Bart Goddard
2013-08-22 13:01:08 UTC
One of my students brought me a homebrew and asked,
"Can you tell me what we did wrong? This stuff
smells like ass."
I let the bottle age in the fridge a couple weeks,
and finally, last night, I and another experienced
homebrewer cracked it open. We have our opinions,
but I'd like more:
The initial whiff is "jalepeno." This was not
a jalepeno beer. I've forgotten what style he
was trying for, but it was something "normal."
So no peppers in the beer. The second whiff
was more like bell pepper. Neither of us knew
anything that would give a pepper aroma to a brew.
The very little that we tasted was almost OK to
drink. There was a slight sour taste at the end
which made us think of an infection. So our best
guess is "some kind of infection that produces a
jalepeno/bell pepper smell." There was no ring
around the neck of the bottle and the beer had
good clarity. No haze or floaty threads.
The student asserted that the aroma was real
strong. We didn't find it strong, so maybe the
extra aging mellowed things a bit. Our second
guess was that the hops just needed to settle
down, and perhaps the beer would be fine in a
month or so.
So the main question is "Anybody have jalepeno
before without actually adding the pepper?"
(And, yes, we professor types are very wary of
ingesting anything a student brings us. "Thanks
for the cookies. I'll eat them later....")
Bart
"Can you tell me what we did wrong? This stuff
smells like ass."
I let the bottle age in the fridge a couple weeks,
and finally, last night, I and another experienced
homebrewer cracked it open. We have our opinions,
but I'd like more:
The initial whiff is "jalepeno." This was not
a jalepeno beer. I've forgotten what style he
was trying for, but it was something "normal."
So no peppers in the beer. The second whiff
was more like bell pepper. Neither of us knew
anything that would give a pepper aroma to a brew.
The very little that we tasted was almost OK to
drink. There was a slight sour taste at the end
which made us think of an infection. So our best
guess is "some kind of infection that produces a
jalepeno/bell pepper smell." There was no ring
around the neck of the bottle and the beer had
good clarity. No haze or floaty threads.
The student asserted that the aroma was real
strong. We didn't find it strong, so maybe the
extra aging mellowed things a bit. Our second
guess was that the hops just needed to settle
down, and perhaps the beer would be fine in a
month or so.
So the main question is "Anybody have jalepeno
before without actually adding the pepper?"
(And, yes, we professor types are very wary of
ingesting anything a student brings us. "Thanks
for the cookies. I'll eat them later....")
Bart