3rd Strike (Possibly 4th) and I’m A Pissed Off Brewer

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Jimbob

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Location
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I’ve been brewing about a year now. I started out with extract brewing and was make some decent beer. On a batch that I brewed to be ready on the 4th of July (a Real Ale Fireman’s 4 Clone – Blond Ale) the beer had a bad soapy flavor. The beer also would not carbonate very well but was very foamy. My first thought was my cleaning practices, at the time I was using Oxyclean (scent free). I tossed the beer, it was really that bad. At the same time I had a Sam Adams Summer Ale Clone ready to keg. Same thing happened. Soapy flavor and would not carbonate but had lots of foam. Last night (9/1/08) I bottled a Belgian Wit Beer, tasted and got the same damn soapy flavor. I was online while bottling and decided to hit the BN chat up and see if they knew. They posed lots of good questions and potential causes. The main thing they suggest was to 1) post to the forum and 2) send an email in to the show. On arriving at work (Today 9/2/08), I was listening to an archive of the Session – 3/2/08 Competition Brewing with JZ, and heard a call-in that had a similar issue as I have had. So here are my notes on my brews, these should answer most of the questions that I got on the chat and that I heard JZ ask the listener. There is a 4th batch in this mix, a Schwarzbier with ale yeast (I might not be defining this style properly) that was brewed between the Sam Adam’s Clone and the Belgian Wit. While, I didn’t get exactly what I was looking for out of this beer, I didn’t notice the soapy flavor. However, this beer aged for sometime with oak and whiskey. I kegged this beer last night also, it’s carbonating and I will taste it again tonight.

Cleaning and Sanitation
On the first batch I was using Oxyclean Free but changed to PBW. For sanitation I was using Iodophor but changed to StarSan. Every thing was cleaned and sanitzed the day of the brew session. In addition, between Batch 2 and Batch 3 I did a “Scorched Earth” cleaning and sanitizing of EVERYTHING, and then cleaned and sanitized prior to the brew session.

Equipment
10 gal Aluminum boil kettle, 48qrt cooler for mash tun, 5 gal water cooler for hot liquor tank, Glass carboys for fermentation (both primary and secondary), kegging and bottles

Batch 1 – Blonde Ale (Fireman’s 4 Clone)
Recipe Type – Extract
Water – Water for dispenser at store (I fill 5 gal jugs for drinking water)
Brewing – Full wort boil
Time In Primary – 5 to 7 days
Temp During Primary – Room Temp 75-78F (no temp control)
Time In Secondary – 2 weeks
Temp During Secondary – Room Temp 75-78F (no temp control)
Starter – 1 liter
Aeration – Shaking of carboy about 5 minutes
Kegged

Batch 2 – Sam Adam’s Summer Ale Clone
Recipe Type – All-Grain
Water – Water for dispenser at store (I fill 5 gal jugs for drinking water)
Brewing – Single Infusion @ 147F, Fly sparge in a rectangular cooler with copper manifold per “How to Brew”, 60 min boil
Time In Primary – 5 to 7 days
Temp During Primary – Room Temp 75-78F (no temp control)
Time In Secondary – 2 weeks
Temp During Secondary – Room Temp 75-78F (no temp control)
Starter – 1 liter
Aeration – Shaking of carboy about 5 minutes
Kegged

Batch 3 – Schwarzbier (w/Ale Yeast) aged with Oak and Whiskey (no noticeable soapy flavor --- will update after further tasting)
Recipe Type – All-Grain
Water – Water for dispenser at store (I fill 5 gal jugs for drinking water)
Brewing – Single Infusion @ 148F, Fly sparge in a rectangular cooler with copper manifold per “How to Brew”, 90 min boil
Time In Primary – 5 to 7 days
Temp During Primary – 64F (added a chest freezer with temp control, first batch to use)
Time In Secondary – 2 weeks
Temp During Secondary – Room Temp 75-78F (no temp control)
Starter – 1 liter
Aeration – Shaking of carboy about 5 minutes
Bottled

Batch 4 – Belgian Wit Beer
Recipe Type – All-Grain
Water – I designed my water this time using 90% distilled water and 10% tap water, I calculated this based on my water profile and using the spreadsheet from John Palmer’s website
Brewing – Single Infusion @ 147F, Fly sparge in a rectangular cooler with copper manifold per “How to Brew”, 60 min boil
Time In Primary – 5 to 7 days
Temp During Primary – 64F (added a chest freezer with temp control, first batch to use)
Time In Secondary – 2 weeks
Temp During Secondary – Room Temp 75-78F (no temp control)
Starter – 1 liter
Aeration – Shaking of carboy about 5 minutes
Bottled

