Damn hard-to-describe reoccurring off-flavor!

I keep getting this tough-to-describe off flavor in my AG brews. A medicinal, sulfur, sour, cardboard flavor. It can either sit in the background of the brew or dominate it (making it undrinkable).

I do not use bleach to sanitize, I use one-step and sanitize everything.
I mash at 1.25q per pound of grain at 155 degrees.
I batch sparge for 10 minutes at 168 degrees.
The LHBS crushes the grain for me.
I siphon everything, no pouring.

I'm not sure what the cause is, I am about to take a bottle in to my local shop and ask them to taste it.

WVBeerBaron said:

I keep getting this tough-to-describe off flavor in my AG brews. A medicinal, sulfur, sour, cardboard flavor. It can either sit in the background of the brew or dominate it (making it undrinkable).

I do not use bleach to sanitize, I use one-step and sanitize everything.
I mash at 1.25q per pound of grain at 155 degrees.
I batch sparge for 10 minutes at 168 degrees.
The LHBS crushes the grain for me.
I siphon everything, no pouring.

I'm not sure what the cause is, I am about to take a bottle in to my local shop and ask them to taste it.

Click to expand...

what yeast strain are you typically using...

cardboard typically = oxidation but I also get medicinal from certain hops (argentine cascade).

It is likely your process introducing oxygen to the finished beer....

With your description it could be a number of things so I'll start with the water.

How do you get your water(sink, spigot) and do you treat it (filter, 5.2, brewing salts, campden tablets, let it sit for 24+ hrs....)? Also, does your water have a chlorine smell?

Just trying to get the full picture before pointing a finger or moving to the next possible problem.

If it's something that only happens with your AG brews, I'd look closely at the mash chemistry first. What kind of water do you use? Do you have a water profile for it? Is it treated with chlorine or chloramine? Do you treat it with anything? What are your fermentation temps and timelines? We really need a lot more info to be able to point to possible causes.

I had a similar problem. Every batch had the flavor. Turned out to be hard water (I knew I had hard water, but nowhere I searched mentioned any off flavors from hard water). Now that I use 1/5 regular water 4/5 RO water, my beer is awesome!

Medicinal / bandaid taste could also be overstressed yeast.

BrewNinja1 said:

I had a similar problem. Every batch had the flavor. Turned out to be hard water (I knew I had hard water, but nowhere I searched mentioned any off flavors from hard water). Now that I use 1/5 regular water 4/5 RO water, my beer is awesome!

Click to expand...

This. Except this is only for light colored beers for me. From Reds to Stouts I use tap (it makes for some amazing Stouts). All my light beers were terrible. I change to RO water, now they are fantastic.

WVBeerBaron said:

...medicinal, sulfur, sour...

Click to expand...

This to me indicates a contamination. Try a different sanitizer.

EDIT: I forgot to say. Even if you're not a fan of bleach, I'd bleach all your gear just to make sure you don't have a contaminating substance hidden somewhere in a crevice.

I have only ever used bottled water with no fiddling with the chemistry. I do not boil or sanitize the bottled water.

As far as yeast goes I use white labs, usually WLP001 depending on the style and I use a new tube each time.

Fermentation temp are usually around 65 degrees. I use my basement because its pretty constant all year.

80% of the time I rack to a secondary after primary fermentation settles down.

I also wonder if i am not aging long enough, though I've had this flavor remain in a beer for 1 year plus.

I would think maybe a sparging problem, but I don't see a problem in what you've described. Maybe you're not recirculating enough and you're getting a lot of grain pieces in the kettle and boiling them?

I don't trust One-Step but I do like Iodophor and StarSan...but if the One-Step has worked for all your extract batches, that might not be the problem. Though you could try a different sanitizer for one batch and see if it makes a difference.

You should definitely bring a bottle to your LHBS for feedback if they'll provide it. Also ask your friends what they think it tastes like. I find others pick out off flavors better than I do sometimes (even if they don't realize it's an off flavor: "wow this tastes good, sort of like green apples!")

WVBeerBaron said:

I have only ever used bottled water with no fiddling with the chemistry. I do not boil or sanitize the bottled water.

As far as yeast goes I use white labs, usually WLP001 depending on the style and I use a new tube each time.

Fermentation temp are usually around 65 degrees. I use my basement because its pretty constant all year.

80% of the time I rack to a secondary after primary fermentation settles down.

I also wonder if i am not aging long enough, though I've had this flavor remain in a beer for 1 year plus.

Click to expand...

What is the typical OG of your average batch? One vial of liquid yeast is way underpitching for most average gravity beers, which can cause stress and lead to off flavors. I suggest either making a starter or using more than one vial of yeast. Here's a handy pitching calculator that shows how many cells you need for a specific OG- http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

You could also try Safale S-05 dry yeast. It's virtually the same strain as WLP001 or Wyeast 1056, and you get twice as many cells for about half the price.

You still didn't specify how long you ferment. Taking the beer off the yeast cake too early can also lead to some off flavors, especially if you underpitched to begin with. I leave my beers in the primary for at least 3 weeks, and skip the secondary altogether. If you want to use a secondary, I'd leave the beer in the primary for at least a week before racking, and then give it a min of 2 more weeks in the secondary before bottling or kegging. Even after the bubbling slows and the krausen falls, the yeast are still hard at work cleaning up after themselves.

Is your water chlorinated? If so, eliminate the chlorine at EVERY step in your process. I mean EVERY step including the dilution of your sanitizers.. Doing so cured my off flavors.

