Bottle conditioning in basement

Are they carbonated properly? If so, then it's not the low temperature that's problem (at least when it comes to conditioning).

What sort of beers are you brewing? All the same styles, or a wide variety?

What's your normal process for brewing/fermenting/etc?



Pear can sometimes come from under pitching, under oxygenating, or too high fermentation temperatures.

If it is more "green-apple" than pear, then this could mean incomplete fermentation (bottling too early, too cold, or under pitching).

Grassy could be too much hops, or maybe older stale hops or malts.

 

Is your sugar solution mixed with water and stirred into the beer nod how much sugar are you adding?

 

@GormBrewhouse is right on with the inconsistent carbonation issue. As for the pear flavor, do all these kits utilize the same yeast, and how much camden are you using to treat your water? And how much water are you treating? I'm not sure I follow using campden tablet because of the water softener.

 

Always put your sugar solution in the bottle bucket before you rack into it.
Your other problem sounds yeast related. Are you pulling them too early? IS the yeast itself not getting enough love going in? If you have some bread yeast laying around. Give your boil some of that. They are simple minded and aren't above being cannibals or feeding on dead bodies for their nutrients. After you pitch. Don't be afraid to get some aggression out on the fermentation vessel and shake it around to give them oxygen. In the first two days of fermentation. You can be a jerk to them and give them all the air they need to wake up and kick ass.

 

So a couple things stand out to me...
1. Stir your beer gently in your bottling bucket after racking your beer in. I used to think racking on top of the sugar was enough to disperse my sugar, it isn't. I keep a sanitized spatula around to stir the beer as I go.
2. That's a shit ton of campden. If you're using it to kill bacteria and yeast in fruit you use that much. If you are using it to get rid of chloramines the typical dosing is 1/4 tablet per five gallons. Are you using city water?
As for yeast health, are you using dry yeast? Typically dry yeast comes with a high enough cell count for a decent pitch.

 

Are you saying to add bread yeast to the kettle boil to prevent off flavors? How long?

 

Yeah, that is a shit ton of campden. I don't know what the off flavors of too much campden is though.
Are you doing extract or all grain? If extract, I would just use RO or spring water or distilled and not add anything to treat it. See if that does it.

 

I bet those instructions are supposed to be for wine, not brewing water.

 

I have been sleuthing out a similar issue for myself - I randomly had two batches in a row come out with strong fruity off flavors. Very much pear like, over ripe red apples, almost metallic, hinting at sweetness without actually tasting properly sweet.

After a lot of digging I have settled on the off flavor being esters. With the two IPAs that came out this way I was re pitching slurry, which has an unknown / widely varying cell density and I believe that in all likelihood I was over estimating my density and wound up with yeast starters that did not have the cell count I thought they did.

Runaway esters are often caused by underpitching yeast, and can also be related to under oxygenation of wort, which leads to the same fundamental problem of not enough cells. Even with dry yeast, you might need 2 or 3 packs for bigger beers. With liquid yeast, without a stir plate and flask, its going to be hard to build up a big enough starter for high gravity ales / lagers. Unless you are absolutely sure you are pitching big, healthy amounts of yeast, I would look to this as the first thing to correct.

As for bottle conditioning - you will probably have better luck if you can get them warmer - in winter mine condition around 60 degrees and take about 3 weeks. In summer they condition around 72 -79 and are usually fully carbed up in a week. Not sure what could be causing the variation of carbonation other than improper mixing of priming sugar.

The good news is that if you are dealing with esters, they will hydrolyze and turn back into good ole alcohol. This will happen faster at slightly warmer temps, and it will probably take a couple months depending on how high the ester concentrations are.

 

Are you racking by siphoning to the carboy or pouring with the use of a funnel? If you are siphoning and then relying on shaking the carboy for oxygenation that could be an issue. I think we all tend to be gentle with carboys so that you may not be shaking it enough to get adequate O2 into your wort. However, if you use a funnel and pour it in, then ignore my statement. Pouring, especially with a strainer in the funnel, should do an adequate job of oxygenation for most beers so you don't have to risk breaking a carboy during aggressive shaking.

 

Excuse me, but what the hell does that mean?

 

For the next batch, try two packs of yeast, 1/4 the amount of campden, pouring rather than syphoning into the carboy, leaving it on the yeast for a week after it has reached FG, and stirring the sugar mix in the bottling bucket.

Then see if you still have the same problem.