These four batches used a 10 gal aluminum boil pot that was purchased prior to the first batch in this list. Prior to that I was using a 5 gal put and then adding water to get the 5 gal batch. I was thinking about this on the way to work this morning, is it possible that this could be a result of the aluminum boil pot? I have actually just upgraded my equipment and now have two kegs that I’m converting to a brew kettle and mash tun. I’m think of doing just an easy/cheap batch of extract in the new kettle to test this out. Please
 
Mash temps seem low- 150 is the low end of the range.

I take it you rinsed the bejeezus out of the Oxyclean/PBW?
 
Mash temps seem low- 150 is the low end of the range.

I take it you rinsed the bejeezus out of the Oxyclean/PBW?

Assuming you rinsed the oxyclean/PBW well the only other thing I can think of it that your time in the primary could be lengthened. I typically never go less that 2 weeks in primary. Oh and mashing at that low of a temp is likely to produce a very dry beer maybe your describing that as soapy?
 
So you got off flavors even after temp control?

Yes, I still get the off-flavors with the temp control.

I take it you rinsed the bejeezus out of the Oxyclean/PBW?

I thought that rinsing was an issue on the first batch, so I did a full cleaning and rinsed the hell out of everything with both hot and cool water.

Assuming you rinsed the oxyclean/PBW well the only other thing I can think of it that your time in the primary could be lengthened. I typically never go less that 2 weeks in primary. Oh and mashing at that low of a temp is likely to produce a very dry beer maybe your describing that as soapy?

With regard to fermentation time, I let the fermentation go about 5 days and check the gravity. If it's at final gravity I rack it. I've been hitting my gravity pretty well, nothing way off.
 
With regard to fermentation time, I let the fermentation go about 5 days and check the gravity. If it's at final gravity I rack it. I've been hitting my gravity pretty well, nothing way off.

Well, I think I just identified your issue. Leave it in primary on the yeast cake for 3-4 weeks and eliminate the secondary. Even though active fermentation is done and you hit your FG, there's lots of funky tasting compounds floating around in the beer that the yeast need to 'clean up'. The longer the beer sits on the cake, the better.
 
With regard to fermentation time, I let the fermentation go about 5 days and check the gravity. If it's at final gravity I rack it. I've been hitting my gravity pretty well, nothing way off.

Yeah, but gravity is not the only thing your after here. Yeast produce a lot of interesting things during their aerobic/reproductive phase that they will later consume, essentially cleaning up after themselves. JZ discusses this in one of his episodes and suggests that removing the beer from the yeast cake to soon can lead to undesirable flavors in the finished product that can be avoided if the yeast have enough time to clean up.

Edit: Jason beat me to it.
 
On ten plus previous batches this has never been a problem with the same fermentation methods. That being said, I could have been really lucky!!! I'm leaning toward the brew kettle. This started when I added this kettle and has occured in every batch since.

I think this is what I'm going to do to try and isolate this or eliminate this. I'm going to step back to extract for several batches. I'm going to brew a Kolsch using JZ's recipe and his advice from the Jamil Show and extract techniques from Brewing Classic Styles and How To Brew. The Kolsh, being somewhat lite, there isn't much room for off-flavors to hide behind. I'm going to move to my new brew kettle and take massive notes. I'm going to listen to the JZ Kolsh episode and if it's simple I go forward with the Kolsch, otherwise I'll find another simple brew. I think I'll brew this beer a couple of times to make sure I've zeroed in on the issue. I'll also take your fermentation advice into account

I'll document things in my blog here and possibly on the BN.
 
10 gal Aluminum boil kettle
This wouldn't happen to be a brushed aluminum boil kettle, would it?
I just started using a brushed aluminum boil kettle (soon to be replaced by one of two 36 qt SS kettles :D ; when it rains, it pours) but when I pre-boiled the kettle to build the oxide layer all kinds of plasticy crap came off the surface, a similar source might be soaping your beer. The extended secondary for your schwarzbier might have helped that junk settle out of the beer.
 
JimBob I would still leave your beer in the primary longer, 5 days is just not long enough, sure you may have gotten lucky on the other beers but I think you'll notice the difference if you leave the beer in the primary for at least 2 weeks. The yeast may clean up those off flavors, you have changed some things in your brewing process that could be making the yeast make the soapy flavor, most likely if this is the case the yeast will clean this up over time.
 
