Off-flavor looks like what could be DMS

Hey guys,

My first batch is a scottish 80. I bottled it on monday. The beer tastes alright except for a predominant off-flavor. Its a bit hard to describe but it seems to correspond to DMS. I know I shouldn't diagnose anything before bottle condition is done but I can't help it. One thing that leads me to this conclusion is that DMS is volatile, and we left our hydro sample on the counter for almost an hour. After that the off-flavor was completely gone. What do you guys think? If it is indeed DMS, do you think that time will fix things?

Yalpe said:

Hey guys,

My first batch is a scottish 80. I bottled it on monday. The beer tastes alright except for a predominant off-flavor. Its a bit hard to describe but it seems to correspond to DMS. I know I shouldn't diagnose anything before bottle condition is done but I can't help it. One thing that leads me to this conclusion is that DMS is volatile, and we left our hydro sample on the counter for almost an hour. After that the off-flavor was completely gone. What do you guys think? If it is indeed DMS, do you think that time will fix things?

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No, if it is DMS, it probably won't improve.

That doesn't mean that it IS DMS, though! DMS is vegetal in flavor. I bet once your beer is done that it'll taste better. Maybe what you're perceiving as an off-flavor now is just young beer.

I hope its not then. But why did the flavor go away by letting it rest?

Yalpe said:

I hope its not then. But why did the flavor go away by letting it rest?

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Either the aroma disipated by being opened to air, or your nose got "used to" it.

I know you can't help it by sampling your beer early, but at 3 days is way to soon to start diagnosing an off flavor.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.

And even carbonation doesn't mean that they will not still be green and need more time to condition. Which it sounds like the beer needs to do.

I usually wait til it's been in the bottle 6 weeks before I try to "diagnose" what went wrong, that way I am sure the beer has passed any window of greenness.

If you are sampling your beer before you have passed a 'window of greeness" which my experience is about 3-6 weeks in the bottle, then you are more than likely just experiencing an "off flavor" due to the presence of those byproducts (that's what we mean when we say the beer is "green" it's still young and unconditioned.) but once the process is done, over 90% of the time the flavors/smells are gone.

Of the remaining 10%, half of those may still be salvageable through the long time storage that I mention in https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

And the remaining 50% of the last 10% are where these tables and lists come into play. To understand what you did wrong, so you can avoid it in the future.

Long story short....I betcha that smell/flavor will be long gone when the beer is carbed and conditioned. Read my blog;

Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."


So come back in another 4 weeks, then we'll talk.....

For the record (in case someone searches for this thread), the flavor has not gone away. It was inconsistent through the bottles so I'm thinking it is related to my bottling process. Oxydation? I let some bottles hang around for a while IIRC. Some of them are drinkable. I dumped one because the taste was too strong. I still have one bottle in the fridge which is 6 months old. I'll open it soon but I don't have my hopes up.

On the up-side, the other batches have been better. They all had their fair share of issues but I'm in the process of fixing that too. I guess I'll never know what happened to my first brew!