Well I think this is my 6th or 7th brewing experience..which has been about 50/50 pale ales and hard kombucha. So far everything I have made, including some pale ales with 5+ year old ingredients (not including hops), has turned out delicious and I greedily guzzled it all. Not this time. I had not brewed anything for about 5 months and was ...a little out of practice. The mash got down to 134 degrees. Pre boil gravity 1.013 @ 124F (about 1.022 adjusted for temperature? yikes..) OG at 1.040 into the fermenter (after cooling) (hmmmmmm) FG 1.002 (????) Recipe was: gallon batch 1.16# 2 row 0.16# munich light 10L 0.16# rye 0.16# flaked oats 0.083# crystal 20L 1.72# total hops ~24g 50/50 of simcoe and cascade US-05 yeast got very near 1 gallon into the fermenter, I did top off with a small amount of tap water.....but I was pretty close. fermented 5 days at ~71F (temperature controlled, thermocouple on the fermenter) racked 3.52L of beer into bottles + 28 grams priming sugar bottle conditioning also temperature controlled with thermocouple on a bottle..set to ~71F psi rose nicely to about 30 psi over about 4 or 5 days tried a bottle......... ... so lets just say I had no choice but to ferment this fast...and I've had good experiences before with sub 14 day brew to pour. The mash getting down to 134F is I'm pretty sure the issue here and is 100% my fault so anyways..this is my first experience tasting diacetyl..wow what a butter bomb...now I know. Also VERY watery..with alot of astringency (not from hops, I am pretty sure), and a metallic sort of aftertaste.. generally terrible...the only reason I haven't poured out the remaining bottles is because I am curious how it will change bottle conditioning for a few weeks. So far they have been in the bottle 3.5 weeks. I tried one about a week after the first and it was still awful. So is this hopeless and should I just dump them and move on?
With that FG and grain bill, it's likely you have an infection. This increases the possibility of bottle bombs, so store and handle with care.
