Wet dog/roadkill off-flavor?

I have never had this happen. Are you sure you don't have a cold or something like that causing your taste to be off? I totally get it if you get a bad beer but it sounds like many beers are having this same issue of funk.
Anyway, hope you resolve this, I would not want a wet dog tasting beer that is for sure.
Cheers!

Edit: What also came to mind is glassware? Is it possible your tasting dishwasher soap or other cleaning fluids off glass, that also could be what is causing it or if your towel to dry it is funky? Just an idea....

 

Yikes. I can't say I've had anything that bad. I do think all brown ales smell like musty air. I'm still not sure what that flavor, ingredient, etc. truly is, but whenever I sniff a brown ale is smells like a water bottle that's been left in my basement for several years and then opened.

 

Perhaps I'm lucky, I have no idea what roadkill smells like

 

my guess is vanilla in beer are off-putting to your nose, as well as beer aged in red wine barrels. maybe you are getting a sour funk from those.

 

I've had infected stouts, but it was a sour cherry hit. I've had bad beers before but nothing so vile as to be called road kill.

 

I'd quit drink.

Cheers!

 

I've heard people describe brett saisons as having wet dog flavor like it was a good thing! (sometimes the phrase horse blanket is used, also not what I would call a desired flavor). But the glassware is a likely culprit; we had a problem with our dishwasher that glasses smelled fine until you put liquid in them, then they smelled vaguely fishy. Ran the dishwasher empty with detergent a few times and it went away

 

I think that vanilla has zero to do with it as only 3 of the beers he mentioned include vanilla.

The "wet dog" smell could be similar to a "wet cardboard" scent which could be oxidation, if some of those beers were aged a bit, I could see that being part of it. Maybe you're a bit more receptive to that particular flavor.

"Road kill" is an interesting one. You've made it a point to mention that the Old Foghorn was fresh. Anchor dry hops Old Foghorn with Cascade hops, which also happen to be an extremely common hop in American brewing. Since Cascade hops have fairly low alpha and beta acid percentages, and have a good balance of bittering to flavor profile, it's extremely common in those beers you describe.

I'm just going to assume you might perceive the breakdown of the beta acids in a particular hop as the flavors you describe. It could also be a kind of malt all of them have in common.

Your mouth could also be broken, if that's a thing.

 

On a related note to the OP, I recently had an IPA that smelled distinctly of that pungent acidic smell of vomit... yes vomit. My wife confirmed the beer's smell too, and she is more than happy to tell me I'm wrong and set me straight when needed! It was a fresh draft of Hill Farmstead Abner IPA, so needless to say it was a shocker to me. Thankfully, the beer tasted fine, but I could not shake the smell from my mind.

 

I know the funky thing is popular, but I hope no one brews anything that purposely smells or tastes like wet dog or road kill

 

That's definitely butyric acid and can be caused by bacteria during the making of the wort, or after bottling. It's a fairly common infection.

 

I hope vomitty and road kill aromatics in beer aren't the next thing: Hold Your Nose Old Jim Beam Sour Mash Rainbow Brown.

 

Interesting. I didn't know that. It's also not my first infected beer from Hill Farmstead either.

 

Well, a positive takeaway of regular exposure to roadkill and wet dog aroma is being prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse.

Keep training.

 

I could see "wet dog" being close to "barnyard" or "horse blanket", which can be a positive in certain beers. With "roadkill" though, there's so many variables: what type of animal, how long it's been there, weather conditions, that I can't really dial in on that. It's always possible that that is just how your palate is. we all don't taste the same things the same way, and some times we can have Blind Spots in our palates. For example, I have a hard time picking up diacytle, so a beer could be loaded with it and I wouldn't notice. Maybe the OP's palate is very sensitive to certain bugs?

 

I thought about brett character as well, but since they're all clean beers by big breweries, I can't imagine them all being infected.

 

I heard that Dead Possum Porter is dropping this week.

 

I did some additional googling and found this article on butyric acid and found this informative page: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Butyric_Acid

This part also caught my eye because seems to be exactly what I experienced with the Hill Farmstead Abner where I could clearly smell something off, but it tasted fine: "...The aroma and flavor is often described as a vomit, bile, or rancid cheese. The odor threshold is quite low (240 ppb) while the flavor threshold is much higher (2000-6800 ppb)..."

Also from the article Clostridium bacteria is commonly found on grains and is often the culprit for butyric acid in beer. The bacteria is impressively resistant to temperature and it's spores can even survive boiling water up to 1.5 hours! Wow!

I read another anecdotal account from a brewer who said they had a batch of beer go bad due to butyric acid which they attributed to some bacteria on a batch hops they used for dry-hopping.