I kegged a breakfast stout and an IPA back in January and they have the same weird taste. Luckily for the stout, the flavors mask the taste so it is palatable; not so much in the IPA.
I, however, forgot to ask in Marty's beer sensory class if drinking bad beer is harmful. Does anyone know if any of the chemicals/off-flavors we tasted are harmful? Or, are they exactly that, off *flavors* having to do solely with the taste and not the ingestion of the beer?
Thanks for the further replies.
I don't think my palate is too out of whack but sometimes I think I taste/smell stuff differently from others (e.g., I thought I smelled lighter fluid in our laundry room; Maureen said it smelled like mold/funk). I lit a match just to test who was right and I didn't go up in flames.
Just kidding about that last part.
no and yes. If you have an infection it will be one of the following: enterobacter, acetobacter, lactobacillus, pediococcus, or a strand of brettanomyces. The only one of those which is potentially harmful is enterobacter. However, enterobacter dies pretty quickly in an infection because of the shifting Ph and rising alcohol of the fermenting beer. I suppose it's possible to get sick from this although I've not heard of it happening and if you let the beer sit more than a couple of weeks I think everything is fine.
I believe most traditionally produced belgian sours begin with a small amount of enterobacter but it leaves the mix very quickly and traditional belgian brewers never did anything to pasteurize their fermenting beers that I'm aware of. Many still don't and the only reason they do is to add sugars for backsweetening without having them ferment out (to cater to American palettes ) and also to stabilize co2 production at bottling.
You'll be fine.
Thanks for the replies!
My tolerance for bad tastes is pretty high and I hate wasting food/drink (esp. beer; esp. beer I myself have made!) so I'm going to drink it.
But good to know your answers.
About the worst you can expect to get from an infected beer is diarrhea.
That happened to me only once with an infected mead. The strange part is the mead tasted fine but 20 minutes after drinking it you would be running for the bathroom...
I don't think it's harmful. Diacetyl is a common off flavor in most beers but is desirable in a Kolsch and other such beers. A sour or funk is often a very bad sign but it is also desirable and totally drinkable. I say drink it. Or sit on it for awhile. If the IPA is bad I would crack the lid on the keg and dry hop a few ounces of a big hop like amarillo or citra to help cover the "weird". What is the off flavor? Use the same yeast for both batches?
On second (and third) taste, it taste's okay.
My question still stands, though. If you detect something is wrong, can you put up with the off-flavor and just drink it (so as not to waste precious beer) or should one dump it, save it, do something else with it?