Muntons Carb Drops / Tabs ruin every beer

Me and a buddy of mine have been brewing "experimental" batches about 1 Friday per month, comparing yeasts, dry hops, etc... And it has been going so-so. Many of our small batches have been disgusting. Not our full 5 gallon forced carb'd batches, just the little bottled batches. We tried to isolate the issue. Water, maybe freezer burnt hops, extract "twang", and finally we found out it was the carbonation drops, after splitting one batch with priming sugar and one batch with carb drops.
Disgusting.

The floating pieces don't bother us at all, but the burnt toothpaste aroma and palette tend to make us less than happy.

Does anyone else have experience this bad with these "carbonation" drops?
The control batch was a beautiful IPA with cascade and a malty sweet aroma, but the carb drop aroma dwarfed all of the nice hop aroma from the control batch, not to mention the taste is like each floating piece defecating on your tongue. And it is the same bad aroma and taste from all of our bad batches.

We don't think it is an infection because we have used multiple bags and have the same results.

We read a lot of opinions on the drops, appearance and uneven carb'ing, but the awful taste and smell that accompanies them was never mentioned.

Has anyone else done a side by side with these drops?
(We like to split 3 gallon batches into 3 one gallon yeast or dry hop experiments, but when it comes time to bottle, prepping 3 bottling buckets (or cleaning 3 times) can be a pain).

I’ve split catches using brewer’s best conditioning tabs. They are great. Other than needing to gently invert my bottles for a few days to get them dissolved there haven’t been any problems. They even add a bit of decent flavor due to the DME.

Never done a side by side but I use 1 Coopers Carb drop in each 187ml champagne bottle when I bottle my 1 gallon sour batches and it hits the carb level perfectly. I dont notice any off flavors from it, but then again there are alot of bugs in my house blend these days.

It may just be Muntons then. Or, the homebrew supply store is possibly carrying old drops. We are going to try and pull some out of the fridge and let them sit at room temp for another couple of weeks and see if the yeast clean up the off flavors and aromas. (That bubblegum flavor is also present in all of the muntons carb'd batches
)

the conditioning tabs are pretty neat to, in the fact that you can control the carbonation level to an extent. The tabs are significantly smaller, so each 12oz bottle gets 1 - 5 depending on style and carb level you want. I'd give them a shot.

I have used both Muntons and Coopers. I haven't had problems with either.

Let a bunch of these different carb tabbe beers sit out at room temperature for a couple of weeks hoping the yeast would clean up the off flavors. I guess yeast can't clean up a$$ flavored bubble gum.
Stay clear of these muntons tabs!

Carb tabs are the worst. I've brewed a few beers with them and they all have a similar taste: twangy, bazooka bubble gum flavor and aroma. They have ruined entire batches. Not good. Money down the drain.

It just seems so much easier to boil some water, stir in sugar, and add that to the bottling bucket rather than having to drop a certain number of those things into each bottle. Probably worth it to simplify and just go the sugar route.

Bulk prime the next batch and see.

The last batch was a 3 gallon ipa split into two 1.5 gallon ferments, one with safale and one with saflager. After four weeks at the recommended temps we went to bottle.
We boiled some sugar water and batch primed one of the batches, the saflager. We didn't have the patience to boil and cool more sugar water so we used carb tabs on the other batch, the safale.
The main difference is bubble gum vs no bubble gum, and the same bubble gum ha down up in other carb tabbed batches. It was actually a good bubble gum in one batch with a trappist yeast, you could market it as bubble gum beer and it would sell.