JuanMoore said:

I suggest either making a starter or using more than one vial of yeast. Here's a handy pitching calculator that shows how many cells you need for a specific OG- http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

You could also try Safale S-05 dry yeast. It's virtually the same strain as WLP001 or Wyeast 1056, and you get twice as many cells for about half the price.

You still didn't specify how long you ferment. Taking the beer off the yeast cake too early can also lead to some off flavors, especially if you underpitched to begin with. I leave my beers in the primary for at least 3 weeks, and skip the secondary altogether. If you want to use a secondary, I'd leave the beer in the primary for at least a week before racking, and then give it a min of 2 more weeks in the secondary before bottling or kegging. Even after the bubbling slows and the krausen falls, the yeast are still hard at work cleaning up after themselves.

Click to expand...

Both are good points and would have been my next recommendations. No...really they would have been. I'm not just riding Juan's coattails.

Perhaps introducing some oxidation when racking to secondary? Could contribute to the cardboard flavor.

WVBeerBaron said:

I have only ever used bottled water with no fiddling with the chemistry. I do not boil or sanitize the bottled water.

As far as yeast goes I use white labs, usually WLP001 depending on the style and I use a new tube each time.

Fermentation temp are usually around 65 degrees. I use my basement because its pretty constant all year.

80% of the time I rack to a secondary after primary fermentation settles down.

I also wonder if i am not aging long enough, though I've had this flavor remain in a beer for 1 year plus.

Click to expand...

If you are doing AG then you have to adjust the mash pH or only a certain SRM of beer will ever be good. It made a world of difference in mine.

Download this. http://howtobrew.com/section3/Palmers_Mash_RA_ver2e.xls
The first tab will explain it's use although I think it goes into more detail than you need. You do need to know what is in the water you use, if it's bottled then hopefully that's easy to find out. I work in Morgantown and would never use the public water there, luckily I live in PA.

Oh and I concur with stopping the use of one step, buy either of the others mentioned, both work fine.

How do you cool your wort? While most of us believe that hot-side aeration is largely a myth, it's not completely a myth.

Here's a story of some friends who were pretty new homebrewers & what was happening to their beer. It always tasted great for the first several weeks in bottle but by a month to two months in bottle it would be cardboardy & kind of medicinal. I had tasted it & it was odd how it came out over time. Well, some detective work on my part included getting their description of how they cooled their wort. What they were doing was putting it in an ice bath then stirring it extremely vigorously -- they were apparently doing it so vigorously they would have to switch out stirrers every 5 minutes or so because their arms were getting tired. They were doing this from the time they first put it in the ice bath to when it was cooled. Well, hot-side aeration, if it happens, occurs in the hot part of that range when oxygen gets bound to other compounds in the beer & then over time (weeks or months) releases those bonds so the oxygen becomes loose in the beer. I think this was their problem. Normally it isn't a problem for most homebrewers if only modest amounts of oxygen are introduced to hot wort, but in this case it was really massive. They shifted over to using my wort chiller then getting one of their own & haven't had this problem since.

So, consider HSA and wort chilling methods -- the cardboard taste is classic for it.

Will an AG batch I use a 50 foot copper wort chiller hooked up to the sink. With extract batches I use an ice bath and stir once or twice over a 1/2 hour period.

I have been using tap water to make all of my one-step solutions and since it's a no rinse solution, and my water has a lot of clorine, I wonder if that's the problem.

As far as mash PH goes, I use the 5 star stablizer.

JuanMoore - Typical OG of my AG stuff is right around 1.060. I ferment in primary for typically 2 weeks, then rack to 2ndary. Or I just leave in primary for 4 weeks and keg.

One other issue i know I need to curb is starting the syphon with my mouth. I know, I know, I gotta work on that!

i had nasty columbus oh water that was terrible since then i switched to about 30% tap and 70% RO. brews no longer have as many off flavors

WVBeerBaron said:

I have been using tap water to make all of my one-step solutions and since it's a no rinse solution, and my water has a lot of clorine, I wonder if that's the problem.

Click to expand...

Possible, but unless you're leaving quite a bit of sanitizer in the fermenter I wouldn't think it would be an issue. Might be worth using bottled next time just to be sure.

WVBeerBaron said:

JuanMoore - Typical OG of my AG stuff is right around 1.060. I ferment in primary for typically 2 weeks, then rack to 2ndary. Or I just leave in primary for 4 weeks and keg.

Click to expand...

Fermentation timelines sound good. For a 1.060 beer you need to be pitching ~200 billion yeast cells. A super fresh vial of liquid yeast straight from the lab only has ~100 billion cells, and that number drops considerably over time. Like I said earlier, you should be making a starter, or using two vials of yeast, or using a dry yeast.

WVBeerBaron said:

As far as mash PH goes, I use the 5 star stablizer.

Click to expand...

You said ealier that you use bottled water and don't mess with the chemistry at all. What kind of bottled water? Drinking, spring, RO, distilled? How much 5.2 are you using? I still think you need to look more closely at the water chemistry.

WVBeerBaron said:

One other issue i know I need to curb is starting the syphon with my mouth. I know, I know, I gotta work on that!

Click to expand...

If you don't want to spend the ~$12 on an autosiphon, you can just fill the transfer hose with water and pinch both ends shut until it's in place. It's pretty easy and much more sanitary than using your mouth.