All my batches have a "hot" off taste . . .

My last several batches have had the same off flavor in them. It is a hot flavor and gives me a headache. The strange thing is they taste great going into the keg. They were done differently. Some stayed in the primary for a few weeks, others stayed in 1 week, then off to a secondary. They have been various ABVs as well.

My last batch, I put some into a bottle and the rest into the keg (to see if the problem was my keg or keg lines). They both had the same off taste.

I know fusel alcohols (from high fermentation temps) can have this flavor, but does it take this long to develop?

Sometimes it takes awhile to present itself. Are you fermenting on the warm side?

To be honest, I don't know. I have it in my basement, in a bucket of water. There is a shirt over it, soaking the water up, and a fan blowing on it constantly.

It can really take that long (3 weeks) for the fusel alcohol flavors to show up?

I put my fermenter in a cooler and fill with water and add frozen soda bottles to keep temps down. Better than wet shirt treatment. I can typically keep temps within about 2 degrees of target for entire ferment. I like to let temps raise slowly till end of fermentation. This is easy to accomplish as well.

My cooler of choice is a Coleman 60qt. Cube shaped. This allows water to riser higher on the fermenter providing better temperature control.


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I think you ferment a bit warm. The swamp cooler method can be helpful but it can only overcome so much heat.

I would agree with the notion it's fermentation temp. It's not unlikely that it's fusels, even if you can't notice them right away - ales in particular are a hot mess right out of the primary and it's difficult to really tell what's going on until some of the other flavors that might be masking it settle out. I used to have the same kind of problem with chlorophenols before I learned you have to treat the chlorine out of your brew water - beer would taste fine for about a week, then out of nowhere, yeech.

Buy yourself a fermometer - it's a cheap little plastic strip you can stick to the side of your fermenter. It's not super-accurate but should do a decent enough job of telling you how high your temps are getting in there.

reim0027, I had the same problem for a while, especially after I switched to all grain, full volume boils. My aftertaste issues went away when I started using an O2 kits. I was shaking my carboys as best I could, but I wasnt getting enough oxygen into the chilled wort (wimpy arms )

FWIW, The taste you are getting is from stressed yeast who cannot do their job because they dont have any/enough O2. Ferm temps are also to blame, so a +1 on the swamp cooler method. I have had great success with a cooler half full of water, replacing frozen water bottles in the morning and at night. Keeps my temps right around 66 degrees F.

So, add some O2, and put your fermenter in a cooler of water and you should be good to go!

Another vote for fusels here, with fermentation temperatures the likely culprit. Thorough aeration is also important, but in my experience, under-aeration with US-05 manifests as a strong banana flavour rather than a "hot" acetone flavour. It's possible to over-oxygenate your beer if you use an oxygenation stone and pure O2, so I use a tool called a "Fizz-X", which is basically just a rod you attach to your drill, with short arms on the tip. It really whips up a good froth in the wort, and it's impossible to over-oxygenate when just using plain air like this (you can only over-oxygenate with pure oxygen).

You're on the right track with the swamp coolers, just add some frozen soda bottles to your protocol and measure the temperature of the water bath twice a day, at least during those crucial first 3-5 days.

Definitely fusels! I've had this with a few of my first AG brews and the headaches you get off that are ridiculous!

It was all down to heat with mine too. Get it down real low before pitching and chuck some ice packs in your swamp cooler to keep the temp down. Replace them as often as you need.

That's great to know. It has been really bugging me, making a beer that tasted great, only to have a foul taste in about 1 week. I tried letting it set for a while and it didn't improve.

I do use a drill-attached aerator and whip my wort into business.

I'm getting a freezer (to turn into a keezer). I may use that for fermentation for a few days. I can get a probe that attaches to the power supply, to adjust the freezer temp to the wort temperature. Hopefully that'll solve my problems and I can go back to enjoying my homebrew.