Folks I am looking to see if anyone has come across a similar scenario. I have a saison on the go it's a recipe I have tried and tested the only difference this time round is the yeast. I use the yeast bay saison blend. The brew has been in the primary for 12 days and dropped to 1.008. I'm getting sickly sweet fake tinned mixed fruit aromas & tastes. The temp has been in and around 19-20 degrees.
Has anyone used this culture? Or had similarity off tastes? and why? I did contact yeast bay out of curiosity. Nick their Bio brewer noted this is not a property of their culture.
Any thoughts?
Not familiar with the yeast but from your description it sounds like it could be ethyl butyrate. Its a common enough ester but in high concentrations its got a sickly aroma of tinned pineapples and can even smell a little bit like cheese/vomit.
If it is ethyl butyrate, and i can't say for sure that it is, it was either produced by the yeast during fermentation as a result of temperature, under pitching, too much added sugar or a butyric acid contamination in the wort.
It may clear up during conditioning, if not, dry hopping may help to mask it
Thinking about this further it could be a combination of multiple esters.
Can you describe the type/s of fruit your getting?
Isoamyl Acetate = ripe banana, artificial banana, peardrops
Ethyl Hexanoate = red apples, aniseed, liquorice
Ethyl Acetate = Solvent, Acetone, Model Airplane Glue
Ethyl Butyrate = Tropical, tinned pineapple, sickly, vomit
Sorry Ohindog I only saw this reply now. The best way to describe the fruit is 'muddled and sweet'. It's a fruit bowl effect, more troipal towards pineapple and definitely no banana / Apple or solvent. I have dry hopped it, tomorrow being 10 days. I'll send an update of flavours tomorrow hopefully it has cleared. Thanks S
I just checked my notes, a note of 'tutti fruity' is the best summary. And 'wrong'!
Sounds like it could be ethyl butyrate. Juicy fruit bubble gum, orange juice and mango are other descriptors for it that I've heard of which may fit with your fruit bowl/tutti fruity notes.
I had a look at the yeast bay's description of their saison blends and they describe them as having an ester profile of orange zest and grapefruit, these are probably a result of ethyl butyrate at low to moderate levels, you seem to have got it in the extremes which would make it perceivably different.
Was it a pure saison blend or saison/brett blend? How did the dry hopping work out?
Pure saison blend. The dry hop definitely masked the aroma (it smells great) but the tuity fruity taste is still present on the after taste. The saison traits are becoming a bit more apparent. It still tastes odd. I'm going to give it one more week.
Hopefully it clears up with a bit more conditioning. I used the white labs farmhouse blend a while back and it threw off a lot of ethyl acetate at the beginning but it cleared up completely during the conditioning. That blend contained brett so conditions were a little different but it turned out well in the end.
Even if the beer still tastes fruity after condioning, its impact will be reduced once its chilled for drinking.