Plastic taste in beer

A homebrewing friend of mine has been sampling some of my beers and finding that there is a plastic taste in them. I've been looking into it and it seems the 2 most likely explanations are an infection or due to using tap water. I haven't noticed the issue myself, so for some reason it just leads me to think it's more the water issue (if it's the same water I drink on a daily basis, would I notice it?). Another thing my friend noticed is that the more aged beers he's been sampling has the plastic taste even more than the younger ones. Would this fact seem to support the water issue or infection issue? I plan to both do a thorough cleaning of my equipment and use bottled water next time, but I'd still like to know what's causing the issue.

Most likely bacterial infection. Infections get way worse over time because the wild yeasts/bacterias keep fermenting over time and continue to create these off flavors over time.

Check out this list and tell us which one of the off flavors is most like your beer: http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html

My guess is that you're tasting phenols which can come from high amounts of chlorine in your water or high fermentation temperatures. What temp are you fermenting at?

polyphenals...look to remove chlorine and check your plastic hoses. Probably not an infection.

The 2 brews he tasted these in fermented between 64 and 68 degrees both were Wyeast 1056. I'm not thinking that the temp was an issue.

I've gone back through and tasted the beers myself and I don't pick up this plastic taste but my friend pointed to the Chlorophenol taste on this link as a comparison.

http://morebeer.com/content/homebrew-off-flavors

I felt at first that it would be the water as I don't taste the plastic, but given that it seems to worsen with age I thought it might be an infection. Would a chlorine water issue worsen over time or fade out?

I experienced this as well and at first I thought about poor sanitation or chlorine but now I'm not so sure. I had been experiencing this from my most recent brews and the only real change has been using a counter flow chiller and march pump set-up including braided PVC tubing. I recirculate hot wort through the chiller to sanitize it and I'm starting to think that since the max temp on the tubing is less than 212° something from it is leaching out and getting into the beer. Anyone else think that this may be the case?

Also, I'm new to this water chemistry stuff. I'm not sure what a bad chlorine level is in regards to homebrew. This is my water report...

http://www.mundelein.org/community_info/pdfs/WQR.pdf

Brutus Brewer - I don't think that braided hose you are using is rated for those temps. You should use silicone hose for temps that high.

For your next brew, buy spring water at the grocery store and see if that does it. Don't buy distilled as you want the minerals that are in the spring water. Yeah, I agree about the temperature, if you're fermenting in that range you should not be getting phenols from fermentation.

I bet it is infection. I've heard of people getting plastic tastes from wild fermentations.

foos-n-brew said:

Brutus Brewer - I don't think that braided hose you are using is rated for those temps. You should use silicone hose for temps that high.

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Yes, i ordered some of this today

I still think it's a bacterial contamination but using non chlorinated water and being extra careful with sanitation would be a win-win.

foos-n-brew said:

Brutus Brewer - I don't think that braided hose you are using is rated for those temps. You should use silicone hose for temps that high.

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What does everyone else think, any chance that at those temps the plastic smell leached into the beer? I read on the web site that the braided PVC tubing is non toxic, so I'm guessing it's still safe to drink. FWIW, the plastic smell I perceived has diminished quite a bit from when I first kegged this batch. In addition, I took a sample to the LHBS and let them try it and they both didn't notice it, only the hops (it's an IPA).

I've had this before, mainly with lighter-coloured beers (0-10SRM). Didn't happen with my darker stouts and porters.

Solved it with 1/2 campden tablet the night before I brew 'er up.

I would say try cleaning all your equipment, see if you get the plastic taste again, if so then change the water aspect. If you do both at the same time you won't know which is actually the problem. IMHO.

What kind of sanitizer was used?

Stay simple at first - begin by attacking the more obvious targets.

Early last year I went from using One Step to Star San and my odd flavor issues went away - I had a strange taste that I couldn't really put my finger on either - but after this switchup, I've been consistently brewing great beer. I hope it's a similar situation for you.

You might even consider scaling back and brewing smaller batches until this is identified. There's nothing more frustrating than brewing five gallons and not even being able to cook with it.

