Plasticy Taste to my Pale

Well, I bottled both my pale ale and pumpkin ale around the same time. The pumpkin Ale turned out fantastic, but the Pale has a taste that I can only describe as plasticy. I have no idea where this is coming from because my pumpkin Ale was brewed with the exact same stuff and just a day later. The only thing I can think of is 1: My hops were skunky for some reason (the plastic flavor comes across batteling the cascade hop flavor for sure. In fact, I barely taste any cascade even though it was around 22 IBUs) or 2: The LME I used had been sitting in my fridge for a couple days in the plastic bucket it came in and got a little funk from that. 3: Oxidation, because this was before I knew that my false bottom was calibrated incorrectly and was creating a seal on the bottom of my mash tun (I thought it was a stuck mash) I ended up having to pour the hot wort from my partial mash through a sifter and into my boil kettle.

I just want to know what some people think primarily because I think it would be a good brew if it didn't have that plasticy funk. If anyone can let me know what they think it would be greatly appreciate.

On the plus side, I'm all grain now and have the kinks in my gear worked out. No more dealing with extract or having to pour out of the mash tun ever again.

As always, thanks in advance!

-Jek

Jekster said:

On the plus side, I'm all grain now and have the kinks in my gear worked out. No more dealing with extract or having to pour out of the mash tun ever again.

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Hard to say, it could be loads of things from actual plastic leaching to a percieved plastic flavor like you say. At any rate I am willing to bet it'll be gone when you go AG. My vote is for the LME in plastic. *shrug*

1. Hops don't skunk. The alpha acids have to be isomerized by boiling before skunking can occur, but beer can skunk in minutes if exposed to sunlight.
2. Food grade plastics will not leak flavors into foods. That's one of the requirements for being food grade.
3. Oxidation takes months to develop.
4. Plastic is most often from chlorine. Either your sanitizer or from the water. Since you've had good batches before, I'd vote for sanitizer rather than water. However, I have lived in places where the water treatment was variable. In Las Vegas, water treatment & quality depended on whether they were pumping from the lake or wells that day.

It's not a bandaid flavor or aroma is it? I am not going to jump to Infection but the Plastic, flavor needs a little more clarification, I think. If you want give me a call and either I can come by or you can stop by my place and we can see of we can figure it out. Also you could bring one to House, I am sure he could help you out.

Cheers

If it's not like Band-Aids, is it solventy? I've seen people describe something as plastic when I picked up solvent, as well as the Band-Aid phenols Wop31 is getting at.

What was your yeast and what were your fermentation conditions? It could be fusels, acetaldehyde, or some other product of fermentation at too high temperatures.


TL

David42: Thanks for the detailed clarification of everyone. I like it when individual parts are broken so I can understand everything going on. Nice to know that it wasn't the plastic bin since that was my first culprit

As for the sanitizer theory, I've used one-step in each batch and haven't had any problems at all till this brew. Still think it could be a possibility?

wop31 said:

It's not a bandaid flavor or aroma is it? I am not going to jump to Infection but the Plastic, flavor needs a little more clarification, I think. If you want give me a call and either I can come by or you can stop by my place and we can see of we can figure it out. Also you could bring one to House, I am sure he could help you out.

Cheers

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Yeah, there definitely needs to be some analysis going on. I wouldn't particularly denote it was bandaid at all, but more of a heated plastic flavor as wonderful as that sounds. It also does not come across in the armor to me. Rather, it only comes through when I take a drink. I get a particularly bad plastic hit if I breath in through my mouth while taking a swig. It's just odd because my Pumpkin Ale turned out mighty tasty and was brewed the next day using the exact same stuff. It's also frustrating because, as I mentioned, if the plastic nastiness wasn't there it would be an easy drinking and tasty brew.

I had this happen to my last Bitter. I searched the internet and found that the plasticy off flavors are most likely caused by an infection with a wild strain of yeast. I made up a 10% bleach solution and wiped down my work area and also paid a little more attention to sanitation the next time I brewed. This seemed to do the trick.

Thanks for the input as always. I also just remember that the one difference in the last beers as opposed to my first, which did not have this problem, was that I primed with DME. The DME was about 3-4 weeks old and had been open sitting in my kitchen. It wasn't particularly sealed and maybe got some funkyness from that. I'm not too sure. I'm also going to go ahead and get some starsan for my next batches. The one step I used to clean with last time was someone else's that I got at a garage sale. Maybe it was a bit old and wasn't doing the job sanitation wise. Who knows.

Also, I just thought of this as well. For both these batches I had regular Vinyl tubing to connect my false bottom to my ball valve in my mash tun. I wondering if some of the plasticy flavor could have leeched out of the vinyl tubing. I know that stuff is food grade, but I also know that it probably wasn't safe at the temps it was subjected to throughout a mash and sparge. I recently changed to high temp tubing and hopefully this will be the case. Although, I do have to admit I'll be sad if the Porter I also brewed has this funky taste if this is the case. Since I did use the same setup when I brewed that... =/