Plastic tasting finish

I brewed my first all grain pale ale batch with a new system and it smells awesome, but when I taste it has a plastic finish on the back end. This is becoming more pronounced as the fermentation continues. I am going to throw out the batch. I wanted to get some thoughts, even though I have a pretty good idea what it might be. First off here is my recipe:

9# Golden Promise (92%)
.5# Crystal 40 (5%)
.25# Flaked Barley (3%)

1 oz Simcoe @ 10 min
1 oz Amarillo @ 10 min
1 oz Simcoe @ 5 min
1 oz Amarillo @ 5 min
1 oz Simcoe @ FO
1 oz Amarillo @ FO


Mashed @ 154 for 60 min.

WYeast 1056 @ 75°, but quickly dropped to 68.

When I batch sparged I threw the hot wart into two plastic buckets, they read BPA free, but I feel that is probably the reason why I have this off flavor. At first I thought it was the chlorine levels, but the person that owns the home brew store I go to coincidentally lives close to me and said he never has a problem with the water. He told me depending on the style of beer he occasionally adds things to change the PH level, but does not do that for pale ales and doesn't think that is the issue.

I am about to brew again on Friday, and decided to buy a second kettle, one for collecting the hot wort and the other to batch sparge with. Before I brew I just wanted some insight. I am guessing that I was so worried about sanitation, adding ingredients at the correct time, and making sure temperatures were spot on that I made the dumb mistake of letting my wort drain into something that will provide horrible off flavors. Any thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks

I wouldn't think 154F in a food grade bucket would cause that much problem but I could be wrong. BPA free does not necessarily mean it is heat tolerant.

Chlorine would be my guess. I doubt your pail gave you that strong of a taste unless there was some cleaning agent (soap) or something that was dried on and dissolved into the beer.

It very much sounds like chloramine. See https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/campden-tablets-sulfites-brewing-water-361073/

I was planning on using bottled water for my next batch to see if that helps...if it does I will get the carbon water filter that is mentioned on the mad fermentationists website. I thought it was chloramine at first too. In fact I asked for a water report and my city water is way about the typical 2-3 ppb that is in the normal range. We are at 3 ppm. What through me off is talking to the local home brew store owner. I do have camden tabs to put in, but I want to use bottled water so I can hopefully have a good batch and don't get discouraged early on. Chloramine is a bummer since it does not burn off in 24 hours like chlorine. Either way thanks for the help. Any other suggestions are always welcome.

I do pb/pm biab & use a couple different sizes of SS kettles we got in a nested 4 pot set. & I use spring water to brew with so I don't get that sort of off flavor.

just remember bottled water isn't always necessarily good water or even better than your municipal supply.

Several of my early batches had what I would call an odd plastic aftertaste. I eventually narrowed it down to oxygen in an unfinished beer. I changed the way I bottle, and it went away. Not saying that's what your problem is, but it may be worth looking into.

Thanks for the tip. I didn't have an immersion chiller at the time, so needed to give it an ice bath. It took me an hour and forty five minutes to cool the wort to pitching temp, so it is possible that oxygen to the unfinished beer could be the problem.

Well, there's filtered bottled water, RO water, distilled water, then spring water. Giant Eagle spring water gives a hair better hop flavor/bittering then White House Artisian springs water does. But both are out of the bedrock here in Ohio & work quite well.

Just a FYI, a carbon filter will *not* remove chloramine. Campden tabs will.

Yes, actually it will but you must be sure to allow long contact time (slow flow rate). The carbon filter which precedes the RO membrane in most RO systems is there to do exactly that (protect the membrane from chlorine/chloramine) and can be used to give you an idea of what size filter is needed for a particular flow.

It is still fermenting? I've had beers fermented for 3 weeks and went to package and didn't quite taste all that great. But after a couple more weeks tasted great. You can't grade a beer during fermentation. I would wait it out if possible.

I stand corrected, however it is hard to know how slow of a flow (and filter absorption capacity) without testing the outflowing water, whereas campden takes care of it all.

Don't dump it. Give it some time, you may be surprised.

OleBrewing said:

It is still fermenting? I've had beers fermented for 3 weeks and went to package and didn't quite taste all that great. But after a couple more weeks tasted great. You can't grade a beer during fermentation. I would wait it out if possible.

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RPCidery said:

Don't dump it. Give it some time, you may be surprised.

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This. Never judge a beer during fermentation. Give the yeast time to do the job and clean up.

Judging a beer this early is like making a house and commenting it looks stupid halfway through its construction, way before the paint and exterior have even been put up. Give it time.

If you still have problems google search "beer faults" for some ideas as well.

I made a kristallweisse a few months ago that was initially undrinkable. Plastic tasting. What I did was to rack it into corny with a couple of ounces of toasted french oak chips and a ounce of fuggles pellets and let it sit for another couple of months, tasting it periodically. After the two months or so, I took the keg to a party, and eight people drained it,and raved about how good it was the whole time. That was how I got it reinforced into my head to not be too hasty to dump a batch.