Louis Pasteur

Irony HURTS...

L is for lamentation. L is also the twelfth letter of the alphabet, and this is my 12th attempt at cloning Wychwood's Hobgoblin Ale.

It's unfortunate that I chose the name of this brew before it's end results could be understood. We owe a lot to Louis Pasteur.

You can probably already guess what happened. Contamination. How, I do not know? It's getting on towards the summer. Perhaps it's just time for me to do a little spring cleaning. More on that later.

THE GRAIN BILL

10 Pounds 2-row
8 Ounces crystal
3 Ounces black

This was supposed to be my big experiment in dark malts. No chocolate, just black. It was supposed to be a matter of color. Other then that, the usual substitution for Wyeast 1028, being Wyeast 1275, and 4 Ounces of goldings in total.

THE MASH PROFILE

Strike with 11 Litres @ 75° Celsius for 66° Celsius
Rest for 60 Minutes

THE RESULTS

It was also supposed to be a single infusion, but can you believe that I can't even get that right? It hit 66° Celsius for about 10 Minutes, but then rapidly fell back down to 64° Celsius. I decided to just let it rest for 30 Minutes then pull another stupid decoction.

This time the math worked, and I ended up with a nice rest for 60 Minutes @ 68° Celsius.

I'm going to make a project of going over my records and plotting all the strike results on a graph. Maybe a picture will form. I figure that to find a needle in a haystack, you've got to grasp at a lot of straws.

OG: 1.050

TG: 1.011

THE TRAGEDY

When I transferred this poor bastard to secondary I caught a slight astringency in the taste. My records showed that the sparge was a little hot, so I was only mildly disappointed. Later I noticed that the gravity was a little slow to drop. I've used 1275 plenty of times and I was beginning to fear that some kind of contamination was neck and neck with the yeast.

On bottling day the gravity looked OK, but the astringency was even worse, and the beer was cloudy, way to cloudy considering that I had left the beer an extra couple days to let it attenuate.

Now that it's primed, the beer shows all the signs of contamination. Over carbonated, and yet it has 0 head retention. There is a slight build up of foam that clings to the neck of the bottle, and it's still cloudy. Worst of all the sediment won't stay put. It's almost impossible to decant without the yeast floating up to the lip of the bottle.

To punish myself, I've been drinking it. It actually doesn't taste that bad. It smells a little too bready. 1275, is a bit on the breadish side but not like this. It also tastes way to sweet. Good bittering though; At least that worked.

This isn't lactic, nor is it acetic. I'm thinking that with the warm weather, this may be a case of wild yeast. Wild yeast usually tastes way worse than this though. Sort of like bad fruit wine.

Could this be feral yeast?

It seems like a long shot, but I remember one strange episode a couple years ago, when I saw first hand how quickly a commercial yeast can go back to it's wild nature.

I was about to set a brew in motion, but because of some fuckup I can't remember, I was short of a Wyeast pack, and would either have to wait a week, or improvise. My brilliant plan was to use a turkey baster to grab some beer from an identical, but older brew. This beer was nearing the end of secondary, so it was still just a touch cloudy. I drew cloudy beer from the top of the fermenter, then made a half-assed starter with it.

After a good dose of corn sugar and a few hours this stuff was ready to go, so I pitched at the end of the brew and congratulated myself for being so smart.

This beer NEVER FELL CLEAR. It was cloudy as hell. It tasted identical to the older batch, it simply lost all it's ability to flocculate.

Without realizing it, I had selected for the poor flocculaters out of the general population by taking yeast from the top of the fermenter rather than the bottom. I basically sabotaged the careful breeding efforts of the lab.

So... I'm thinking that I may have some wayward 1028 or 1275 floating around in the air, or stuck somewhere in my equipment. Some where in my kitchen, there may be some yeast cells that have devolved into slathering cave dwellers. Half yeast -- half ANIMAL!

Welcome to the Island of Doctor Moron!