I was up north last week Mark. Next time I’ll let you know and we can knock a couple of these back.
IS this thread dead?
Joe, anytime.
Don, I dont understand your question.
Apologies… I couldn’t tell is people were still posting. I home brew. Made a saison aged in chard. barrels. Something went a little wrong and have some buttery notes. Hoping to get some input.
Don,
read this as a starter for what happened.
Like Mark said, butter is normally the result of diacetyl and it can happen in a couple of ways. Diacetyl is a byproduct of fermentation and given time, the yeast will normally reabsorb it unless the yeast is super flocculant or if the beer is racked off of the yeast too early. If the beer was aged on the yeast and wasn’t a highly flocculant strain and it still has diacetyl, then the other likely culprit is a pedio infection (which happens a lot with barrels). Pedio creates diacetyl and normally some lactic sourness as well. The bad news is that if it’s been aged for a while and still has the butter, there’s likely no way to fix it.
FWIW, I’m just a homebrewer, so maybe some of the beer industry folks here have other insights.