Off Flavor

duboman said:

No and disregard the other comment about distilled water not being good, it's a misinformed comment as you are building up as per Yoop's suggestion

At this point I think you really need to reevaluate your off flavor as we have all chimed in with everything pertaining to phenols and it seems like its something else.....

Either that or you need to contact the provider of the water you're buying and verify it has no chlorine or chloramines in it.

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The only way I can describe it is that when I burp it tastes like plastic. I've googled that and many people have the exact same thing, and it's due to chlorine in water. I dont' know what else it could be

I agree that's what it sounds like but I'll be damned if this thread hasn't covered everything involved so contact the supplier of the water you are buying

My opinion is your drinking the beer too green. I have been brewing a long time and I have noticed around 5 weeks in the bottle beers get much better. Those that taste good earlier, have strong flavors that mask the taste of green beer like IPAs or have unique yeast based flavor like wheats.
More dark malt based beers (porters/stouts) and also higher gravity beers(Belgians) ; the better they will taste with age.
There are exceptions and it took me a while to find a sweet spot for the beers I like. If you are brewing American ales, not too dark, not too strong, set one or more in a closet for amonth or two and try it again. Im betting the taste your experiencing is from the yeast.

It seems the sanitation part of your process is fine, but what about the rest of the process? That is, do you mainly brew with extract and steeped specialty grains, BIAB or 3 tier all grain? Have you checked the pH of your water? Of the mash (and sparge), if applicable? Like you, I was getting a weird off flavor (astringent and faintly soapy) in each of my batches, and also like you I was meticulous about sanitation, temperature control, and trying different recipes, all to no avail.

I have moved from extract + specialty grains to partial mash to all grain BIAB and each time I got this weird flavor, and I was just about to throw in the towel and resume buying $10 six packs from Total Wine (wait - I never stopped doing that?!) when I decided wth, might as well spend another $60 and get a pH meter. What a surprise to find out that both the bottled spring water and the activated carbon filtered water from my tap were decidedly alkaline (pH of 8.0 to 8.3)! I bought that dubious "5.2" mash additive (NOT RECOMMENDED!) for my next batch and when I measured the pH of the mash it was 6.8!?! I hurriedly added a couple tsp of "5.2" and that did bring the pH down to 5.2, but when I sparged the grain bag (I use the dunk in a separate pot of sparge water method of BIAB) the pH there was 7.5! Everything I've read has said that letting pH rise above 6 during mashing or sparging results in tannin extraction, and tannins are polyphenols... see the connection here: polyphenols can be turned into chlorophenols by the HCl in your stomach.

So, check the pH of your mash/sparge/steeping water, whichever applies.

duboman said:

No and disregard the other comment about distilled water not being good, it's a misinformed comment as you are building up as per Yoop's suggestion

At this point I think you really need to reevaluate your off flavor as we have all chimed in with everything pertaining to phenols and it seems like its something else.....

Either that or you need to contact the provider of the water you're buying and verify it has no chlorine or chloramines in it.

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You're right, I was misinformed. Many apologies, I was going off of information I got from a food scientist, so I didn't doubt the accuracy. Here is relatively good proof of my error.

http://homebrewdude.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/can-you-brew-with-distilled-water/

Brewskii said:

My opinion is your drinking the beer too green. I have been brewing a long time and I have noticed around 5 weeks in the bottle beers get much better. Those that taste good earlier, have strong flavors that mask the taste of green beer like IPAs or have unique yeast based flavor like wheats.
More dark malt based beers (porters/stouts) and also higher gravity beers(Belgians) ; the better they will taste with age.
There are exceptions and it took me a while to find a sweet spot for the beers I like. If you are brewing American ales, not too dark, not too strong, set one or more in a closet for amonth or two and try it again. Im betting the taste your experiencing is from the yeast.

Click to expand...

Some of the beers i brewed were fresh. Some were in bottles for 2 months. One was in bottles for a year. They all have the same off flavor. Plus, aren't we supposed to be drinking hop bomb ipa's as fresh as possible?