Hot Smelling English IPA

[BrotherGrim]

Well here goes.

After many many moons of good brews, I have reverted back to my bad beer roots. I was prepping to brew an English IPA about 14 days ago and found out my yeast wouldn't wake up in the starter. I gave it an extra day and kept a close eye on it on the stir plate, but no joy.

I had an oatmeal stout that was ready for kegging in primary so I racked it off and brewed my IPA. When I had it cooled down to about 65F I dumped it onto the yeast cake from the stout. I had used Nottingham on the stout,(which by the way tastes great), and the IPA took off super fast. Visible active fermentation was violent and lasted about 4 days.

After 9 days, racked off the primary and into secondary where I dry hopped with Whitbread Golding for an additional 5 days. Kegged it today, and I have a definite hot alcohol smell to it. It didn't taste hot, but the smell is definitely there. I know it will never completely go away, but I haven't got the heart to pitch it.

Here are the stats. OG was 1.057 Final wound up at 1.007? I have no idea how nottingham got it that low, but there it is. Average ferment temp was 66 to 68F.

Thoughts?

 

[skunkfunk]

Did you get rid of some of the yeast cake before pitching? Might have severely overpitched.

 

[Kaz]

+1 to skunfunk....at an OG of 1.057, you probably 3-4 times as much yeast as you needed. I'm not hugely familiar with over pitching that much but it could certainly cause some flavor issues.

 

[eastoak]

skunk is right on, if this was not temperature controlled and you pitched onto an entire yeast cake there is your answer.