Gentlemen. I’m a homebrewer from China. Nice to meet you. It’s my first time to brew hefeweizen. I remember it taste a little sweet when I bottled last week. But today I open a bottle and find it turns to tart. I searched some article and they describes hefeweizen: A tart, citrusy character from yeast and high carbonation is often present. But anther articles also said that when you find your beer taste sour, it shows that your beer turns to bad. I don’t know how to distinguish this two situation in right way.To be honestly, I don’t know whether my beer can drink.
Welcome. Does it taste good? If so drink it. It's hard to quantify one persons tart taste to another.
Welcome to the BA site, Hopxxx. There are two things in your text that I want to comment about. However, I don't think they are related to each other. First, if the beer tasted sweet at the time of bottling, your fermentation may have been incomplete with sugars still present to give you that sweet taste. The beer should have tasted like a 'rough' beer that needs a little bit of conditioning. Did you take gravity readings to determine that the gravity was level? Second, if it went from sweet to sour in a week, I'd suspect an infection in your beer. Hefeweizens can be described with a slightly tart taste, but I've never seen a description using "sour" which is the word that you used. Is the carbonation extremely high so that you're getting gushers? If you are getting that in addition to the sour taste, that would tend to confirm an infection of some sort. You'll have to look back on your procedures to see where your equipment sanitation steps may have failed you, or perhaps you left the newly-fermented beer exposed to the air for too long an a wild yeast has settled into your beer. Like @scurvy311 says, drink it is it's only tart and not offensive to you, but if it's too sour for you and not drinkable, then learn from this episode by exploring your sanitation procedures, and pour the beer down the drain.
How much priming sugar did you use? You could be getting an off flavor from excess carbonation. Or it could be a bacteria infection, if so be on he lookout gushers at some point.
I got sidetracked. Welcome. Does it taste good? If so drink it. It's hard to quantify one persons tart taste to another. Does it taste lactic acid tart/sour or sour milk/cheesy or just prickly on the tounge from excessive carbonation? Def check for excessive carbonation if you have an infection or bottled before it was time. I'd store them cold and in a plastic trash bag until you were certain.
The FG is 5'P and the OG is 14'P. At the begging I add some salt to reduce the PH. When bottling only use 120g sugar for the 20L beer. There is really high carbonation. and when I drink it. I can feel a little sweet, a little sour really, and a little salty.
I uesd 120g sugar for the 20L beer. what the mean of "if so be on he lookout gushers at some point". I really need to improve my english.^_^
Sour is similar to tart, but it's much stronger. A ripe green apple is tart. A lemon is sour. If your Hefe is sour, then it's infected. If it tastes good, drink it! Infections are the result of less than optimal sanitation of anything that touches the beer or the beer was exposed to air that contained bacteria. If the beer is infected, it can produce more carbonation than you intended and create a bottle explosion.
Oh,no. If it's infected, will it became sourer and sourer? if the sour level always in the same, can I realise that it's not been infected.
If it's infected it could become more sour. It also may stay the same and still be infected. One way to prevent any further fermentation is to refrigerate all of your bottles.
