the case of the mysterious plastic taste

I am in the same boat with a very prominent plastic taste in my double chocolate stout that has been bottle conditioning for almost 3 weeks. I too tasted the beer at bottling and detected no plastic off flavor, in fact it tasted quite good. About a week ago I chilled and tasted one ( as I usually do throughout the conditioning phase) and it was perfect, no off flavor and carbonation was good. Just over all a good tasting chocolate stout. However, since then a few days later I have tried two more and both exhibited a very pronounced plastic taste. So much so, I couldn't drink it. I am hoping the whole batch will not be like this. I just randomly selected another bottle and will chill it all day and give it a try tonight to see if it was just a few contaminated bottles. Just wondering if anyone who had this off flavor noticed if the plastic taste conditions out over time or had to dump it.

It never goes away completely, but nellies out enough to be drinkable, in my experience

mantooth said:

I am in the same boat with a very prominent plastic taste in my double chocolate stout that has been bottle conditioning for almost 3 weeks. I too tasted the beer at bottling and detected no plastic off flavor, in fact it tasted quite good. About a week ago I chilled and tasted one ( as I usually do throughout the conditioning phase) and it was perfect, no off flavor and carbonation was good. Just over all a good tasting chocolate stout. However, since then a few days later I have tried two more and both exhibited a very pronounced plastic taste. So much so, I couldn't drink it. I am hoping the whole batch will not be like this. I just randomly selected another bottle and will chill it all day and give it a try tonight to see if it was just a few contaminated bottles. Just wondering if anyone who had this off flavor noticed if the plastic taste conditions out over time or had to dump it.

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Well, I've tried two tonight and all I can say is delicious! The first had a very very slight plastic taste but way drinkable, the second I detected no off flavor at all. :rockin: So maybe its just green beer taste or just random contamination I encountered with the other bottles. I think I'll let the rest age another week or so and then enjoy I used Muntons Premium dry yeast with this batch from Austin Homebrew Supply. The beer tastes awesome, I just hope I don't encounter anymore plastic tasting off flavors for the rest of the this batch. I'm doing my third all grain this week (an irish red) and hope all goes well.

I had this problem happen to me at random intervals for about five batches. I could not tie it to a yeast (US05 used in different batches, no problem sometimes, othertimes plastic) or water supply (always distilled or RO). Some people that sampled it tasted nothing, while others got a horrible plastic/vinyl taste. It never presented itself in primary, but did in secondary or in the bottling bucket. Sometimes as late as bottle conditioning.

I came to the conclusion it had to be a wild yeast. It was much too random to make any sense. Of the times it happened, I recalled less-than-stellar sanitization practices. I have very hard water where I live. I lived on onestep for all cleaning and sanitizing for all batches. I decided to put "big boy" pants on and go with iodophor, thinking this would be better. I think I was wrong. I think it doesn't like hard water, even though everything I have read says iodophor is fine in hard water. I would like to blame iodophor, but realistically I should not. Anyways, I went to RO water with starsan, very pleased.

I threw my better bottle 5gal out, got a 6gal, went to starsan exclusively, and multiple batches later, no off flavors. All is well again

Seen a few topics relating to the use of green garden hoses and persistent plasticky tastes. I even recall a guy who narrowed it down to the green hose though he had the hose connected to a carbon water filter, and figured it would remove the taste.

Have dumped a couple batches myself that ended up fermenting on the high side of 70 and tasted "plasticky" to me, but as a cook I've come to realize taste is a highly individual thing, what's plastic tasting to me might be perfectly tasty to another, tons of variation in tastes/smells among individuals.

Work on minimizing the potential variables in your process and you'll narrow down the culprit; bottled water for a batch to see if the flavour is there, diff yeast, etc.

Also, be very careful using garden hose, as the cheaper ones tend to contain lead and can be leeched into your brew water