Its pretty hard to infect a beer, you almost have to try and cause it to happen. If this beer was on tap and you had this taste as a regular problem then you start thinking about contamination. However, given its bottled the chance that it is infected is pretty low. As a side note from looking at your hoses and removing possible sources of chlorine, I have encountered this with dry hopping as well. I was discussing a beer with the head brewer of a brewpub chain that had a polyphenolic character to and he said that the brewer had a habit of dry hopping the serving tank and he believed that to be the source of the off flavor. I thought this interesting as the only time I have got that character from dry hopping is when I put it in my cornie and let it sit too long.

If it's happening over and over again and it happens only in your light beers, it's a chlorine/chloramine issue. It definitely gets worse over time. You don't notice it drinking the water fresh from the faucet but you're also not drinking tap water mixed with alcohol and other biological components and you're usually not drinking your tap water after it has sat for weeks or months.

Try using bottled water for a batch of light-colored beer using all the same equipment. See if the problem goes away.

JonK331 said:

For your next brew, buy spring water at the grocery store and see if that does it. Don't buy distilled as you want the minerals that are in the spring water. Yeah, I agree about the temperature, if you're fermenting in that range you should not be getting phenols from fermentation.

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what he said ^^^

i had the same issue with all my brews till i went to spring water.. problem solved...
Tons of phenols in the water.

I had this happen to a beer after I added strawberries in the secondary. The taste got worse over about 1-2 months and eventually the whole batch were gushers.

Wait, are you serving this beer from a bottle or keg?

Brutus Brewer said:

I experienced this as well and at first I thought about poor sanitation or chlorine but now I'm not so sure. I had been experiencing this from my most recent brews and the only real change has been using a counter flow chiller and march pump set-up including braided PVC tubing. I recirculate hot wort through the chiller to sanitize it and I'm starting to think that since the max temp on the tubing is less than 212° something from it is leaching out and getting into the beer. Anyone else think that this may be the case?

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I too have been recently getting a plastic taste in my beer, and it's only been since I got my counterflow chiller and march pump set up. The taste is so subtle that I'm the only one that seems to be able to detect it. I can only detect it because this flavor is in all of my recent beers. I didn't really notice it at first. One friend said that he could detect an off-flavor, but he couldn't tell what it was. He said it was a new off-flavor to him. Also, I've been brewing very light lagers and kolsches lately because I'm trying to get my brewing process completely correct. I believe it's finally good except for the plastic flavor. I'm going to invest in that same tubing to see if that helps.

The braided Vinyl tubing I have seen is only rated to about 180 degrees. If you go over that temp you will likely extract flavors that you won't like.

Go with silicone tubing as its rated to 500 degrees.

Brutus Brewer said:

What does everyone else think, any chance that at those temps the plastic smell leached into the beer? I read on the web site that the braided PVC tubing is non toxic, so I'm guessing it's still safe to drink. FWIW, the plastic smell I perceived has diminished quite a bit from when I first kegged this batch. In addition, I took a sample to the LHBS and let them try it and they both didn't notice it, only the hops (it's an IPA).

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Any thoughts on this? Part of me thinks I should just dump it and start over.

I say drink it if the taste doesn't bother you ... Why waste beer? That would be alcohol abuse.

Leave it. It'll probably go away eventually.

I have some pretty bad beers from when I first started - but I could never dump them. They just sit there, and eventually I try one to see if it's any better.

Be wary of store-bought water. I have had the bottled water taste off; the stuff on the shelf is not refrigerated at can leech the flavor of the plastic.

I never definitely proved my problem, but after I:

Switched to StarSan
Used only distilled water from the store machine (outside)
Changed soft gear

did my plastic flavors go away. They were intermittent. Now I have had around 10 batches and no issues (other than recipe!). It comes back to the issue with beer clean/sanitizing chemistry: with very hard water, they usually do not work. They typically rely on pH. My water is too hard to support StarSan or PBW, so when I want to clean I usually get water from the store.

FIRST POST!
Picking up on this thread since I have the same probs.
I've brewed four batches, all had the plastic aftertaste.
Two batches were Mr. Beer (LME), one was Northern Brewer (LME) and the other was hand assembled DME.

