Will aging change the "plastic" flavor?

I have researched this a bit and found the potential causes of my flavor, but I could not find a solution.

Background:
After tasting my first brew, it has tastes like plastic. The brew fermented at way too high of a temp (upper 80s) and with unfiltered chlorinated city water.
After fixing the temp problem, I let it sit for almost a month in the secondary fermentor hoping the flavor to fade. I bottled last weekend, but the flavor was still the same.
The Brew was a Munton's Nut Brown Ale kit, OG was 1.040, FG was 1.010, I used a plastic "Ale Pale" for primary, and a glass carboy for secondary.

Will this flavor go away over time in the bottles? How long should I let my bottles sit before tasting them?

In my experience, chlorophenols (caused by chlorine in the brewing water and exacerbated by higher temperature fermentations) will NOT age out or go away.

Short answer: Maybe.

Long answer: Bottle conditioning (in a much cooler place than you fermented in, hopefully) will definitely change some flavors. Whether the flavor you're picking up fades or not is impossible to guarantee.

It's also worth noting that the fact that your water was chlorinated and you fermented in a plastic bucket may have nothing to do with your taste. Personally, I prefer to pick up a couple of the big 2.5 gallon jugs of water at the supermarket, but unless your city water is very heavy chlorinated, it shouldn't be a major factor, especially after boiling.

Give the bottles a week or two to sit, then pop one in the fridge for a day and try it. If it tastes good, great. If not, try again in another week. If you're still unhappy after four or five weeks, I really doubt you'll be seeing any further improvement.

Yooper said:

In my experience, chlorophenols (caused by chlorine in the brewing water and exacerbated by higher temperature fermentations) will NOT age out or go away.

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In other words...

No, it won't go away.

Sorry man, but next time you brew with tap water run your water out a day or two in advance and let it sit out, uncovered, until brew day. Any chlorine will precipitate out of solution in the form of gas leaving your brew water free of chlorine.

If the flavor doesnt go away just save them for when you start to tie a good one on and drink those instead. My 1st AG batch I used tap water and it has a weird after flavor. The initial flavor is good but the after taste is weird and lingers around. When Im pretty buzzed I dont notice it as much. In other words dont let it go to waste lol.

headbanger said:

In other words...

No, it won't go away.

Sorry man, but next time you brew with tap water run your water out a day or two in advance and let it sit out, uncovered, until brew day. Any chlorine will precipitate out of solution in the form of gas leaving your brew water free of chlorine.

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Or use campden tablets for chlorine and chloramine. Or charcoal filter your water.

This is what I was afraid of.

Well I am not going to give up on it. I will see what happens to it after sitting for several months. Perhaps even to a year and beyond. Plus with the flavor, I don't think I can handle more then one bottle a month. Maybe I'll cook with it.

I would think the high fermentation temp would have more to do with this off flavor than chlorine in the water. While chlorine is detrimental to brewing, most of it will be boiled off with a 60 min boil. What you are describing sounds more like a high temp fermentation. Did you get a bunch of fruity esters along with the "plastic" taste? Secondly are you sure you are tasting what you think you are tasting? Could this actually be a medicinal flavor, or that of a band-aid? If so you might want to evaluate your sanitation. Process, for you might have gotten a bacterial infection. It could be something as simple as you scrubbed your bucket too vigorously with the scratchy side of the sponge. In any case if you are tasting a medicinal flavor I would say it's time to replace your bucket along with anything else that is plastic in the brew house.

[email protected]. on tap: homemade sarsaparilla and easy virtue blonde. primary: heffewitzen, blow your top steam. conditioning: fruity monk Belgian wit

@Squirrelly I am thinking it was the heat too, but wanted to throw out the chlorine option as well since my research says that can also cause "plastic" flavors.

It doesn't taste all that fruity. Mainly like a weak beer with plastic. When I followed the kit's directions it said to boil the first 2 gallons and mix in extract and sugar and finally top off in the fermentor with cold water. I didn't boil the last 3 gallons of cold tap water out of ignorance. My city water is exceptionally hard and chlorinated. (Tastes somewhere between pool water and mineral water) I pitched yeast when the temp was around 100 degrees. (What can I say? It was my first ever batch and my kit instructions were pretty vague.)

