Howdy All,

Brewed a wacky Belgian and recently bottled it. I'm going to list what I did first so it can be read without bias, then tell you all my problem at the end. Here goes:

Started with the ingredients for a pretty run-of-the-mill Hefeweizen - Dry Malt Extract, Liquid Wheat Malt Extract, a little crushed Wheat Malt, a couple ounces of Hallertauer hops, and a German Ale dry yeast packet. Had a couple beers while brewing and forgot to cool the wort. Got impatient and pitched the yeast into 110-degree water, killed it. Used my planned-secondary yeast, White Labs Saison style, when the wort cooled. Let it go for a week, then racked it into my carboy for secondary fermentation. After this, I added a sugar-shot consisting of: 1 pound dark candi sugar, a 1 pound mash of Belgian 2-row malt, and about four pounds of mulberries from my tree in the yard, which I steam-sanitized. After I added this gravity booster, I introduced my second yeast, White Labs' own Trappist Ale yeast. I let ir ferment, then racked it off of the trub and conditioned it for a month. Bottled, carbonated, sipped...drumroll, please...it tastes like PVC plastic and is far drier than I thought.

This is my first try with both a Belgian and a double-yeast beer. It's drinkable, and I plan on letting it age a bit to see if some of those compounds can be metabolized by the yeast.

It's a beautiful looking beer, but it tastes like it came out of a Super Soaker.

Any idears!?

What up man, welcome to the site!

Questions: What the the original gravity? What was the final gravity? How much extract did you use? What did you ferment in? How hot did you mash the belgian malt? What temperature did you ferment at?

A couple things pop out at me. It sat on dead yeast, but not for that long, so I wouldn't worry. You pitched hot. You fermented fruit juice.

The malt extract won't ferment that dry, but the sugar you added will... fruit juice also ferments fairly dry (ever had a true hard cider? quite dry). With the pound of sugar and the fruit juice, a lot of the sugars will ferment all the way through. Depending on the mash temperature, this may have resulted in very fermentable wort as well for the belgian malt. Also, the saison yeast is a pretty thorough worker, so that will ferment out pretty dry. PVC (and solvent smells) can come from stressed yeast, especially when it's pitched too warm. What might have happened is you didn't actually kill all the german ale yeast, which is a fast worker. This yeast, which was stressed because of heat and (with cell death being high) underpitching, probably fermented at first in a highly strained environment, possibly causing the off-flavors. Saison yeasts are notoriously slow and fickle, so there is no way they fermented the beer through in a week. When you transferred to secondary, the german ale yeast had probably done most of the work up until then, and started to flocculate out. So you brought the saison yeast (now just starting to really get going, especially since you didn't pitch a starter, which would mean it's REALLY slow to get going) over to secondary. It ferments dry, so it would take care of the sugars left by the german ale yeast. You then added fruit juice. I know things like orange juice and tomato juice ferment into something quite horrid. The juice definitely fermented here, as you added it during a primary fermentation. Maybe this created the off flavor. Also, it sounds like, with all this sugar, the alcohol probably got pretty high. If there was german ale yeast left, it would die or get really pissed off in this environment, producing these off-flavors. So, to recap:

The German Ale Yeast pitched too hot and got stressed and the fermented mulberry possibly caused the off-flavor (or you use plastic buckets for fermenting and you dumped the wort in there too hot and it leached flavor, I doubt this, though... I mash in plastic buckets and have never had a problem). The German Ale Yeast also may have gotten pissed at the high alcohol and produced off-flavors before dying and messing up the flavor by the beer sitting on dead yeast.

The Saison yeast and the amount of highly fermentable sugars (sugar and fruit juice) probably dried it out (trappist yeast is also pretty attenuative I believe) dried out the beer.

Or the beer is infected. If you soon have bottle bombs, this is the answer.

That's my best ideas, though. Hope it helps!

To add to what Jeff said, it could also be from your fermenter itself, if you are using a food grade plastic bucket you can get some off flavors directly from the bucket itself if you have liquid of too high a temp sit.

Did you cool your wort at all before adding to the fermenter? If you added straight from the boil to your fermenter that may be part of it.

John Palmer's How To Brew is a great resource for figuring out some of your off flavors. For the PVC taste you described he has this to say:
"This group of flavors is very similar to the alcohol and ester flavors, but are harsher to the tongue. These flavors often result from a combination of high fermentation temperatures and oxidation. They can also be leached from cheap plastic brewing equipment or if PVC tubing is used as a lautering manifold material. The solvents in some plastics like PVC can be leached by high temperatures."

More on off flavors here: http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html

Thanks for the input. After letting it sit a couple weeks and sampling another bottle, I think that it is an extra-strong, dry wheat taste. I am hoping that time will save this beer.

Another question though...I brewed what I believe to be a very successful brown ale last night. One thing...the gravity came out to 1.082. Kinda high. It's a very rich brown color, with plenty of chocolate sweet-smell (and Simcoe bitterness to balance!) and it will most likely end up as a double brown. I want to use a second yeast to dry it out some more but don't know exactly what to choose. I am using Fermentis dry American Ale yesat right now. I am pretty confident that It will bring that gravity about halfway down. I want a balanced beer, not to sweet, not too boozy.

Adjuncts I used: 1.5 cups of brown sugar and just shy of a pint of Grade B Maple Syrup.

Lemme know!!

that's def a lot of sugar which will most likely turn to booze (def gonna be a boozy beer). What are you going for by saying dry it out? I just want to make sure we're on the same page.

The sugar/syrup alone will be about 2.5%abv added to your beer. And it will almost all ferment out... Luckily malt extract normally finishes a little sweeter than all-grain. So, it's going to be boozy at least 8.5%... possibly into the 9's. It's going to need some time. The ale yeast should ferment through this fine, it'll just take a little time. Did you make a starter on this? This is a good candidate to stall fermentation... a lot of sugar and high alcohol. Chances are it'll all be fine, though. If it's alcoholy, just leave it for a while. It'll mellow. Good luck man!

Don't worry about a second yeast by the way. The first one should get all the way through it. It's not a big enough beer to need a secondary high alcohol yeast strain.