When Beer Goes Bad – a couple of Questions
I had a bit of a disappointing start to my Saturday evening bottled beer at home session this week. I'd picked up a three-pack of different beers from a relatively new micro-brewery (I won't mention the name of the brewery as this isn't going to be a happy tale, and I'd rather not prejudice anyone against them for something that could well be beyond their control for all I know) and I decided that I'd give all three of them a go in one evening, then write up a triple tasting notes piece.
Alas, things went badly wrong from the moment I cracked open the first bottle and got a whiff of the sour, over-ripe smell that generally signals Beer Gone Bad (Flemish Reds being the notable exception). I tired a couple of cautious sips and my worst suspicions were confirmed by the unpleasantly vinegary, metallic taste. The beer in question was a dark mild that I'd sampled when I bought the three-pack in question at a farmer's market type affair back in the Summer, so I knew it really shouldn't taste like that. Straight down the sink. Strike one.
Bottle number two - a pale ale with a pleasant malt / hop balance - was entirely drinkable, so no problem there.
But then I opened bottle #3 - a 4.7% red-brown ale that I'd also sampled at the time of purchase and rather enjoyed - and the stuff literally oozed from the bottle. Seriously, it was positively gelatinous, with a distinctly unpleasant-looking patchy scum floating on the surface. That one went down the sink with half a kettle of boiling water as a chaser. Strike two and out.
So here's my first question: can someone more familiar with the perils and pitfalls of the brewing process suggest what was wrong with beer #3? I'm guessing beer #1 was oxidised (?) but I have no idea what would cause the other effect. Is this what's alluded to when someone says a beer has "gone septic"? Or is it some other side-effect of the yeast used in the bottle conditioning? Or was it a case of a few harmless floaties that I could have safely ignored? Incidentally, all three beers were well within their best-by dates, at four, six and three months, respectively.
And my second question: do you think that I should tell the brewery in question? I'm not going to go around demand a refund or anything; I'm well aware that when it comes to RAIB you pays your money, you takes your chance and the occasional bad bottle is one of the risks of drinking real ale at home (and one obvious advantage of pub drinking over home drinking is that you can take a bad one back to the bar). But if there's a problem with the brewer's bottling process, or the yeast strain used in the bottle conditioning, or something technical, then the brewer in question would want t know, right?
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I'd suggest the brewery would welcome constructive and sensitive feedback.
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Cheers Dave. Anyone genuinely interested in improving their product ought to, oughtn't they? Still no idea what the problem actually was though - any diagnostic suggestions out there?
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It is a sad thing when this happens, and it only takes one batch like this to ruin the reputation of a new microbrewer forever.
My only suggestion for bottle 3 is that when the beer is run out of the fermentation vessel and put into a conditioning tank finings are added to the beer to let it clear before bottling. Normally you would then let the beer clear overnight and transfer it via CO2 pressure, gravity or pump into a seperate tank which the bottling machine is attached to. Either the beer wasn't transferred, saving time and effort (but lazy and risky) and a load of finings were sucked through from conditioning tank to the bottling machine and into your bottle, or the force used to push the beer into the bottling tank was too great and stirred up the finings letting it end up in the bottle.
If that is what has happened, it is a schoolboy error which deserves a slap on the wrist. Not only should the beer been treated more gently, cutting corners like that always leaves quality issues. The bottles should also have been observed and tested while they were in storage eliminating any chance of this happening.
If I were you, a friendly, constructive call to the brewery in question wouldn't go amiss!
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Both infections sound like Lactobacillus. Acidic flavours and in the case of #3 ' silky turbidity' are characteristic of these organisms. They are the most common spoilers of beer as they are anaerobes. As a brewer the fact that you have micro contamination is all you need to know. You have then to clean up your act. There are a number of expensive time consuming tests that can be done to guarantee that you don't have an infection in the batch but they are often beyond the means of a micro.
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@Pete , @Stuart - Thank you very much indeed for imparting the technical know-how there, just the sort of info I was hoping for.
And I will indeed drop the brewery a line, just to let them know and in case it's a batch issue that they can check for in their remaining stock.
Cheers all!
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Bottle number 3 is almost certainly "ropiness", basically an infection usually down to poor housekeeping and bad hygiene, a familiar problem with novice homebrewers. Don't have time to explain it, but google should answer any further queries. I'd phone the brewery and a discreet word.
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@Dominic - Would that be the Marble brewery in Manchester, by any chance? If so: your beers are bloody marvellous, mate. Keep up the excellent work! :)
And I did drop the brewery in question a line. They told me that they'd heard from one other customer with a similar problem, so it must have been batch but that it hadn't occurred again since. They also very kindly offered to replace my bottles, but as they're based a bit far from me I'll probably not get the chance to take them up on that one. But still, they responded quickly and positively and thanked me for the feedback, so that's the main thing.
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