I considered it might have been infection, but it has no other signs, such as pellicle or sour taste. As for scratching the bucket, it was a brand new bucket, no scrubbing was done. I simply rinsed out with hot water and rinsed out with sanitizer.

Whether heat or chlorine or bacteria, my actions will be the same; let it sit for a while and hopefully time will heal my beer.

I've had this happen. For me it was likely a combination of high fermentation temperature and a low level of viability on the yest. The taste never went away in my case.

I still fear this is an infection problem. By not boiling the added tap water or extract, and by "rinsing" the sanitizer I would find it hard to believe that there are not rogue yeasts in your beer.

The sanitizer should be the last thing to touch your fermenter before your fully sanitized wort. There should be no reason to rinse your sanitizer unless for some reason you are not using star-San. If you choose not to use the star-San then the sanitizer must be rinsed with sterile boiled water.

"The brew fermented at way too high of a temp (upper 80s)"

that'll off-taste it badly, for sure. i'd get a plastic tote and fill it with ice water, then ferment in that. maybe put a towel over it to retain the cold (but leave the airlock open to bleed the gas off). wait a minute... that sounds like what i do... no wonder it sounds familiar i keep several 2 liter coke bottles full of ice in the freezer when not needed, and rotate 2-3 of them into the fermenter tote as needed to keep it in the correct range

That sounds like an awful lot of work. How do you ensure perfect fermentation temp doing that?

It seems a bit easier to put four or five carboys in the temp controlled chest freezer. I could not imagine trying to lager without the strict temp controller. Although I must admit the temp controlled conical I think is the next investment.

Perhaps it was an infection. Time will have to tell. Fortunately, none of my other brews have displayed any infection symptoms or off flavors. I will definitely keep an eye out though.

Sanitizer was the last thing to touch the fermentor before the wort was put in it. I was trying to say that I "rinsed" with sanitizer. But wild things may have come from the tap water.

Your description of your final beer makes me think it was a sanitation issue. What are you using to sanitize your equipment?

The phenolic/plastic taste you are describing may be a negative reaction to a cleaning solution. A personal example is that I brewed 10gals of Pale Ale for a party. I did not notice that I had picked up OxyClean instead of the OxyClean Free (Free of cholorine, purfumes, etc.) My 10gals of Pale was ruined and had the exact same propterties you are describing.

It did not mellow over time. Had to dump 5 gallons, the other 5 were tolerable if you added some liquor to them.

in my experience, i don't believe it will. I had the same exact issue with a couple of brews before i realized it was the chlorine and chloramine in my water supply. Do yourself a huge favor and go buy a 30 dollar under-the-sink filter from Lowe's. It will save your brews (but also, get that ferm temp down...that will cause separate issues).

And if you want to be extra sure, crush a campden tablet and add a little of it to your filtered brew water right before you heat it up.

IMO, you should buy a filter and ferm chamber today

Second batch update
I was using Sodium bisulfate (that is the stuff the brewing store said to use) and hot water to sanitize.

I read that boiling the water for extended periods of time should get rid of chlorine. So I boiled every gallon of water for 30 minutes with the next batch. I ran sanitizer through every hose and washed every bucket in sanitizer.

End result was the exact same, a nasty plastic-like beer. I didn't bother bottling this last one, down the drain it went. Yes, I read the whole thread of threads on not dumping beer.

My decided course of action:
1. Stop brewing (at least until I can afford and purchase some sort of temperature controller).
2. Buying reverse osmosis water from the grocery store.
3. Trashing my hoses. Should I toss the bottle wand, the bent plastic thing for siphoning, or my airlocks?
4. Soaking my buckets in bleach.

Any other suggestions to prevent my creating any more nasty brew?

wulfhart said:

Second batch update
I was using Sodium bisulfate (that is the stuff the brewing store said to use) and hot water to sanitize.