I used store bought spring water in gallons, ice bath for wort cooling, plastic fermenting bucket and room temp fermentation (Ale). I also used some off-brand sanitizer from my LHBS. I am switching to Starsan with next batch. House was maybe 72 deg at coolest during fermentation. So my suspicion is high fermentation temps are causing the plastic taste. I did not take temp readings during ferm.

Would anyone agree with this assumption? Would a basic swamp cooler during fermentation maybe solve this problem? So sad to have four batches of beer that have barely been drinkable. In fact, my first two (Mr. Beer) I poured down drain. My last batch was a porter so the malt-heaviness at least covered it up.

Chuckiles said:

FIRST POST!
Picking up on this thread since I have the same probs.
I've brewed four batches, all had the plastic aftertaste.
Two batches were Mr. Beer (LME), one was Northern Brewer (LME) and the other was hand assembled DME.

I used store bought spring water in gallons, ice bath for wort cooling, plastic fermenting bucket and room temp fermentation (Ale). I also used some off-brand sanitizer from my LHBS. I am switching to Starsan with next batch. House was maybe 72 deg at coolest during fermentation. So my suspicion is high fermentation temps are causing the plastic taste. I did not take temp readings during ferm.

Would anyone agree with this assumption? Would a basic swamp cooler during fermentation maybe solve this problem? So sad to have four batches of beer that have barely been drinkable. In fact, my first two (Mr. Beer) I poured down drain. My last batch was a porter so the malt-heaviness at least covered it up.

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It could very well be the way-too-high fermentation temperature, but often it comes from bleach residue, or chlorine in the brewing water. A new sanitizer should take away any risk of bleach, and using bottled water should eliminate chlorine in the brewing water. I'd use reverse osmosis water, if you can get it, as it's more of a "blank slate" of water. Hopefully that will fix the issue!

I have done side by side comparisons of 1 gallon extract brew and 5 gallon extract brew. Both used municipal tap water. The 1 gallon was boiled completely before fermentation. The 5 gallon I only boiled 2.5 gallons and diluted it with cold tap water up to the 5 gallons. Remember, chlorine is removed with boiling. The 1 gallon did not have the plastic taste. The 5 gallon (2.5 of which were not boiled) DID have the plastic taste. My policy, add Campden tablets to remove the chlorine if you do a half boil.

I had this issue with the last place I lived in. First beer I brewed there I used half spring water but had to use half tap water because I didn't have enough bottled water. It was a pale ale and it sort of had that plastic off flavor to it that worsened over time. I didn't think it was the water, I thought it was more a temp control issue, so I brewed a Heady clone with all tap water as my next beer. I looked after the fermentation temps clearly but this time the beer had an even stronger plastic smell and taste to it. So much that it was undrinkable and I had to dump the batch. One of the only ones I've had to dump in over 4 years of brewing.
The next batch I brewed with all spring water and the issue was totally gone. It was definitely the chlorine/chloramine in the tap water.

Campden tablets will help with chlorine but I'm not sure if it helps with choramine. From what I remember, and this was a while ago that I was dealing with this issue, choramine can only really be totally removed by pretty lengthy contact time with a carbon filter. Perhaps maybe that was the only way to get rid of choramine using only a carbon filter... I can't remember... in any case I'm sure you can find more info on here about filtering chlorine/chloramine out of your tap water.

I just always buy good water to brew with instead of messing with my tap water. Good water in, good beer out!

Good luck!

The very reason I started using spring water. Besides the improved flavor.

I'm going a little crazy with the same problem a lot of people in this thread have described. I'm ~120 batches in and this is my first time experiencing it.

I've had a pretty strong plastic taste in my last 4 or so batches, the flavor comes on about 3 seconds after taking a sip. The weird thing is, sometimes I will only notice it on the first sip and then I can enjoy the rest of the glass with no off flavor. There have also been a few times that I pour the glass out because I can't stand that taste. I have also shared my beer with several friends who insist they don't taste any off flavor, including plastic. I noticed the plastic taste in a NEIPA, entered it in a competition anyway, and it won gold with a 39!

I use campden tablets and been slowly replacing all my plastic parts. I'm just as mystified by the fact that the flavor comes and go as I am by what the source could be.