First two batches of kegged beer taste like crap. Problem?

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kyle6286

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I've had no problems with off flavors in my previous batches. Lately, however, my last two batches have an off-flavor that's tough to describe. I've heard of beers having a band-aid flavor so maybe my mind is just telling me that's what it is, but this flavor hasn't been present in my first two batches. I'm trying to think of any differences in my process that could be the cause, but the only things that I've changed have been:

1. Late extract addition after flameout instead of all at the beginning. I dump half in at the beginning and other half after flameout. The only reason I've tried this is because I've heard numerous times it can produce clearer beer and result in less of that tangy "extract" flavor some people experience.
2. Temp increases in summer. To combat this, I've used a swamp cooler and I've managed to keep my wort temps at 63-67.
3. Kegged beer. I got a kegerator a couple of months ago, and my last two batches have been kegged.
4. Better bottle. I don't see this having any affect on my beer, but I've used it in the last two batches that have the off flavor.

Other than that, I really can't figure out what's causing this. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but I can definitely notice an off flavor. Since I'm new to homebrewing, having made only 4 batches, it's hard for me to describe the flavor. Looking at Palmer's off flavor list, I'd say it falls under the medicinal category but I've never used bleach.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html

To clean my corny kegs, I've used the correct ratio of oxiclean free and water. I let them both soak for about an hour and then thoroughly rinsed them. I'm thinking about buying a beer that I've previously made that turned out great, either Midwest's Amber Ale or their Belgian Wit and bottle instead to see if it has anything to do with the kegs. Any ideas? I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

Also, I just read on a site that some people have problems with their kegged beer if root beer was previously in the keg and was absorbed into the o-rings. I picked these two corny kegs up from a soda distributor and cleaned and sanitized them with oxiclean free and starsan. Could my o-rings be the issue?
 
Nope, haven't done anything differently besides what I've mentioned. Same water in all of my batches. I use my tap water since Rhode Island water is supposedly very good quality. The more I read online about kegged beer, the more I'm realizing it's probably my issue. It has something to do with either the beer lines or the corny kegs. I'm ready to just sell it and go back to bottling. I'm not looking forward to diagnosing my problem for the next two months. Anyone interested in a brand new kegerator lol?
 
A few ideas come to mind from what you've posted. By the way good descriptions of your process.

First off, bandaid or medicinal flavors can be a sign of an infection. It can also be high fermentation temps, but you are no where near that high of a temp to pose those issues.

My first thought is: what are you using as a sanitizer? Oxyclean is a great cleaner, but if you are rinsing with tap water you might just be reintroducing microbes to your equipment. A lot of folks will disagree with me, but I feel you should use a good strong cleaner and then a final acid no rinse sanitizer to be sure your brewing gear really is sanitized. There is a huge difference between clean and sanitized.

Secondly, you may want to re-evaluate the better bottle. If after your previous batches you got in there and went to town with the white bristled carboy brush you may have created microscopic scratches in the plastic where bacteria will reside. There is really no way to ever get that sanitized again. There are special brushes which are softer and red in color designed for the better bottle.

Lastly, did you replace the O rings on your keg and sanitize the dip tube? If you got a used keg, chances are those O rings need to be replaced. There is a set of four of them usually sold at you homebrew shop for just a few bucks. To sanitize the dip tube, fill the keg with sanitizer and put enough C02 in there to push the solution through the picnic tap. You should also run cleaner through the keg prior to sanitizer between each batch as well.

Sorry to hear this happened, but it's all in learning. Good luck.
 
What was your last beer run through the keggerator? What was the last beer in your keg? Did you pressurize the corney and flush out the dip tube? How long has your beer been in the keg? How long did you ferment and when did activity stop at the airlock? What beer did you brew?

Just trying to get up to speed so I can help you figure it all out. And 6 minutes late!!! Ya beat me to it squirrelly!! :mug:
 
Ah dune I have the HBT iPhone app. Yes sir, you have met a formidable opponent.

I like the direction of your thinking; I was imagining keg issues too, but just wanted to eliminate a few other variables for the original poster.
 
A few ideas come to mind from what you've posted. By the way good descriptions of your process.

First off, bandaid or medicinal flavors can be a sign of an infection. It can also be high fermentation temps, but you are no where near that high of a temp to pose those issues.

My first thought is: what are you using as a sanitizer? Oxyclean is a great cleaner, but if you are rinsing with tap water you might just be reintroducing microbes to your equipment. A lot of folks will disagree with me, but I feel you should use a good strong cleaner and then a final acid no rinse sanitizer to be sure your brewing gear really is sanitized. There is a huge difference between clean and sanitized.

