Daily Q & A! - May 05, 2017

Cracked 2 beers today that were bottled a week ago. Tasting notes as follows:

9% (I wanna say it was 1.085 OG, but I don't have my notes... I just noted the top of the bottle) "porter" that I threw together with some LME and roasted malt I had in the freezer. Tastes of roast malt. I liked that, but it for sure needs some time to age. Not bad for 1 week post bottling though. But right after that, a strong taste of bubblegum hits. And holy shit does that not work at all with this. Google tells me this is an ester flavor.

Then, a cascade and 2-row SMASH. I tasted the cascade (I think I'm getting what this stonefruit flavor note is. Does anyone else get a hint of grape in there too? Both times I've tried this I've been picking up grape.). I taste (well, don't really taste, more like notice the not-water consistency of it) the 2-row. Both are nice and clean. Try as I might, I can't pick up the bubblegum; any hint of it seems to be confusion of the stonefruit flavor and/or in my head from tasting the porter.

Thing is though, they were both done with WLP001. And I used Homebrewdad's yeast calculator to give me cell counts to pitch and to build a starter for both of them. They sat in the same water bath to ferment (temp as measured by probe strapped to the "porter" was 70F, give or take a small amount as I added ice to the water 3x a day to keep the temperature in check) So was I too warm for fermentation and that's why I'm getting these esters in the porter? Is it a matter of the fact is a fucking gravity bomb and just needs time to age out that shit? Should I have overshot the yeast calc more for that high OG?

I guess the big thing is... is this par for the course, or do I need to run to home depot tomorrow morning and pick up a chest freezer and convert it to a fermentation chamber before I start another 2 SMASH brews? I don't want to put this work in to end up with this ester bomb that I just tasted.

/r/Homebrewing Thread