To Tip or Not to Tip?

[TastyFishLips]

Evening all, just kegged my latest brew, a Samuel Smiths Winter Welcome, and it tastes quite sour (dare I say vinegary) from the fermenter!!

I'm pretty anal about sanitizing and everything gets heavily doused in StarSan before my brew goes anywhere near it!

All I can think is that it's been caused from when I pitched my yeast, White Labs British Ale, which was beyond it's best before date and I didn't make a starter, so after a few days of no activity I dumped in some S04!

Would this time sitting stagnant cause an infection, i.e no protective Co2 layer?

I stuck the brew in a keg to see if it gets better over time, or should I just go and tip the lot down the drain?

In a slightly weird way, I'm kind of excited because this could be the first infection I've had, so am eager to find out what may have caused it!!

Cheers

Adam

[Hugh Jampton]

Dump it. It won't get better.
I had three beers go sour a few years ago and I never worked out what the problem was.

[AJ_Rowley]

If its vinegar tasting/smelling it sounds like that's acetobacter. That's caused by oxygen getting into the beer somehow. But that little bit of inactivity may have let some microbes in.

Better to dump. Give everything a really good hot clean and soak. You may need to replace the fermenter (plastic bucket?) as this could potentially still harbour some little nasty and ruin another batch.