer?  Does it also define good or bad public policy?
 
h4brewing said:
If it does it again im going to assume the liquid yeast went bad due to not refrigerating it for a couple days...dry yeast next time!!

Yeast does not go bad.  It can and will die and not do its job but it does not go bad.  Refrigeration keeps the yeast dormant.  One the vial warms up, they get active.  With no oxygen, they will die off.  As the vial heats up too much, they die off even faster.  You likely killed 90% or more of the viable cells.

Now pour this vial with little or no live cells into wort.  The few remaining cells can't ferment the wort fast enough to ward off the already present bacteria. The yeast cannot generate enough C02 or alcohol to make the wort inhospitable to the competing organisms.  Once bacterial develop colonies, it is over.  The yeast have lost.  the wort is lost. 

Occasionally some fold have a beer that is infiltrated by  airborne wild yeast.  If these yeast can propagate enough, they can produce detectable amounts of off flavors.  These can be sour or soil like and even like wet hay or a barnyard.  There are many of these esters and phenols produced by wild yeast.  Often, these wild yeast are able to consume the sugards beer yeast cannot resulting is a much drier. thinner, watery beer.  Sometimes without ever producing an off flavor. 


 
That's a drag! I did a marathon brew one time doing 4 batches and the first one got something, all the others had to be dumped as well.
I was told to toss all plastic items and sanitize the hell out of what was left...I have had no problems since. The top of the beers had a sort of fuzz on them. I bottled them anyway and regretted doing. Had bottles exploding all over the place. The rest I popped the tops and they shot off like gysers.
I think it was airborne whatever it was.
Don't get frustrated, just clean the hell out of everything and try again.
 
I was told to toss all plastic items and sanitize the hell out of what was left...I have had no problems since.

That's what I did after my last infected brew, and I too have had no more problems. I also pitched all my plastic fermentation vessels and only use glass. That's probably a bit overboard, but at least the glass carboys smell like, well, they don't. Unlike plastic buckets that have had a few batches put through them.
 
Maine Homebrewer said:
I also pitched all my plastic fermentation vessels and only use glass. That's probably a bit overboard, but at least the glass carboys smell like, well, they don't. Unlike plastic buckets that have had a few batches put through them.

I have used my plastic tanks forever and have never had a problem.  PBW for about an hour or two after a batch completely removes ANY smell at all.  Plus, if you have any bottles that you want to take labels off of, the PBW will do the job in a hurry.  As you can tell, I love that stuff.
 
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