Secondly, you may want to re-evaluate the better bottle. If after your previous batches you got in there and went to town with the white bristled carboy brush you may have created microscopic scratches in the plastic where bacteria will reside. There is really no way to ever get that sanitized again. There are special brushes which are softer and red in color designed for the better bottle.

Lastly, did you replace the O rings on your keg and sanitize the dip tube? If you got a used keg, chances are those O rings need to be replaced. There is a set of four of them usually sold at you homebrew shop for just a few bucks. To sanitize the dip tube, fill the keg with sanitizer and put enough C02 in there to push the solution through the picnic tap. You should also run cleaner through the keg prior to sanitizer between each batch as well.

Sorry to hear this happened, but it's all in learning. Good luck.

I'll try to respond to all of your issues. First, I use oxiclean free as a cleanser. I follow up with star san and don't rinse anything. For these two kegs in particular, I soaked them for an hour in oxiclean free and water, rinsed it out good, and then sanitized with star san. I connected both of them to my co2 tank and let some sanitizer solution out of the beer line. This should've taken care of everything. I left some of the foam at the bottom of the keg and racked my beer on top.

In terms of my better bottle, I've never used a brush. I've soaked this with oxiclean free, all the way past the krausen line, for an hour and then shook like crazy. Both times this worked well and removed any residue. Before using it again, I made sure to sanitize it with star san.

I didn't replace either of the o-rings on my two corny kegs, but I made sure to take the lid apart and I dropped it in the corny keg when it was soaking in star san.

Thanks for your help.
 
It sounds like you are spot on with your sanitation. Good work!

I would change out all the O rings in the keg. It's a pretty easy task that only takes a few minutes.
 
What was your last beer run through the keggerator? What was the last beer in your keg? Did you pressurize the corney and flush out the dip tube? How long has your beer been in the keg? How long did you ferment and when did activity stop at the airlock? What beer did you brew?

Just trying to get up to speed so I can help you figure it all out. And 6 minutes late!!! Ya beat me to it squirrelly!! :mug:

These two batches are my first batches in the kegerator. One was an American Wheat and the other is BM's centennial blonde, which I was really excited for. Brand new beer lines, sanitized equipment, etc.

Yes, I pressurized both cornys and let star san run through my lines and faucets for about 20 seconds each.

I replaced my first beer lines, which were about 5", with 10" lines to reduce foam. I made sure to sanitize everything again. With my kegerator temps at about 40, I carbonate at about 12 psi.

My first kegged beer has been in there for about a month and a half. Although the flavor seems more subtle now, it is still present. Not sure if the carbonation is helping mask the off flavor. My newest batch, BM's centennial, has only been in the keg for two weeks. And again, it has the off flavor of the other beer, but it's more noticeable. Now that I think about it, this flavor isn't present when racking to the keg. Actually, I don't think it was there for either of them, which makes me think even more it has something to do with the corny keg, dip tube, or beer lines. Even though I sanitized everything, I didn't take apart everything and put it back together because I didn't know how.

I ferment all of my beers for a minimum of three weeks, check gravity a couple times, and then rack after about four weeks of fermentation. Airlock activity, if I recall correctly, probably stopped after 4 days or so.

One last thing, since I'm new to kegging, I'm not sure what the correct method is but I keep my beer lines connected to the keg at all times. So, I might have a beer one night, and then not have one for another week or so in this case. This means the same beer is in the line untouched the whole time. Tonight, I made sure to dump out a few ounces to account for any beer left in the lines for a while and that didn't fix it.

I appreciate everyone's help. If I can't figure out what my problem is, I might just try to sell all my kegging equipment and break even on what I bought. I'd rather just make beer that tastes great like my first two batches without having to worry about negative flavors during carbonation.
 
If you haven't changed the o-rings, seems that would be the logical next step. Always worth trying. Seems like everything else keg-related has been addressed?
 
If you have a spare keg, put water in it and hook it up to your system. Let it sit overnight.

If you can taste the issue when you pour some water off the next day, it's something about your kegerator.

In my case, I had to soak a couple new faucets for a while in some PBW to get a metallic taste out of them.
 
I had a similar problem and it ended up being a small chunk stuck in the black plastic tip of my auto-siphon. Everyting tasted great going into the keg, then about 3 days later the off flavors started.
 
A couple of other things to try if you haven't already.

Disassemble the keg and look at the beer out poppet. I have been amazed at some of the gunk that has been trapped by the beer out poppet.