I read that boiling the water for extended periods of time should get rid of chlorine. So I boiled every gallon of water for 30 minutes with the next batch. I ran sanitizer through every hose and washed every bucket in sanitizer.

End result was the exact same, a nasty plastic-like beer. I didn't bother bottling this last one, down the drain it went. Yes, I read the whole thread of threads on not dumping beer.

My decided course of action:
1. Stop brewing (at least until I can afford and purchase some sort of temperature controller).
2. Buying reverse osmosis water from the grocery store.
3. Trashing my hoses. Should I toss the bottle wand, the bent plastic thing for siphoning, or my airlocks?
4. Soaking my buckets in bleach.

Any other suggestions to prevent my creating any more nasty brew?

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Sorry to hear of your problems.

An absolute beginner myself, so I could be way off the mark, but I think I read somewhere that using reverse osmosis water isn't advisable because some of the nutrients, or minerals, that yeast thrives on, aren't present.

strike the above, failed, attempt at being helpful. Just read a couple of other threads that say Reverse Osmosis water is perfectly acceptable to use because there are plenty of nutrients already in the LMEs

One other thing I saw mentioned, which might not be related to the plastic(y) flavour you have at the moment, but thought might be a good point to remember for future brewing, is that the spring part of the bottling wand can harbour some sludge/bacteria. So dismantling, cleaning, reassembling and sanitizing between batches is probably a good idea.

Best of luck with your future batches

OP Ive had this same thing happen to me and I narrowed it down to a few "suspects", which I tried to fix on my last beer:
1) High fermentation
2)Not enough yeast
3)Tap water
4)Grain hulls in boil due to too coarse of a paint strainer bag (BIAB)
5)Infection

This last beer I did what I could to fix all those possible problems. Right now I have a beer fermenting away at 60 degrees. I'm very optimistic that my results will be much better now. Oh, and the taste did not go away with aging

OP writes, "...1. Stop brewing (at least until I can afford and purchase some sort of temperature controller)..."


I assume you brewed this in the New Mexican months of either July or August. I further assume it fermented at or around that 80F you indicated earlier.

I would start with the fermentation issue. Get a controller for $70.00 or so and a free refrigerator off of Craig's list and then brew an inexpensive beer to test your new system on.

wulfhart said:

This is what I was afraid of.

Well I am not going to give up on it. I will see what happens to it after sitting for several months. Perhaps even to a year and beyond. Plus with the flavor, I don't think I can handle more then one bottle a month. Maybe I'll cook with it.

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I've had this problem once - on my first batch. The taste lingered forever. HOWEVER, it will go away. My father, bless his heart, saved a sixer from my first batch. I discovered it on a trip to my parent's house 2 years and 3 months after brewing it. Low and behold, no plastic taste!

No matter how bad, no beer would last that long in my house, but it is possible to wait it out.

sorry to hear about the continued problems. I would toss everything that is plastic and start fresh. once a bacteria gets into plastic equipment it is impossible to get rid of it. I have separate fermenters and lines for making lambics and for beers I might inoculate with Brett. None of these pieces of equipment will ever come in contact with my normal equipment I use on a daily basis for fear of cross contamination.

The temp control is a wise idea. You can actually do this quite cheaply. Just get a chest freezer (one of the the 200.00 home depot jobs) and a third party temp controller. If you set your temp for ales at about 61* at least your fermentation temps will be consistent.

My wife and I chose to minimize the use of plastic in our brewery after going through exactly what you are describing. Members of our brew club advised us to do what I am posting here. We also switched to Star-San as a sanitizer and PBW to wash all of our equipment, and we have not had a sanitation issue since. Good luck.

[email protected]. on tap: easy virtue blonde, fruity monk belgian wit. primary: American pale ale, American stout, blow your top steam, and heffewitzen

A cheap cleaning method to try and save any equipment that may not need to be tossed is to get some Oxyclean Free (Free has no dyes or perfumes) and make up a batch with very hot (but not boiling) water. Soak all of your equipment (not aluminum) in the solution for a few hours or overnight. Rinse well then sanitize.

