That "band-aid" taste

Brewed my second batch. It was an english IPA. And it's got the "band-aid" aftertaste to it !! I know I read somewhere that this is a common mistake and very correctable but I can't seem to find it anywhere !! What did I do wrong?

It could be due to chlorine (from chlorinated water or water with chloramines.) You can boil tap water and cool for your brewing needs if it is chlorinated. If it is treated with chloramines, you need to add a campden tablet or potassium metabisulfite to the water before using for brewing. Or you can use bottled water or spring water.

I think this is the most common source of band-aid taste. Some bacterial infections can cause this also.

You can also use a carbon filter on your tap, like Pur or Brita to remove chlorine and cloramine.

http://www.homebrewzone.com/off-flavors.htm

check this site. it will tell you where you went wrong, possibly

After reading about this and going over my notes I's have to say I didn't rinse my bottling bucket well enough. And I really don't remember if I rinsed the syphon hose after sanitizing. Lesson learned !!

guidos858 said:

After reading about this and going over my notes I's have to say I didn't rinse my bottling bucket well enough. And I really don't remember if I rinsed the syphon hose after sanitizing. Lesson learned !!

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Do you sanitize with bleach?
Keep the bleach away from your equipment! Even with through rinsing it can lead to off flavors. Get a good no-rinse sanitizer like starsan and use that

Captain Damage said:

You can also use a carbon filter on your tap, like Pur or Brita to remove chlorine and cloramine.

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Only granular activated carbon can remove chloramines and I believe even then the efficiency of removal is not very high. Campden is a much easier option, IMO.

guidos858 said:

After reading about this and going over my notes I's have to say I didn't rinse my bottling bucket well enough. And I really don't remember if I rinsed the syphon hose after sanitizing. Lesson learned !!

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Thanks for posting. I just opened a bottle of English IPA that I brewed about two months back when I first started brewing and had the same band aid aftertaste! I have had several bottles form this batch previously and do not recall having this flavor. I recall that I soaked the beer bottles in a solution of bleach overnight to remove the labels and then ran them through the dishwasher a couple days later to include the sanitizing cycle. I am hoping that this is just one or two bottles that somehow didn't get all the bleach out. I don't like the thought of throwing out the whole batch. Would the dishwasher be strong enough to remove the bleach for the initial washing? Or am I looking in the wrong area for the cause?

If you rinse after sanitizing you are re- contaminating your equipment.

What was the ambient temperature during fermentation? Fermenting at too high of temps, which is a common mistake among first-time homebrewers, can lead to phenolic band-aid like compounds.

PrinceOfThePoint said:

What was the ambient temperature during fermentation? Fermenting at too high of temps, which is a common mistake among first-time homebrewers, can lead to phenolic band-aid like compounds.

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I thought about the temperature as several other posts make mention of pitching the yeast before the wort has cooled. I usually get the wort down to under 90 in the ice bath before transferring to the fermentation bucket. My thermometer only goes to 90 so I make sure it is under that. Then I add about 3 gallons of cold water to the wort and pitch the yeast. The bucket is stored in my basement where I have a thermometer that shows the temperature as between 68 and 70 on a daily basis.

I drank one last night that only had a very slight flavor of band aid. Based upon the fact that some bottles have a strong flavor and some have mild or no band aid flavor I am strongly leaning towards blaming the fact that I cleaned these bottles with bleach and some were cleaned better than others. They all went into the dishwasher but the water cant get up in all of the bottles. Hopefully the next batch will be better. No more bleach!

Worth a thought, even though the original problem was probably just bleach. This is an excerpt from Tom Stevenson, a prominent wine writer.
"VOLATILE PHENOLS
Generally considered to be faults, although ethyl-4-guaiacol and to a lesser degree vinyl-4-guaiacol can contribute attractive elements of aroma to a wine's bouquet, and this positive effect may vary from grape variety to grape variety (e.g.,vinyl-4-guaiacol is perceived as a defect in Kerner, yet it is thought to contribute in a positive sense to the varietal character of Gewürztraminer). Almost one-third of all French wines tested have had volatile phenols above the level of perception, so they cannot always be bad. The amount of ethyl and vinyl phenols present in a wine is increased by harsh methods of pressing (particularly continuous presses), insufficient settling, particular strains of yeast and, to a lesser extent, increased skin-contact. Some yeasts, such as Zymaflore VL1, are specifically designed to produce a wine without any phenol off-flavours, although they are, rather confusingly, known as Poff (for phenol off-flavour) strains.

Ethyl-4-guaiacol Smoky-spicy
Ethyl-4-phenol Stables, horsey, sweaty-saddles
Vinyl-4-guaiacol Carnation
Vinyl-4-phenol Band-Aid (sticking plaster)"