BeerBorg

Made a Nut Brown Ale in March of last year that was Good but slightly sweet in June
A little better in July
Really seemed like it was going to age well
tried a few in Oct/Nov and they were really good
Kinda forgot about them
Dug out 8 bombers a few days ago
Put 3 of them in refrigerator
Popped one open last night .... it tastes like lemon seltzer
WTF
NO hint of lemon before
opened the another a few minutes ago .... LEMON
opened the other ... LEMON
What caused that
This is horrible
Not a "touch" of citrus
not a "hint" of lemon
This tastes like Lemon Seltzer
STRONG and nasty

Possibly an infection which caused it to over carb. Not sure how the lemon would get in there though.

something like this happened to my pumpkin ale....after a month or two tasted fine with only a hint of pumpkin tho.(used a pie pumkin and a half teaspoon of pumkin spice for flavor)but after that it developed this weird gross flavor that i cant describe. i didnt have gushers but it was really foamy when poured into glass

I don't think I've ever had a beer, infected or no, totally lose its original flavor and turn into something that radically different. That's weird.

I'm not sure about any other explanation possible except infection. But sorry to hear about it.

Had a stout infected. It went from roasted, coffee, and chocolate to sweet tarts very fast. Not a lick of the original profile left once the tartness took over.

Some wild yeasts can ferment the more complex sugars that give our beers their interesting character, which our intended yeasts can't ferment, but these wild yeasts act much slower. I went through several months of battling with these -- first trying one thing, finding a few months later that the problem was still there, trying another process change, etc. So I'm slightly fanatical, or at least concerned, about sanitation as a result. I think I'm past that issue now, but time will tell. I'm still cautious as to whether a bottle will foam when opening.

These are not gushers
They all pour nicely
Beautiful foamy off white head
Nice dark brown color
Even have a nice aroma (no real lemon in aroma)
But they taste awful
Like LEMON

My best bet is an acetobacter infection, it basically eats your alcohol and turns it into acetic acid and water. It might very well make it taste like lemon at least for a while. Eventually it would turn into straight up malt vinegar. Depending on how much alcohol is in it will determine the ultimate acid level/ph of the final product. In a really big beer it could turn it acidic enough to actually blister your mouth given enough time. It doesn't make CO2 so it would not overcarb your beer / cause foamers.

Wild yeast/brett would increase your CO2, and would not make it no longer taste at all like what it started as. It would just be "funky nut brown ale with hay or stinky foot or the like". It might get a little sour but not like lemon juice. Lactobaceter would make it taste more like "yogurt sour" then lemon/vinegar sour.

EDIT: If you want to know for sure, pour a few of them into a container, and leave it open. If a translucent/flattish cellulose like layer starts to form in the middle and then cover the top after a good bit of time/oxygen exposure, then it's acetabacter. It make a pellicle that can become solid enough to pick up and play with and remain intact - totally different then a lacto or brett pellicle. A rip roaring acetobacter pellicle can become a 1/4" thick disk you can toss around like a Frisbee. If it makes a bubbley thin pellicle, it's lactobacter. You *need* to leave it exposed to oxygen for the pellicle to form. It will not happen in the bottles.

Have fun with that.

Understanding that drowning's description is lemony and not gushing, a variety of problems can occur and the discussion above has varied somewhat, but one solution is in common among these problems: good sanitation. My issue has been mostly loss of flavor and excessive head, but not really gushing. (In my case, I have suspected a yeast infection of Saccharomyces diastaticus, but not everything is consistent and I have no way of verifying that.) If drowning's issue is Acetobacter, another thing to watch is oxidation, because it is aerobic.

FWIW, Wyeast 3711 (and most likely Bella Saison as as far as I can tell it's the same yeast) are classified as a sub type of Saccharomyces var. diastaticus. That's why they will attenuate just about anything to 1.003 or even to 0.9something.

So if using those yeasts and running into trouble with other beers later, THAT could be the source of your "infection" as such. In which case bleach bomb everything that touched your French Saison.

But that kind of infection would cause over carbonation, gushers, or bottle bombs, not conversion to lemon seltzer.

Having commented on over-attenuation earlier because some other comments had been broader than just drowning's original specific issue, I really wouldn't intend to distract the discussion -- but mashani, that's an interesting point about the belle saison yeast. I can't test it because I already dealt with those fermenters. But do you know of any other yeasts that the usual sanitation would not take care of (meaning PBW, Star-San, iodophor, etc)?

"Usual" sanitation/cleaning (starsan/onestep/pbw/idophore/etc.) SHOULD take care of 3711/Bella, but with plastic fermenters with micro scratches, or spigots or some random piece of equipment that has a seam you never know. IE you might not notice that a little bit of your S-04 survived normal sanitation practices when you brew an S-05 batch, but if it was 3711 and it survives, you might be in for more of a surprise a while down the road.

Did you brew it on a Friday or a Monday? I heard a lot of lemons are produced in Detroit on those days to to hangovers on Monday and weekend fever on Fridays. Same thing may have happened to you.

joechianti wrote:Did you brew it on a Friday or a Monday? I heard a lot of lemons are produced in Detroit on those days to to hangovers on Monday and weekend fever on Fridays. Same thing may have happened to you.

YES in fact, It was brewer 3/24/2014
MONDAY
That's the problem