DMS

What it tastes and smells like

• cooked sweetcorn
• creamed corn
• cooked cabbage
• tomato juice

Responsible compound: dimethyl sulphide.

Styles this tends to affect

Not where it belongs — where it is most likely to appear when something has gone wrong.

• Alcohol-free pale lager — A pale lager produced at or near zero alcohol, now the largest and most refined part of the no-alcohol category.
• Alcohol-free wheat beer — An alcohol-free wheat beer — often the most convincing of the category, because wheat body and yeast esters survive dealcoholisation well.
• American lager — A very light, highly attenuated pale lager brewed with a substantial proportion of maize or rice, prioritising drinkability and cold service.
• American wheat beer — A wheat beer fermented with clean American yeast: soft body and lasting head, without the banana and clove.
• Blonde ale — A gentle, approachable pale ale with soft malt sweetness and restrained hopping — often a brewery’s entry-level beer.
• California Common — Lager yeast fermented warm in the Californian manner, producing a clean amber beer with woody, minty hop character.
• Cold IPA — A lean, dry IPA fermented with lager yeast at higher temperature, using maize or rice to strip body and expose hop aroma.
• Cream ale — An American hybrid: ale-fermented then cold-conditioned, producing a smooth pale beer close to a lager in character.
• Czech premium pale lager — The original pale lager: rich bready malt, generous Saaz hopping and a rounded bitterness that soft Bohemian water makes possible.
• Dortmunder Export — A pale lager sitting between Helles and Pils: fuller and firmer than the first, softer and less bitter than the second.
• Festbier — The golden, stronger lager actually served at modern Oktoberfest — malt-forward and smooth, but pale rather than amber.
• German Pils — Pale, dry and firmly bitter, with a crisp finish and a spicy-floral noble hop character — Germany’s answer to the Bohemian original.
• Helles Bock — A pale, strong lager with the body of a bock but a brighter, more hop-balanced character — traditionally a spring beer.
• India pale lager — A lager hopped at IPA intensity: clean cold fermentation carrying bright American hop aroma and firm bitterness.
• International amber lager — A light, commercially-produced amber lager, most familiar in its Mexican form, with gentle caramel over a crisp body.
• International dark lager — A commercially-produced dark lager, light in body and gently sweet, with colour contributing more than flavour.
• International pale lager — The global mainstream lager: pale, clean, lightly hopped and built for consistency and refreshment above flavour intensity.
• Märzen — A rich amber lager brewed in March for autumn drinking, with deep toasty malt and a clean, firm finish.
• Munich Helles — Bavaria’s everyday pale lager: soft, bready and malt-forward, with just enough hop to balance and nothing to distract.
• Pre-Prohibition lager — A reconstruction of the American lager brewed before Prohibition: fuller, more bitter and more characterful than what replaced it.
• Vienna lager — An amber lager built on gently kilned Vienna malt: toasty and lightly sweet, but finishing clean and dry.

If you are drinking it

A cooked-sweetcorn or cabbage aroma is a brewing fault, most often from an inadequate boil. It is harmless. A faint corn note in a light lager may be within style.

Not a safety issue. Beer’s alcohol, hop compounds and low pH make it inhospitable to organisms that cause illness.

What causes it

If you are brewing it

• Brewer: Boil uncovered at a genuine rolling boil for at least 60 minutes, and longer for pilsner malt. (prevents)
• Brewer: Chill the wort rapidly through the 80–60 °C range rather than letting it cool on its own. (prevents)

Where in the process this comes from

Steps that can produce this fault when they go wrong. Each links to what the step is for and how it is controlled.

• Bottom fermentation — Ferment cool with Saccharomyces pastorianus, suppressing yeast-derived fruit and spice so malt and hop character stand exposed.
• Kilning — Dry germinated grain with heat to halt modification, stabilise it for storage and develop the colour and flavour that distinguish one malt from another.
• Sensory panel — Assess beer against its own specification using trained tasters, screened and calibrated against known spiked standards.
• The boil — Boil the wort to isomerise hop acids, sterilise it, coagulate protein, drive off unwanted volatiles and concentrate the extract to the target gravity.
• Wort chilling — Cool boiled wort rapidly to pitching temperature, producing a good cold break and passing quickly through the range in which spoilage organisms thrive.

Often confused with

• Vegetal character — cooked cabbage, celery