It tastes bad. It's banana beer. This is an ester produced by yeast. Usually its in hefe and belgium yeasts. Not US-05. So this yeast was very pissed. Just like always. Although usually its ripe apples. So this is a switch. It could be from lack of O2. So too much O2 = apples. Too little O2 = bananas. Maybe. I don't know.
So I'm going to make a new batch today and only hit it with 20 secs of O2 from the stone. Since I'm feeling cynical about it, I doubt it will work. So I need to start thinking of reasons why I'm making bad beer and devise a series of experiments to find out why. I think back to the time I thought I had an infection. That was a good experiment. It chopped out so many variables. I'm going back through old posts and I can't find any info on the results of that experiment. My memory says that they came out the same. That it didn't matter. In that experiment I used all new/clean gear and one batch was exposed to the O2 stone and another was not. This was because I thought that the issue was the O2 stone. And they came out the same. As memory serves.
Today I was planning to change the amount of O2 I put in the wort thinking that I was over oxygenating the wort and that was causing the horrible esters. Now that I think about it, it won't matter. I've got to think of a new experiment. I'll go ahead and do this one just to be sure though.
As of this moment, I'm thinking about what was common throughout all the estery beer. I'm thinking back to the last time I made beer that wasn't estery. It was beer made in the bathtub. No chest freezer. Could the chest freezer be the problem? Maybe its the wild temperature swings in the chest freezer that cause the yeast stress. I have a hard time believing that's the problem. Pro brewers use glycol chillers that contact the fermenting beer at much lower temps than my chest freezer. Also, many brewers on the earth use chest freezers for temp control. I don't hear any of them complaining. The real problem is I can't do this experiment for a few more months. It's a billion degrees in this house and has been since March. The way the weather here is it won't be until November before it's cool enough in the house to do this experiment.
Honestly I getting discouraged. I read the internet daily for posts of people complaining about my issue and smart people who have answers and there are none. I get no help from others. I have no access to brewers elite enough to help me. I went to the homebrew clud in Bakersfield once. That didn't help. All answers are the same answers to the ester problem. Pitch enough healthy yeast. Temperature control. O2. Well I've done all that. What do you do when you've done all the suggestions and you continue to not get results? How many bad batches of beer should I make before the word futility resonates? I don't know but I'm getting really frustrated. If I can't begin to make headway on the ester problem by the end of winter, I may start thinking about calling it quits.
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