Nine month ferment? Hey Michigan people....

[Hayzer]

Well hello all. We moved from MO to MI and are about settled in. About. Does it ever end? I need to get back on here more regularly once I get my home brewery put together. (Anyone from Central Michigan?)

I have another oatmeal stout question. My last one can be found in its own thread on here (it bottles and tasted great btw)

This batch in question has now been in the fermenter for nine plus months, I think. Less than a year anyway. It’s moved with us, experienced Missouri’s summer warmth in our garage, Michigan’s winter, in our garage and has seen its fair share of daylight. It’s not nasty smelling and I try to keep from agitating the carboy, outside of the move. My question is, should I waste my time bottling this? Is there such a thing as carboy aged? LOL

I’d like to meet some Michigan homebrewers if you’re on here. Send a message or reply a comment. Only people I know here are my in-laws.


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[Hayzer]

Pic of carboy side.


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[Hayzer]

Surface inside carboy.


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[mashani]

It is not going to harm you to try a sample and see how it tastes.

Aged sour beers might stay in a carboy for that long, or even longer. But normally not through all sorts of temperature changes. That said, such changes would not necessarily have as much of an effect on beers flavor besides increasing the rate of oxidation. But if there were any bugs in there they may have woken up when it warmed up and fermented out whatever was left, which might make more dry, slightly sour or sherry like, or funky like a sweaty horse blanket (all things you could find in an aged sour/Brett beer), but still none of that will harm you, it's more a matter of if you like how it tastes.

The surface view makes me think "something" is in there but its not clear what it would be. Does not look like an active acetobacter or brett fermentation though. But a surface coating suggests there is some oxygen in there and an organism is in there that reacts to oxygen and tries to protect itself from it. But even regular beer yeast that isn't normally considered pellicle forming from a "standard" timeframe perspective might actually do that given enough of a chance. (sour/funky beer people intentionally introduce some small amounts of oxygen to get a pellicle to form and to promote things like sherry like flavor production).

Worst case if there was any acetobacter in there and some oxygen got in then it would have eaten your alcohol and then you made stout vinegar. If that would be good to use to make food stuff, I can't say. Might be good in a BBQ sauce though.

[Hayzer]

Up close it looks like granular yeast. After I knew this was done fermenting, I put a few layers of Saran Wrap on the top and tightly screwed the lid down. That Saran Wrap is bowed up a little, but not threatening to pop.

If it’s vinegar, I should be able to smell that once I take the lid off. If it’s horrible smelling, I’ll ditch it, if it’s vinegar smelling I’ll taste it, if it’s pleasant I’ll bottle it. If in fact it did turn to vinegar I will be making a BBQ slurry out of it.

Thanks for the info.


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[John Sand]

I agree, taste it and see.