Chlorophenols

My first beer has an astringent taste. I suspect that I didn't rinse all of the sanitizing bleach out of the fermenting vessels, and what I'm tasting is chlorophenols. Is the beer safe to drink? (The bleachy taste is awful, but it might be unnoticeable to a drinker who has already had a few correct brews, I hope).

Thanks,
Nordo

Extract with grains? PM, all-grain?

Did your grains get too hot?

Your burps will resemble burnt rubber or bitter Band-aids. That's how you know. Easy to recognize once you have identified it in one brew.

Hmm, it's not much of a rubber or band-aid smell. Maybe, as I think olllllo is going to suggest, I steeped the malt at too high a temperature. The recipe used crystal, chocolate and roasted barley. I don't recall the temperature being particularly hot, but maybe the sheer volume of malts meant that a slight excess of temperature led to a severe amount of tannin flavor.

What kind of flavors have you gotten in beer that has been oxidized? For lack of a bottling wand, I bottled by siphoning the beer into the primary fermenting bucket and using the bucket's spigot, making sure to pour slowly, down the side of the bottle to prevent splashing. Not ideal, to be sure, but it didn't seem terrible.

How long has it been in the bottles before you're tasting it....before we try to diagnose a problem, let's ascertain that you're just not drinking green beer?

Oxidation is described as a cardboard flavor.

Definitely not a cardboard flavor.

The beer is a nut brown ale, it spent a week in a primary bucket, 2 weeks in a secondary carboy, and 2 weeks in bottles.

Nordo said:

Definitely not a cardboard flavor.

The beer is a nut brown ale, it spent a week in a primary bucket, 2 weeks in a secondary carboy, and 2 weeks in bottles.

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Then I'm voting for green beer...The beer still needs some time to mellow out before you judge whether or not anything is wrong...

We recommend 3 weeks bottle conditioning/carbing minimum before we consider wheter or not there's something wrong...

Read this,


https://www.homebrewtalk.com/558191-post101.html

And read this to see the magic that patience can have...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

Walk away from it for a few more weeks, and see if that stuff doesn't dissipate...More than likely it will...

Green beer? That's good news to hear. Thanks everybody for all the suggestions. I will sample another bottle on the 26th on November to see if the off taste is still there.

Nordo said:

Green beer? That's good news to hear. Thanks everybody for all the suggestions. I will sample another bottle on the 26th on November to see if the off taste is still there.

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No promises, but most first time brewers panic, especially if they taste their beer before a minimum three weeks time. We spend a good part of the day answering threads like these and 95% of the time that is the case...

We call it a mental illness...N00bitus


I really don't recommend new brewers try to self diagnose their beer based on what they read anyway...It's best to find an few experienced brewers and have them taste the beer...but that's AFTER about 5 or 6 weeks in the bottle...

And if you read the second link I gave you you will see what 6 months can possibly do to a beer that was f-ed up...

After trying a second bottle, I am much relieved. The terrible astringent flavor has mellowed out and separated into two, easily distinguishable flavors: tannins and hops. If the beer continues to improve at this rate, it will be ready to drink in two more weeks.

I had no idea that beer started out so nasty. The recipe I followed said "Condition for a week, and then age another 3 weeks if you really insist" That wasn't even half as much aging as it needed.

Nordo said:

After trying a second bottle, I am much relieved. The terrible astringent flavor has mellowed out and separated into two, easily distinguishable flavors: tannins and hops. If the beer continues to improve at this rate, it will be ready to drink in two more weeks.

I had no idea that beer started out so nasty. The recipe I followed said "Condition for a week, and then age another 3 weeks if you really insist" That wasn't even half as much aging as it needed.

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A majority of recipes you'll find online are usually directed at making drinkable beer. Not GOOD beer, drinkable beer. Something to get drunk on.

Sounds like you're taking the right approach to it.