Trying a batch with bottled water might be a good idea as well since it sounds like you've got some "tough" water.

You may want to try doing a yeast starter, once I started using starters in my beers they went from good to great!

Just my 2 cents!

Good luck and keep us updated with your results

squirrelly said:

I still fear this is an infection problem. By not boiling the added tap water or extract, and by "rinsing" the sanitizer I would find it hard to believe that there are not rogue yeasts in your beer.

The sanitizer should be the last thing to touch your fermenter before your fully sanitized wort. There should be no reason to rinse your sanitizer unless for some reason you are not using star-San. If you choose not to use the star-San then the sanitizer must be rinsed with sterile boiled water.

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That's not strictly true..

I brewed well over 100 batches using nothing but bleach to sanitize and always rinsed with water right out of the tap - with basically all of our equipment. This was in the mid-late nineties when we'd never heard of starsan.

Never once did we ever lose a beer to infection or rogue yeasts. Tap water isn't so scary.

I would count yourself quite lucky for never obtaining off flavors from rinsing with tap water. However; we as brewers might not taste what might actually be an infection problem ourselves. For instance: I have judged quite a few beers that the brewer was certain were "clean," but still had sanitation issues. When I filled out the score sheets with such notes as: a very slight hint of sour notes, almost undetectable butter popcorn, and battery acid, the brewer actually thought this beer was fine. Even experienced brewers in our club will receive score sheets with these types of annotations, and once they go back to re-evaluate the beer, do they find these flavors. Sometimes we mistake off flavors caused by infections as a "house flavor." Either way these flavors will quickly take a 35 point beer down to a 25 point beer.

As I said, you may have had great luck with your practices, and I give you kudos for that, but I would be curious to see how it was evaluated in a BJCP competition.

[email protected]. on tap: easy virtue blonde, fruity monk belgian wit. primary: American pale ale, American stout, blow your top steam, and heffewitzen

squirrelly said:

I would count yourself quite lucky for never obtaining off flavors from rinsing with tap water. However; we as brewers might not taste what might actually be an infection problem ourselves. For instance: I have judged quite a few beers that the brewer was certain were "clean," but still had sanitation issues. When I filled out the score sheets with such notes as: a very slight hint of sour notes, almost undetectable butter popcorn, and battery acid, the brewer actually thought this beer was fine. Even experienced brewers in our club will receive score sheets with these types of annotations, and once they go back to re-evaluate the beer, do they find these flavors. Sometimes we mistake off flavors caused by infections as a "house flavor." Either way these flavors will quickly take a 35 point beer down to a 25 point beer.

As I said, you may have had great luck with your practices, and I give you kudos for that, but I would be curious to see how it was evaluated in a BJCP competition.

[email protected]. on tap: easy virtue blonde, fruity monk belgian wit. primary: American pale ale, American stout, blow your top steam, and heffewitzen

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Well, I DID get a second place ribbon for my stout in the only competition I ever entered - at the Del Mar Fair in California, so I'm not the only one who thought the beer was good.

Congrats on the ribbon! However, I still hold firm that using anything else to "sanitize" other than prescribed solutions can be risky and inconsistent

I will take all of the advise into consideration.
Getting a freezer off of craigslist is my plan right now. I am in a pinch for money, even then it might be a bit on the controller.

At this point I am starting to wonder if it was an infection combined with everything else. I had my first Belgian style ale, "Abbey" from New Belgium, and it tasted remarkably similar to my plastic nut brown ale. My brew was distinctly more plastic-like, but very similar in taste. A second reason, that I am thinking infection, was with my second brew. It had a thin layer over the top of it that had a slight sheen to it. I had to puncture it in order to get an accurate gravity reading.

@squirrelly Are your bottle wands and racking canes plastic?

No, it won't make it go away. I just tried a bottle of some stuff I bottled in may that had the mysterious plastic taste, still there, undrinkable.

I finally dumped an IPa after 2 YEARS.

Plastic taste persisted.