Metallic taste?

My wife and I decided on our brew. As I said in my intro post, we have had our brewing stuff in storage for a couple years and are getting back into brewing. I was thinking a simple English Bitter, she wanted a strong or chocolate stout. She said, "we have enough bottles, let's make two different batches." She is hot.

So we will make a simple extract wheat ale for the remainder of the summer. Once we get it in the bottles, we'll attempt a partial mash chocolate stout.

We have both noticed that some beer styles tend to have a "metallic" flavor note. This seems to be most prevalent in wheat ales and octoberfest marzens. I myself don't mind a bit. (I love Ayinger Octoberfest, metallic taste and all) She very much dislikes it.

I know that the taste can come from actual metal, such as the brew pot. But I am refering to a broad experienc with commercial brews. Does this come from a particular malt? water supply? yeast? hop? storage issue?

I want to know what to avoid in our wheat ale.

I am bumping this message out of continued curiousity:

It seems that some beer styles tend to have a "metallic" flavor note. This seems to be most prevalent in wheat ales and octoberfest marzens.

Besides exposure to actual metal, does this come from a particular malt? water supply? yeast? hop? storage issue?

Hallertau hops. Just a guess.

Someone complained of a beer tasting metallic here some time ago. I tried the beer and figured out that if you drank it from the bottle, it tasted metallic because of the bottle cap. If you poured it into a glass, the metallic taste disappeared.

I'm assuming, since it's homebrew, that you're pouring it into and drinking it out of a glass? Try putting your tongue on the top of the bottle where you removed the bottle cap. This sounds silly, but you can either eliminate this as the cause of the metallic taste, or very quickly remedy it if this is the case. Good luck!

Great point. Many years ago, I grew to dislike Becks because of the metallic taste. I always got in in the local bar, and always drank from the bottle. I'll have to try it again decanted.

That said, I am having a problem with a beer I just finished. After 3 weeks in the keg, it was great. Touch of sweet, great hops aroma (cascade) and flavor (kent iirc). At 4 weeks, the aroma has dropped of considerably, and it has a distinct metallic bite. It's still a good beer, but it reminds me strongly of that Becks bite.

I have found this "metallic taste" with Hallertau hops too..a few times. Its a spicy canned baby food tin flavor...I dry hopped with Hallertau...and it was present big time...and just recently when using as a kettle hop addition at 30 minutes... the same ( be it less strong) tinny flavor. No Star San involvement.No immersion heater use. Bittering use only perhaps??

I had this issue for quite sometime and finally realized that soaking my immersion chiller in a bucket of Star San for several hours was a bad thing. Using that Star San in my fermenters seemed to cause metallic flavor like sucking on a copper penny. I'm not a scientist but it has something to do with pacification where the oxidized surface is dissolved my the acid sanitizer and then the free ions cling to the wort during the chill and when it goes into fermenter. After I stopped soaking my immersion chiller in star San the metallic flavor went away.