Oh No I Suck Again!

The first all-grain batch is awful - totally undrinkable. It's the exact same problem I have had a few times before. So depressing. Crap. Crappity-crap-crap!

However, there is an upside. I believe that we have finally figured out what is causing these every-once-in-a-while bad batches.

At first I thought might be a problem with one of my kegs. There was no way to prove this because I don't keep records of which beer ends up in which keg, but the frequency of the problem seemed about right. I had already started stripping down my empty kegs and soaking the poppet valves, etc.

However, when I tasted this new Hefe and found the same problem I knew it must be something else. (BTW don't ask why I didn't notice the problem when I sampled the beer. I actually did notice it, but I think my brain refused to believe it). This 10 gallon batch of Hefe was split between two primary buckets, two secondary carboys, and two kegs yet both halves of the batch tasted exactly the same.

This is a big clue. A random poorly rinsed keg or carboy would only have effected half the batch. It had to be something in the boil or ingredients.

I was talking this through with Jess and my dad and that's when it hit me. The yeast. For all the Hefe's I've been using yeast that I harvested from batch #8 and every one of them has been bad. Another bad batch I had was the second Kolsch I brewed on top of a used yeast cake.

The more I dig in to my (crappy) records, the more I am sure about this. I actually stopped harvesting yeast quite a while ago, but the 3333 used for the Hefe was harvested and, I think, is bad and producing nasty flavors. It seems obvious now, which is even more depressing. I have some theories as to why the yeast is bad, but I wont bore you with them. They are probably incorrect anyway.

So, along with several gallons of bad beer, I'll be dumping all of my stored yeast as all of it is suspect.

Luckily, only one of the other batches currently brewing is not using a freshly purchased yeast. However, that yeast was not harvested from a batch of beer, but rather saved from a large starter. I'm not (too) worried about that one.

So lesson learned I guess. Especially now that we are doing 10 -20 gallon batches it is simply not worth the risk using old yeast just to save a few bucks.