Damn, Kegging Off Flavor

So I just started kegging and I have a few kegs on tap. I'm excited about it, except for the fact that I seem to get the same strange off flavor/aroma from each keg after a few days. It's hard for me to describe, but maybe like bad milk or something. Im not exactly sure. The beer always tastes good when it goes into the keg, and even during the first day of drinking. However, all eventually get plagued with this problem, and I don't know why. When I open up the keg, the beer still seems to be ok.

Im running a 6 tap chest freezer style kegerator similar to others on this board. With each keg, I completely disassemble all the possible parts, replace the o-rings, and soak in BLC for 15 minutes. Then I throughly rinse, then use 1-step to sanitize. Then I hook up my beer, and give it a shot, and its good.

Has anyone else ever run into this problem? Im fairly convinced the problem is in the lines, but I'm not sure where. I really, really need some help on this!

Sounds like it is in your lines or faucets. What kind of lines and faucets do you have? Someone else said they had problems with the o-ring on the faucets giving a funky taste.

Does the second pint in quick succession taste better than the first? Search around for posts by the member "kal" because he did a bunch of tests on so called "food grade" tubing and found that most of them leeched flavors over time.

Alright, been a few days since I was able to check this. Had to participate in some local beer competitions!

So I brought samples of my beer from my kegerator to a comp, and had a few certified judges give it a try and tell me what they thought. Every judge was like, wow, this is unusual.. not sure if I've ever tasted anything like this. However, everyone came up with the conclusion that was similar to the taste of plastic. One head brewer even told me I should consider changing to silicon lines.

Right now I have Ventmatic forward sealing faucets, and beer line from morebeer.com. I read the conclusions from Kal, and he said that the line from morebeer is the worst. He mentioned it was defective, but I'm not sure why. I guess I'm pretty surprised that more people haven't had problems with the line from that site, because it seems to be pretty popular on this forum.

I'm going to give Kal's suggestion a try, and leave some water in it overnight and see what happens. This is pretty frustrating though, because the beer line wasn't cheap. I'd hate to throw it away.

Khirsah17 said:

He mentioned it was defective, but I'm not sure why. I guess I'm pretty surprised that more people haven't had problems with the line from that site, because it seems to be pretty popular on this forum.
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Some people are more sensitive to picking out flavors, good and bad. A coworker of mine is a good judge of my brews because he has one of the most sensitive palates I know of. He picks up on stuff most people won't, my point in all this is that it is possible some brewers do not sense the flavors that you are.

Khirsah17 said:

Alright, been a few days since I was able to check this. Had to participate in some local beer competitions!

So I brought samples of my beer from my kegerator to a comp, and had a few certified judges give it a try and tell me what they thought. Every judge was like, wow, this is unusual.. not sure if I've ever tasted anything like this. However, everyone came up with the conclusion that was similar to the taste of plastic. One head brewer even told me I should consider changing to silicon lines.

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I sometimes get a plasticky taste when I use my picnic faucet. I also got it when I first set up my keg system, but after a couple of fills the tastes seems to be fading.

If I were you I would send those line back to B3 and demand an in store credit. I am sure they would do that for you. Faulty hardware should be an acceptable return IMHO. Thanks for letting us know about the problems.

too much CO2 will give an acidic taste that will take a day or two to dissipate. Well maybe not too much, but when I really force carb, as in I need this carbed yesterday kind of thing, I get a carbonic acid taste that is there for a day or so.

I have tasted this beer. The flavors and aromas definatly get worse the longer the beer sits in the lines. We tried running some boiling hot water through it it and boy did it ever smell bad. This must be some kind of flavor from the materials in the lines. Does anyone know what this stuff is made of?

May I suggest:

http://www.micromatic.com/draft-keg-beer/hoses-portfolio-cid-21.html




Gedvondur