Blonde Ale turned (accidentally) Sour

Gross.

 

I would guess that you've got Pediococcus in there. Brettanomyces doesn't generally sour beer very much (under some conditions it can produce acetic acid, but that doesn't fit your description very well), and Lactobacillus is generally not hop-tolerant. But I emphasize this is just guesswork based on the common microbes found in sour beer. And of course you might also have Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, etc. along for the ride.

If it is Pediococcus, then you'll probably want some Brettanomyces in there as well. That's because Pediococcus can produce a lot of diacetyl, which Brettanomyces will eliminate.

I would recommend adding something like Yeast Bay's Melange blend. This will give you the Brettanomyces you need to deal with any diacetyl production, and it will add some complexity and perhaps some extra sourness as well. You can follow Yeast Bay's instructions as to temperature.

One thing to note, though, is that you'll be pitching microbes into an already-fermented beer. That will tend to subdue the character that you get from the additional microbes. You might consider adding some new wort if you want to aim for something that is more sour and/or funky.

The other option, of course, is to let it ride and see if you have some interesting microbes going, rather than obscuring them with a commercial product. If you end up with excessive diacetyl character, you could add Brettanomyces at that point to address it.

No matter what you do, you should let it go for several more weeks to see what happens. I've found sour beers to be fairly forgiving in terms of temperature while aging. Any comfortable room temperature should be fine. I suppose high 60s is probably ideal, although for a sharper sour/funky character the 70s might be better.

 

Man O War blonde sour...

 

A. If you like it, package it, chill it, and start enjoying it.
B. If you don't like it, dump it.
C. If you are not sure, let it sit around, check in with it at approximately monthly intervals. When you feel decisive about it, A, or B.

Me personally, I am not optimistic about these things. I do not want fermenters, kegs, and bottles of beer that I sometimes sorta kinda can stomach. I wind up at B more often than A.

 

Don't have an extra stopper?

For new brewers: This man is not an idiot, unless he hasn't already purchased another stopper as a backup.

 

First of all, trying to "fix" a contaminated beer is usually not terribly successful. That said, if you want to give it a whirl, here's what I'd do. First, I'd go to the HBS and replace everything plastic or rubber that will touch this beer. Porous surfaces can provide places for microbes to reside and some can even survive some decently powerful reducing agents. Contamination of your clean beers isn't worth the risk, IMO.

BTW, do you have a pH meter? It would be useful to find out how much this beer has acidified. It would also be useful to either purge your headspace with CO2 or just keep the lid on it. Oxygen isn't your friend in mixed fermentations.

Secondly, minderbender had some very good suggestions, so I'll just add my two cents to what he's already said.

Whatever it is, you've definitely got some extracellular polymeric substance there. The issue with that is that it's impossible to tell which microbes contributed to it. It could be one microbe or it could be a few distinctly different ones, as it/they came from your stopper, or, more probably, your skin and/or hair. "White wine" is not overly specific to any particular microbe, other than white wine yeast, so it may be that a drop in pH has given you a nose of lactic acid or you may be perceiving acetaldehyde and/or ethyl acetate. Again, microbial identification is impossible without at least a microscopic examination.

Well . . . even though I'd agree that pitching a Brettanomyces sp. is probably the best option, regular old S. cerevisiae will metabolize the diacetyl as well. It just so happens that Brett. sp. tend to be more pH tolerant, so they are probably a better choice if this beer has a lower pH.

I'd say the OP has three decent options. All of them start with smelling and tasting the beer. I'd first take a hydrometer reading, though, as if there's has been active fermentation (which I assume there has been because of the krausen ring in the fermenter) it's safe to sample. If it smells and tastes OK, let it ride. If it's kind of gross AND you like what Brettanomyces brings to the table, make a starter of Brett Brux var drie or vrai, pitch it once it's active, and give the beer about 8 uninterrupted weeks of fermentation time without opening the lid. If it's really gross I'd feed it to your drain. You can obviously see what happens, but really gross things, like isovaleric and butyric acid tend to not go away even with Brettanomyces sp. in solution.

If you have other questions, feel free to ask or, even better, visit the Milk the Funk wiki:

http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Table_of_Contents

 

Once it's done fermenting throw some fruit at it for shits and grins. If it's not that great, the fruit can help cover some disappointing flavors.

 

...unless it's lush vomit mixed with baby diapers

 

things that make you say hmmm......
not sure if you need a remedial course or if you've aced GreenKrusty101 and can advance to 102.

 

Not trying to insult anyone with this comment, but you are describing all sour beers in my opinion O.O

 

Butyric acid and chlorophenols bro. Brett can fix one of those things...

 

Next time this happens take a clear garbage bag and soak it in starsan then stick your arm in the bag and reach in. I would dump that. You'll learn from your mistakes.

 

You forgot the "n" at the beginning of that word.

 

No I didn't. Yakobsen found that brett can metabolize butyric acid into more pleasant compounds, unless there are copious amounts of butyric acid in solution.
http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Butyric_Acid

 

Yeah . . . but that's not the whole story. Esterification and transesterification are equilibrium reactions, which means that all of the compound in solution will not be hydrolyzed. Whatever it is will only be transformed until an equilibrium is achieved. Translation: if you have butyric acid that is significantly above threshold, it is unlikely that Brettanomyces species will esterify enough of it into ethyl butyrate to bring those levels below threshold and different species and strains of Brettanomyces have different levels of esterase activity.

From the MTF page you cited:

Ethyl Butyrate at low levels, which has a pineapple, tropical fruit aroma and flavor, but at high levels not all butyric acid will be converted into ethyl butyrate. Ethyl butyrate production occurred in only half of the Brettanomyces strains studied by Yakobson, with this conversion being less with the addition of lactic acid, indicating that ethyl butyrate conversion from butyric acid is strain dependent and slows in the presence of lactic acid