Worst Brew Week Ever! (this is me venting)

I feel like I need to vent to some like-minded people because my friends and wife don’t seem to quite understand.

I have had the worst brew related week of my life! I’ve been using this Cream Ale recipe that I absolutely love and I decided to tweak it a bit and experiment so I subbed out the 2 row with MO to give it a slightly different taste. I was really excited for the experiment. I let it ferment out in the primary for 4 weeks and then put it on the gas for two weeks. On Tuesday I finally took my first pint and it tasted odd. I couldn’t put my finger on it but it certainly wasn’t an agreeable taste so I let my wife take a sip and she says, “Ugh that tastes like a band aid.” So there you have it. My first infected batch….. but it gets worse.

I only use bottling buckets to ferment in (I’m a firm believer in having my equipment serve as many uses as possible) and the bucket I used for the Cream Ale was currently housing a fermenting Kolsch. I immediately got nervous and took a sample of the Kolsch (which was 1.5 weeks in the primary) and sure enough, there was that awful rubber taste. I cleaned and sanitized the bucket beforehand but after dumping the Kolsch I smelled all of the washers around the spigot and they all stunk like burnt rubber. I guess the smell had leeched into the rubber and my simple scrubbing followed by One Step didn’t do a sufficient job.

To drown my sorrows I decided to tap a keg of Apfelwein that I have been aging since March. Again this was something I was really looking forward to and as soon as I pulled my first pint I realized I now had a keg of Apple Vinegar. It tasted so good going in the keg!

Anyway thanks for letting me rant. I guess I’m going to toss all of the parts to the spigot and really soak the kegs.

I don’t want to get too discouraged so I am currently brewing a huge Wheat so wish me luck!

Sorry to hear brother. Good luck with your wheat.

I had 2 consecutive infected batches once, it was the worst.

Those bottling spigots need to be replaced every so often. They grow mold and funk inside of the valve where you cant get to. I was bottling a batch when I noticed a black spot on the inner wall of the valve assembly...ugh. Good luck with the wheat. Hopefully it comes out amazing!

Band-aid flavors are usually related to chlorine in your water:

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

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Medicinal
These flavors are often described as mediciney, Band-Aid™ like, or can be spicy like cloves. The cause are various phenols which are initially produced by the yeast. Chlorophenols result from the reaction of chlorine-based sanitizers (bleach) with phenol compounds and have very low taste thresholds. Rinsing with boiled water after sanitizing is the best way to prevent these flavors.[/FONT]

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Wow, that's a pretty awful week. Two years ago I brewed two beers in a weekend and found them both to be infected as I was going to transfer to the kegs. Suffice to say, the best way to recover from this is to grab some barleywines and some friends and enjoy forgetting a night

Thanks for the support guys!

strat_thru_marshall said:

Those bottling spigots need to be replaced every so often. They grow mold and funk inside of the valve where you cant get to.

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Yeah I think I may move on to Better Bottles or just plain Ale Pails and leave the bottling buckets for well...... bottling.

Rhoobarb said:

Band-aid flavors are usually related to chlorine in your water:

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I had read that when searching for an answer for the infection. The only reason I'm confident with the water is because I've been brewing for a few years and never had this issue. I've also brewed variations of this recipe 5 times without issue.

darknova306 said:

Suffice to say, the best way to recover from this is to grab some barleywines and some friends and enjoy forgetting a night

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Funny you should say that. I have some Old Horizontal I've been saving and a few buddies are coming over tonight to watch the Stanley Cup so I think I may just follow that advice!

From experience I have found that yeast that is old or has had it's integrity compromised (see the nottingham thread) will cause this as well. I had to dump a batch of mild and a batch of altbier due to effed up yeasties. The mild was a victim of the bad notty, and the altbier was made with yeast I had harvested and stored for about 8 months. The altbier took days to start fermenting even with the starter I made and both of them had that chloroseptic / plastic bandaid flavor.

Thats interesting that you should mention the yeast. The Cream Ale was probably a 3rd gen US-05 that had been sitting in my freezer for a few months. I guess I would be happier knowing it was the yeast and not a flaw in my sanitation.

Of course that doesn't help me with the vinegar.

I agree that your off flavor may be due to phenolics from other reasons than inffection.
I'm saying that because I had the same issue/off flavor on a few batches and here's what I found:
- Brewed a weizenbock and a dunkelweisen and just couldn't stand the phenolic taste. I was told by other home brewers that that was right on the money as for the style, so the taste was due to the yeast strain.
- Brewed a regular beer with S-04 and after 48h I had no signs of fermentation, nothing. Picthed another pack and fermentation started after 6h, as usual, so my first pack of yeast was dead. This batch also ended with a huge phenolic taste and I actually had to dump it.
- Have tried to save on my grain bill and fly sparged until I get around 1.012. I started getting phenolic taste on my beer and decided to increase my grain bill and end sparge at 1.020 or higher. No more off flavors.
- Relaced my water filter and started to fly sparge at max 170F. I had few batches that my sparge temp went up to 181F. That also improved my phenolic off flavor.
- use to ferment ales at 70F to speed things up. Also noticed that lower temps like 65F reduces phenolics.

So my point is, there are many things that can drive your off flavor other than contamination, like yeast strain, yeast quality (pitching dead yeast or stressed yeast), over sparging, over heating while sparging, fermentation temperature and water quality.

I'm having a bad brew week as well.

4 packs of wyeast wouldn't start my octoberfest. Waited 4 days before I pitched some dry yeast, but I was not happy. Hopefully it will be ok.

Then I go to take a pint from the keezer two nights ago and nothing. New manifold leaked the entire co2 tank. Had three beers carbing from scratch with no co2 in the headspace for 2 days before I could get it refilled today.

That's 4 beers with potential trouble. Now I've never had an infection, so I feel for you there. But I'm definitely all Debby Downer about brewing these days.

dale1038 said:

That's 4 beers with potential trouble. Now I've never had an infection, so I feel for you there. But I'm definitely all Debby Downer about brewing these days.

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Hopefully there was enough CO2 to give a think layer in the kegs. I hope all works out my man!

BuonAnno said:

Thats interesting that you should mention the yeast. The Cream Ale was probably a 3rd gen US-05 that had been sitting in my freezer for a few months.

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Well there you go. I'm as frugal as the next guy, but anyone can get US-05 for $2.50 a pack, so I wouldn't even consider washing it.

BTW, Better Bottles is the way to go.

passedpawn said:

Well there you go. I'm as frugal as the next guy, but anyone can get US-05 for $2.50 a pack, so I wouldn't even consider washing it.

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I actually wash my yeast because I like the feeling of self sufficiency more than anything else. I love having hops out back, buckets of grain in the garage and washed yeast in the freezer. I like that I can brew on a whim without having to worry about ingredients.

Although I guess I could just go ahead any buy a few packs of US-05 and store them.

Oh and I think I'll be ordering some Better Bottles this weekend.

Thanks!

BuonAnno said:

I actually wash my yeast because I like the feeling of self sufficiency more than anything else. I love having hops out back, buckets of grain in the garage and washed yeast in the freezer. I like that I can brew on a whim without having to worry about ingredients.

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I completely understand and, to a large extent, I am exactly the same way (I've lots of frozen yeast in my freezer).

Man that bites. I tapped my 2005 barley wine last winter and it was infected. Gushered enough to empty the keg. First beer I made after moving to Oregon. I hope the septic tank beasties enjoyed it.