Hmm. I use an aluminum pot. Works great for me.

Looks like you got the temp control dialed in. And I second leaving it in the primary. I do three week primaries and go straight to the keg, it just means I have to be careful when racking to avoid getting trub in the keg.

You are pretty close to me. Drop me a PM when you are planning your next brew day and I will come over. I might be able to spot something awry in your process you have missed.
 
Hmm. I use an aluminum pot. Works great for me.

Looks like you got the temp control dialed in. And I second leaving it in the primary. I do three week primaries and go straight to the keg, it just means I have to be careful when racking to avoid getting trub in the keg.

You are pretty close to me. Drop me a PM when you are planning your next brew day and I will come over. I might be able to spot something awry in your process you have missed.

Will do Sacc. I just picked up a recipe at AHS and will probably brew this weekend. I'll let you know when. Thanks for the offer.
 
What is your water report look like this year. A similar situation happened to me. The water treatment plant began adding ammonia to the water as an additional cleaner. Well Ammonia bonds with chlorine forming a compound that can't be boiled off. You must either filter or add camden tablets. The flavor is more like pool water then soap but I figured was close enough to your problem to give you a heads up.
 
What is your water report look like this year. A similar situation happened to me. The water treatment plant began adding ammonia to the water as an additional cleaner. Well Ammonia bonds with chlorine forming a compound that can't be boiled off. You must either filter or add camden tablets. The flavor is more like pool water then soap but I figured was close enough to your problem to give you a heads up.

I can't remember what the report says off the top of my head, I'll take a look tonight. Thanks for the heads up.
 
I don't know about the leaving it on the yeast cake for longer to solve this problem. All that yeast in the cake as pretty much gone dormant and there is still A LOT of yeast in the beer working away. In fact, leaving on the yeast cake can actually CAUSE a soapy flavor as the fatty acids in the trub. Just out of curiosity, are you throwing all your trub in the fermentor or leaving the hot break stuff mostly behind.

You sure you are getting all that oxyclean out of there...that stuff sticks to glass like mad! I use it to take the labels off of bottles and have to wash them in hot water for a good long time to make sure they are clean along with a bottle washer. Would never use it on my carboy.

I have left a beer in the primary for only a week and never got soapy flavors. The beer was green also cleaned up fine in the secondary also. Don't think it needed to sit on a big cake of dormant yeast.
 
It's way past time to post the resolution to this issue. So here we go.

I was listening to the BN quite a bit trying to figure this issue out and decided to drop Jamil a line and ask him about this. After several emails I sent JZ a few of my sample bad batches. Once he tasted them, we began to discuss my brewing practices. He mentioned that the off flavors that I had were possibly from wild yeast or pedio. which live on dust particles. It was "dust" that hit me upside the head like a ton of bricks.

The batches that I had brewed were all brew in my garage during the hot Central Texas summer with a fan blowing from the back of the garage over my UNCOVERED cooling wort.

I have since change my practices by covering my cooling wort and not using a fan (duh) and have not had an issue with these types of off flavors.

So thank you all for pitching in and helping me to resolve this issue. I have taken all of your advice to heart and I know that it will help to improve my brewing. Also JZ if your sneaking around out there thanks again for all your help.

If any of you would like some more detail please drop me a line or post here I would be more than happy to share my lessons learned. That's the least that I can do to return the help that I've gotten from this forum and other brewers.
 
Glad you did!!!...I've been a complete *****bag for not getting this out there for so long
 
Dust is nasty stuff. If you are feeling silly, dip your hands into you grain and then slap them together over your fermenting wort...................................that dust will form a white skin on the beer so fast your head will spin.
 
Dust is nasty stuff. If you are feeling silly, dip your hands into you grain and then slap them together over your fermenting wort...................................that dust will form a white skin on the beer so fast your head will spin.

Just to clarify for any n00bs reading along.... Don't try this unless you want to experiment with sour beers. And this is really not the best way to get those anyway.
 
Dust is nasty stuff. If you are feeling silly, dip your hands into you grain and then slap them together over your fermenting wort...................................that dust will form a white skin on the beer so fast your head will spin.

I did this just for the hell of it with about 2 quarts of the smoked porter. Its got the nice little infection going on in the 1 gallon cider bottle. All I did was toss a few pinches of crushed grain in it.
 
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