Another Hop mystery has shown its ugly head and this time it’s affecting the Belgian IPA. As with previous hop bombs, the hop character has disappeared from the tapped keg in a weeks time. Extremely frustrating. I have my theories, but figured I would post on homebrew talkto see if anyone had a few ideas.

My post:

My last brew was a Belgian IPA, very similar to Flying Dog Raging Bitch or Stone Cali-belgique. It stayed the fermentor for 3 weeks, had a full day of carbonation and then was kegged. At the unveiling it was hoppy goodness. Full of hop flavor with balanced bitterness and decent aroma. Much of the Belgian character was masked by the hops.
A week later the beer now has little of the hop character that was in it before and don't understand what happened. Belgian character is most prominent, with the hops mostly masked.
I've made 4 Really hoppy beers thus far. Three of which (including this one) had a similar problem. The first two (Fresh Hop Ale, Double Quad IPA), were both awesome in the first week, but the hop flavor actually changed into something nasty that I couldn't drink. Since these were in the same keg that had never fully been cleaned after arrival, I assumed this was the problem. My next beer, which I called Random Hop IPA, was placed in a different keg and the hop character lasted as you would expect. No problems. Now with this one I have the problem again. The weird thing is the keg was fully disassembled and soaked in concentrated star san before use. So unlikely to be bacteria from the keg at least
What is going on? Can oxygen degrade the hops that fast? Could it be my CO2 or beer lines? Maybe my ball locks? Other beers don't seem to change, just seems to be the hoppy ones. Maybe leftover sanitizer in the keg? I'm at a loss here....
One final note. It was a 10 gallon batch and the beer is split between two 5 gallon cornies. The one on tap is noticeably less hoppy then the on in storage. Not sure if the storage one has changed (maybe a little), but there is a gap between the two.
Very disappointed and need serious suggestions. I feel like not making hop bombs anymore, which would be sad

Hopefully someone with some real insight can post. Otherwise I may send a note to one of the experts in my magazines or at the brewers association. I will continue to monitor the two kegs and see how things evolve. Check back later.

I guess its worth noting that the current Belgian IPA on tap is still really good. We brought it to Frisco 1/15/2011 and everyone liked it. I met several new homebrewers in the process. Hopefully it stays good and doesn’t get that weird flavor the first two got.

I made a 1.5 liter starter using WLP653 (Brett Lambicus) about 60 hours ago and I'm not seeing any activity at all. I did the starter like all other 40+ starters I have done before, but this time I'm not seeing any progress.

The starter has been kept at 70-75 and I even added a little yeast nutrient just in case. The vial did seem to have very little sediment, but I figured this was normal. The vial is dated best before 7/8/10, so seems like it should be viable.

I have done both C. and B. strain starters before like this without problems.

Any idea what might be happening? Bad yeast, need more time, more nutrients, more warmth?

Only other thing worth mentioning is that I am using a stir plate.

Link to Thread

Update - 3/1/2010

The starter finally started after 84 hours, probably the longest it has ever taken. Fermentation is slow, thus it looks like it will take a few days to finish. I did write to White Labs prior to it starting. Below is the response:

Brettanomyces is a lot slower worker than Saccharomyces so you have to be really patient with it.  We normally recommend a full week when making a starter, and there is not a lot of cells in the culture on purpose.  Brett seems to work best when it's stressed, so keeping the cell count low will force it to do a lot of growing in your beer, thus creating a lot of flavor compounds.  Since the Best Before date is in July of this year, you have a very fresh culture of Brett so it's very unlikely that the yeast is no good.  Give it a full week and see how it goes.  Also, when making a starter, try to keep your gravity at 1.040 or below, otherwise the yeast may skip the growth phase and go directly to fermentation in what is known as the "Crabtree Effect"

Some good points here. Brett works better when its stressed, so if you want stronger brett character use less yeast. Second good point is the reference to the "Crabtree effect." I've never heard it called this before, but its nice to have a name for it. This is why starters are always kept under 1.040sg. When I was diagnosing my starter earlier I noticed the gravity was high (around 1.050sg), so I'm hoping I don't have a problem. I may have to adjust my starter calculations down in the future to account for the unpredictability of dry extract.