My beer tastes like melons

[Derby Dabbler]

How high did the fermentation temperature get? Sounds like an ester. butyl 2-methylpropyl ester and its ethyl brother are used as melon flavouring. Yeast often produce esters (which are from the action of carboxylic acid on alcohols). This is usually temperature and yeast strain dependent.

It works for the Belgians, maybe you've just made a new type of Saison which we'll all be struggling to make in 5 years time!

[InsideEdge]

A melon note sounds like quite a good/interestig taste in a beer.

[Kev888]

All sorts of wierdness can come from stressed yeast so as you had temperature issues, personally I'd be inclined to suspect it may be related to that - either unusual by-products from the fermenation or an incomplete clearing up of them that would normally come later in the process. Sorry if I missed this, but did you have a strangely high FG?

(Neither my own stock pot or plastic conical have well fitting lids and my beer is in there for weeks sometimes).

Cheers
kev

[critch]

i d go with esters too.

on an aside, my plums must be like chicken, cos my missus is always saying theyre foul

[Kev888]

[Hogarth]

Thanks for these. I hope you're right and it's a one-off fermentation issue. But there was nothing wrong with the fermentation as far as I could see -- the gravity readings were perfectly normal, and it tasted fine at 1019 according to my notes. Yet it finished at 1011 tasting melony.

Two weeks later it tastes 'orrible -- down the drain it goes. I've got another one in the fermenter, so I'll see.

[MikeMarcus]

When you say it tastes horrible, did the flavour go toward pairdrops/nail varnish?

If so it could be ethyl acetate caused by a Brett infection. Low levels tastes a bit melony to me. Make sure you take extra care in cleaning and sanitising your fermenter.

[Hogarth]

When you say it tastes horrible, did the flavour go toward pairdrops/nail varnish?

If so it could be ethyl acetate caused by a Brett infection. Low levels tastes a bit melony to me. Make sure you take extra care in cleaning and sanitising your fermenter.

Yeah, good call. It is that sort of flavour, though it hasn't reached the extreme nail varnish stage. Could be an infection, as you say, although ethyl acetate can also be caused by struggling brewer's yeast. One thing that occurs to me, is that even if the 'cold snap' towards the end of fermentation didn't cause the off-flavour, it might have prevented the yeast from mopping it up again.

(Ever noticed how one starts moaning on like an old hypochondriac after a bad batch of beer? "Well at first I thought it must be a bug, and then I thought it was yeast, but now I'm starting to think there's something wrong with me waterworks...")

[darkonnis]

I just assume infection first. That way the news can only be good
Glad you got it sorted though!

[Derby Dabbler]

Now if I could only find some melons that taste like beer.....