While you have it all apart, take a dip tube brush, wet it, coat the end of the brush with Bar Keeper's Friend (or similar) and clean the dip tube. Just be sure to rinse extra well.
 
cyclist said:
A couple of other things to try if you haven't already.

Disassemble the keg and look at the beer out poppet. I have been amazed at some of the gunk that has been trapped by the beer out poppet.

While you have it all apart, take a dip tube brush, wet it, coat the end of the brush with Bar Keeper's Friend (or similar) and clean the dip tube. Just be sure to rinse extra well.

I might try this. Do I need anything special to take it apart? Also, where can you get a brush? The only one I have is to clean bottles so I don't know if that is too big. Thanks for the suggestions everyone.
 
It could quite possibly be your o-rings contributing the flavor. I got used soda kegs myself and when I first got them they smelled like old nasty soda pop and were supposedly cleaned by the vendor I bought them from. I cleaned them myself very thouroughly and kegged a few batches. They tasted a bit funny and I could still smell the soda pop after emptying a keg of beer and cleaning it. I ended up replacing all the o-rings, poppet valves and pressure relief valves and have had great beer ever since.
 
Bottle the next batch. That will pretty much tell you where your problem is. In your brewing process or in your keg system.
 
I might try this. Do I need anything special to take it apart? Also, where can you get a brush? The only one I have is to clean bottles so I don't know if that is too big. Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

The diptube brush should be at your LHBS or favorite Internet site.

For getting the fittings off, I think I use a 7/8 inch wrench, 12 point combination wrench. (Some of those fittings require the extra points.) If you have some deep well sockets, you can probably use them as well. Check out the rebuilding section of the kegging faq at: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/sticky-kegging-faqs-43347/

Good luck!
 
Everything looks good!! You have the sanitation practices down. the only things left are the keg issues and other members have addressed them quite well.

Good luck, and don't stop kegging!!

:mug:
 
I filled a bottle with one of my beers and brought it to my LHBS. He described it as phenolic. He also said it has somewhat of a metallic taste. He went over pretty much everything we talked about on this thread and gave me some new o-rings to replace on my keg. He said to take it apart and try using these. I've never taken apart a corny keg before so I hope it's not too much trouble. I'm thinking about dumping the batch that's been in the keg for a month since there's probably only half left. I'll change out the o-rings, sanitize everything, and try the water test by leaving some water in the keg overnight. If the taste is still there, I'm going to be pissed.
 
I had a nasty taste in two of my kegs. It turned out to be the beer line. It was brand new, but had something nasty in it. I replaced those two lines and fixed that. Do you have a picnic tap that you can taste the beer from?
 
I had a nasty taste in two of my kegs. It turned out to be the beer line. It was brand new, but had something nasty in it. I replaced those two lines and fixed that. Do you have a picnic tap that you can taste the beer from?

No, I don't have one.

I just emptied the first batch of the two kegs. Luckily, it was less than a quarter full so I didn't waste too much. Now, I'm trying to disassemble the corny but it's kind of hard to do without a socket wrench. I want to try filling the keg with water and taste it in a day to see if I can narrow the problem down.
 
Definitely try breaking down the kegs, but I'm assuming your tower and taps are new while your kegs are reconditioned? If it's a metallic taste, that's exactly what I got when I switched my old one tap tower with a new two-tapper with perlicks.

To fix that, use the wrench that comes with everything (should look like one of these: http://www.beveragetime.com/product-categories/tools/) to disassemble the taps and then soak them in some PBW overnight: http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/powdered-brewery-wash.html

That was the only thing that got rid of the taste for me. Just running cleaning products through the lines wasn't good enough.

Any chance you got your setup from kegcowboy?
 
dogbar said:
Definitely try breaking down the kegs, but I'm assuming your tower and taps are new while your kegs are reconditioned? If it's a metallic taste, that's exactly what I got when I switched my old one tap tower with a new two-tapper with perlicks.

To fix that, use the wrench that comes with everything (should look like one of these: http://www.beveragetime.com/product-categories/tools/) to disassemble the taps and then soak them in some PBW overnight: http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/powdered-brewery-wash.html

That was the only thing that got rid of the taste for me. Just running cleaning products through the lines wasn't good enough.

Any chance you got your setup from kegcowboy?

Thanks for the advice. Yes, my tower and kegerator are brand new. I got them from my lhbs. My kegs are used but I cleaned them with oxiclean free and then star san. san. I got my regulator on keg cowboy. I'm going to try this when I get a wrench to fit.
 
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