Planning on brewing up a batch of the APA in a few weeks when my sister comes down to visit. Was planning on building up a starter from a blowoff of the last batch and figured I’d be good to go. But out of an abundance of caution I figured I’d brew up a starter tonight since the slurry was 2 months old and get it chugging to make sure it was good yeast.
So I did, and when I screwed off the cap on the jar the slurry was in it smelled sour. Tossed it into the starter anyway since it was there but saved a little liquid. And then I tasted that liquid and wanted to cleanse my tongue with a blowtorch. Sour as hell. I poured a scotch and swished it around in my mouth to kill the taste.
Now, my first thoughts on this was that the slurry was infected. But then I got to thinking about a previous thread about blowoff collection and how the blowoff was “intensely bitter”. I’m wondering if what I tasted in the liquid was mega bitterness as opposed to an infection.
I guess I’ll see what the starter smells/tastes like and will report back.
How did you collect your blowoff in a sanitary manner? I am used to collecting slurry from the bottom of the fermenter, which is rather easy to do cleanly. When I run a blowoff, it’s exposed to air and god knows what else in my basement.
I ran the blowoff tube into a sanitized container half filled with cooled boiled water and sealed up both ends with sanitized foil. Looked pretty closed to me.
Well, this starter kicked off fine and looked like a good yeast fermentation. I may still have had a slight sour smell to it but the starter tasted fine. I think the perceived sourness was from the bitterness but I decided to dump it anyway and get new yeast out an abundance of caution.
