Citra hops and off flavors

So I've done three batches of homebrew that all bad citra hops and they have a had metalic flavor. I tried making a small batch of a smash beer with citra to truly see if that was the culprit , and the boiled wort did indeed have a metalic taste . I've not used citra outside of these brews, is this common? Thoughts ?

Are you sure its the hops?

Are you using an aluminum kettle for boiling?

need more information.

I used citra in about 4 brews and never had a metallic taste

I use Citra all the time. Never noticed the metallic taste. Cat piss, yes. Metal, no.

Say more about your equipment and process

Stainless steel pot , one of them was just a 2 quart pot this morning the other three were with this 1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00420Z50Y/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20 which I got a few months back. Prior to that I'd been doing boils on the stove with the 2 quart , usually extract with specialty grains with no bad results . Anyways mash in 10 gallon igloo cooler with stainless steel ball valve, mashed at 155. Used tap water , but I've used tap water for all
My brews and been fine in the past (10+ brews ). Starssan sanitizer. Pitched yeast (nautinghams last three ) at 75 f. Ferment at 68f. Citra hops and the new boil kettle are the only common threads, except for this morning I used a kitchen pot , leaving only
The citra hops as the common denominator .

All/only Citra hops in this recipe?

I'm a huge Citra fan, my house Pale and IPA both use it and I've been brewing both recipes for for years, never a metallic taste. But I would never use it for bittering...

Cheers!

Well one of them was a cream ale that used centinial for bittering, another was just a mr beer kit that I used citra for a fifteen minute boil. This morning was the same deal.

I have only brewed twice with citra, no metallic taste of odor with either. Now the cat pee flavor is another issue all together

Improperly stored grains can cause a metallic taste, but the most common reason is using inferior/wrong vessels for brewing. Well that and high iron water.

day_trippr said:

All/only Citra hops in this recipe?

I'm a huge Citra fan, my house Pale and IPA both use it and I've been brewing both recipes for for years, never a metallic taste. But I would never use it for bittering...

Cheers!

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Why not? I used only Citra in a saison and it turned out great.

I use citra all the time, my house ale uses it too, and have never tasted metal :/

I'd check for a rusty, or unclean ball valve, clean your connections etc. metallic usually means you have metal interacting with your wort, rather than Metallics in water etc

BackAlley said:

Why not? I used only Citra in a saison and it turned out great.

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because citra is too precious of a resource to be used as a bittering hop. Why waste an outstanding flavor/aroma hop for bittering when you could use a much more readily available and cheaper hop for 60 min additions and get the same effect.

Well just to see I made a hop tea from citra and it tasted metalic too me . Maybe it's just me , but it seems I found the culprit. Thoughts ?

Adavis1989 said:

Well just to see I made a hop tea from citra and it tasted metalic too me . Maybe it's just me , but it seems I found the culprit. Thoughts ?

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I don't like citra.....not sure how others use it but it lends a harshness to my beers and is out of my brew house.

Adavis1989 said:

Well just to see I made a hop tea from citra and it tasted metalic too me . Maybe it's just me , but it seems I found the culprit. Thoughts ?

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very interesting. Ill try this this week, but maybe a bad batch? Everyones pallet is a bit different though. Maybe you dont like citra? who'da thunk it lol

I used to get that metallic taste in all my pale ales. I thought it was when I was using wheat. Not sure but I haven't used wheat in a while and haven't had that metallic taste either.

My wife even tried the citra hop tea (just did a fifteen minute boil in water) , and she agreed it tasted like the same metalic taste from the last few batches of bad howmbrew

Adavis1989 said:

My wife even tried the citra hop tea (just did a fifteen minute boil in water) , and she agreed it tasted like the same metalic taste from the last few batches of bad howmbrew

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See my above post. I think citra has to be used very sparingly. Maybe it's a taste threshold thing like diacetal. I dislike the hop in my brews.....and those that I like that claim to use it it's like a quarter oz in dry hops with oz s of other hops.

Otherwise I think it's a strange taste.

That may be it, I'll try and experimental brew with minimal amont . I do tend to not enjoy very hop forward beers. For example there are few iPas I can drink and really enjoy

I also dry hopped with citra yesterday but the pellets were all crumbled,some totally into dust. Anyone ever had that?

davekippen said:

I use Citra all the time. Never noticed the metallic taste. Cat piss, yes. Metal, no.

Say more about your equipment and process

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Really?! Cat piss?! Awh man, I just bought a pound of this stuff. I assume it's like Simcoe....you have to over do them before the piss flavor?

I used 9 oz on my zombie dust clone, it was the only hop used. No piss, no metallic flavor, more of a mango aroma in my opinion. I really like Citra. Soon to be spaple in my inventory.

So I tried hop tea again with another batch of citra hops from another source same metalic taste ....what gives ? I boiled the hops in the 2 qts of water for fifteen minutes .

The last two times I have used Citra there has been the same unique flavor. Not exactly great. I wouldn't attribute it to metallic flavors however. I'm going to call the hop batch old and chalk it up to experience.

Have used Citra 12+ times and have never experienced metallic flavors. As mentioned before, improperly stored hops could lead to off-flavors - were you keeping them in the freezer? How were they packaged?

I did a Citra/Maris Otter smash and totally get the cat pee thing too; well more of a cat pee/pine/citrus thing (weird). Total bummer. But good experimenting, i guess.
Ive read that it may be from using citra for bittering?
At this point im going to stash it for 2-3 months and hope it ages out.
-beermethatbeer

Adavis1989 said:

Pitched yeast (nautinghams last three ) at 75 f. Ferment at 68f.

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Probably not related to your off flavor, but is that 68 the beer or the air? Notty can be very naughty much over 70-72, and that's where you'd be in the first few days at 68 air temp.

Citra hops were stored already vacuumed sealed in a dark cabinet at around 72 degrees .
Beer fermented at 70 degrees max; the ambient temp was 64, and using a laser thermometer the fermentation vessel registered 67 degrees .

It could just be your palate. Most people describe Amarillo as having bright orange, citrus flavors, but I get an off-putting earthy/spicy tone. I got pretty frustrated after brewing several batches with them, and narrowed it down to the Amarillo after I noticed the flavor in a few commercial examples. In the book For the Love of Hops they describe differences in perception by noting that people have over 1000 aroma receptors but only use something like 300 of them, and not everyone uses the same receptors.

Yeah I mean I want to write it off as its just me. But my wife , who very much enjoys hop forward beers , also agree with me. I'm not sure of
Maybe the few hours my hops were in a hot car may have killed them . I mean , I've ordered hops online and they don't ship hops in the most ideal conditions either . These were also dry hopped pellets btw

From everything I have read and learned about citra you have to be careful with dry hopping. I have heard a couple pro brewers indicate they only dry hop with citra for 3-4 days. A full 7 days seems to give off the cat pee aroma/flavor people mention. I too have done the zombie dust clone with all citra and never had a metallic taste. But if you look at the recipe the IBU's come from hop bursting, no 60 min addition. I have never used citra earlier than 20 min in any recipe.

Never heard of the cat pee with citra and I have had amazing results with it. I usually dry hop for 7 too. Just dry hopped a saison with citra and my only critique is its quite strong (granted the beer is very young). Never had any off flavors for that matter

I am going to keg tomorrow out of my secondary which has been dry hopped (leaf) with 2 ounces of Citra for 3 weeks. I will let you guys know how much cat piss I get (and my brother and his fiancé who will have no knowledge of this off flavor) and report back. Last time I made this I didn't have any off favors. Had a bunch of housework that needed to get done the past month and a half and has forced me to put everything else on the back burner.

After thinking and tasting further I have come to the following conclusion. I can see how the perceived taste could come across as metallic, even though that's not exactly how I experienced it. It didn't really ring a particular flavor to me other than just off and possibly contaminated.

My Citra hops that I purchased from my LHBS were quite yellow in color. Seems as though someone was trying to stretch a crop farther than it needed to.

BreezyBrew said:

After thinking and tasting further I have come to the following conclusion. I can see how the perceived taste could come across as metallic, even though that's not exactly how I experienced it. It didn't really ring a particular flavor to me other than just off and possibly contaminated.

My Citra hops that I purchased from my LHBS were quite yellow in color. Seems as though someone was trying to stretch a crop farther than it needed to.

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Glad to know I'm maybe not crazy

After letting the beard age for about a week I've noticed that the off taste is significantly less and is quite possible to almost drink

Adavis1989 said:

After letting the beard age for about a week I've noticed that the off taste is significantly less and is quite possible to almost drink

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Normally, you have to age a beard a lot longer than a week to drink it.

Cat pee fades faster than the good smells. It will be gone after two months in the bottle.

Some research has been done on the cat pee aroma from hops. Most men can't smell it. Most women can. I'm one of the "lucky" men who can smell it from across the room.

So I tried making another citra hop tea (1 quart of water to 1/4 oz of citra with a different batch of hops ) and got the same metalic taste at first. Then I tried taking like 2 tbps of the tea into 1 cup of water and got a less horrendous taste . Maybe I over hopped the first time ?

I would say at this point that your genes are incompatible with Citra...