To Toss or not to Toss...

Ok -- I've been reading the forum long enough to know that in 99% of the cases, the general answer to the often-asked question of bailing out on a batch is to just see it through anyway but...

I had issues with my first batch, which according to most of the experts I gave a sample to at the local home brew club, was a two-fold problem related to not doing a good enough job washing the cleaner out of my bottles (cleaner taste) and possibly not getting my wort chilled quickly enough (band-aid off flavoring).

My second batch was a Sierra clone that is in bottles and as far as I can tell, went fine (no soapy/cleaner nor band aid tastes).

Unfortunately, as I've been taking my FGs for batch #3, the band aid taste is there front and center. Now just for clarification, I had already brewed and was fermenting #3 before I got the critique and suggestions from the brew club -- otherwise I would have taken painstaking efforts to avoid making the mistakes they diagnosed.

So this brings me to the original question:

Knowing that secondary is not likely to undo these problems and that there would still be a bunch of time/effort used in seeing this batch through -- only to still have a lousy batch, even though the mantra is to almost never bail -- would this be a good case for just cutting my loses and reassessing my procedures?

Obviously it's not that big a deal if I wait it out but if the OxyClean taste isn't going to clear out anyway, is there really a point?

Bummed but determined to make the next batch awesome!

Jim

What cleaner and what sanitizer did you use?

I would rack it to the secondary in any case, and then decide after it sits for a couple of weeks. It isn't all that much work to do this. Bottling is a little more work, but if it tastes anything like beer I'd go with it. You could bottle a portion of it and let the rest sit in the secondary and wait for the carbonation to decide.

I could make so many prison sex jokes, but that'd be wrong.

Evan! said:

I could make so many prison sex jokes, but that'd be wrong.

Click to expand...

Syrup or jelly? :cross:

Personally, I disagree with the conventional wisdom that holds that all beer is sacred and dumping it is a mortal sin. I've dumped one and half batches of beer and I have no regrets.

If you know that the only way you will finish this beer is by choking down and hating every bottle, then dump it. Chalk it up to experience and brew something you will enjoy.

Toss it, Toss it!

Beerthoven said:

Personally, I disagree with the conventional wisdom that holds that all beer is sacred and dumping it is a mortal sin. I've dumped one and half batches of beer and I have no regrets.

If you know that the only way you will finish this beer is by choking down and hating every bottle, then dump it. Chalk it up to experience and brew something you will enjoy.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I don't usually dump them though, I use my infected batches for such things as the liquid bowl in my smoker. I've made 325 gallons of beer over the past 20 months, so losing 5 gallons, while sucky, isn't that big of a deal. I really liked Jamil and Jon's discussion of infected batches in their Flanders Red episode. He was like, you really need to have the right bugs doing the right job to get the right result for a soured beer. You can't just take an infected batch and say it's a soured version. Sorry, it's just an infected batch, dump it, you suck.

hahaha. Word.

Luckily I haven't had any infected batches yet, just a couple that tasted like a$$.

Both batches I dumped were fermented way too warm and ended up like fruit flavored solvent. I knew they were flawed and I wasn't going to enjoy them at all, and I certainly wasn't going to share them with family or friends. So, I dumped them and learned the hard way about temp control.

Evan! said:

Sorry, it's just an infected batch, dump it, you suck.

Click to expand...

Yeah i loved that as well, but i remember it as "...dump it, it's crap."

Prison jokes aside, since the problem seems to be the same as with batch #1, I think I'd rather free up my primary and take another shot at making a good beer rather than see this one through knowing it isn't likely to get much better (though I guess I could at least rack it to secondary and let it fester there for a few weeks ;-)).

thanks for the comments.

Jim

As a fellow noob, I'd rack it to secondary, free and very little work, and start on a potentially GOOD beer. After the brew in your primary's ready to go to secondary, taste the "strange brew" and see if you think it's worth saving. If it's not, no harm done, if it is, then swell!

Laurel said:

As a fellow noob, I'd rack it to secondary, free and very little work, and start on a potentially GOOD beer. After the brew in your primary's ready to go to secondary, taste the "strange brew" and see if you think it's worth saving. If it's not, no harm done, if it is, then swell!

Click to expand...

+1 on this. While it may taste crappy now and you have identified your mistakes, time can heal A LOT of mistakes. Nothing is hurt by letting it sit a little longer in a secondary, and unless you desperately need the bottles/keg/carboy let it sit for at least 2 months. If after eight weeks its still not good/drinkable by all means, dump it.

If it still does have that nasty flavor, there's other things you can use the beer for. I had a batch of 666 that tasted like liquid oak. Craptastic to drink, but man it worked great for the smoker. The slugs loved it too. If it's still bad in 8 weeks, summertime will be here and you can use it for that, or for fertilizing the lawn. Get your grass drunk!

Jim, maybe it is time to reassess your procedures. Give us a rundown on how you brew and sanitize and some more details. This will help because many of us have been through the same thing.

I saw some of the club guys yesterday and we may have come to a new conclusion...

Batch #1 was done with a smackpack (no starter) that didn't expand. While the beer did reach FG, it took a long time and never even caused bubbles in the airlock.

Batch #3 was done with a started that was created from a yeast wash off of a secondary carboy.

The overall thought was that some type of yeast issue was present, since the non-smacked pack probably didn't have enough yeast to overpower the wort. With #3, even though the starter was bubbling away and seemed active when it was tossed in the new batch, it was created from a much smaller yeast cake than it would off the primary (by obviously a very green brewer as well).

So...batch #4 is now set for this weekend. I have a smack pack that I'll make a nice starter from tomorrow. I bit the bullet and dumped #3 last night and am hoping that an overpowering onslaught of good yeast will put me back in the groove (as mentioned, batch #2 -- with a great smack pack starter -- went fine).

Jim

Blender said:

Jim, maybe it is time to reassess your procedures. Give us a rundown on how you brew and sanitize and some more details. This will help because many of us have been through the same thing.[/QUOTE

Click to expand...

What kind of water are you using? From what I understand a band-aid/medicinal taste is usually from chlorine in some form being converted into chlorophenols by the yeast. If you've got chloramines in your water, or are using bleach as a sanitizer, that may be what your problem is.

However, since batch 2 didn't seem to have that problem, I'd say it's most likely due to terminal lameness of the yeast used, or a sanitizing issue somewhere along the line.

Best of luck on batch 4!

TheDom said:

What kind of water are you using? From what I understand a band-aid/medicinal taste is usually from chlorine in some form being converted into chlorophenols by the yeast. If you've got chloramines in your water, or are using bleach as a sanitizer, that may be what your problem is.

However, since batch 2 didn't seem to have that problem, I'd say it's most likely due to terminal lameness of the yeast used, or a sanitizing issue somewhere along the line.

Best of luck on batch 4!

Click to expand...

I'd put good money on chlorine water being your problem. a simple charcoal filter fixed the bandaid problem for me. Others stick with bottled water. Either way bandaid flavor comes from chlorophenols like TheDom said, so it has to be the water, or sanitizer. BTW what kind of sanitizer do you use?

I usually just top off with tap water (Los Angeles) so who knows? You could definitely be on to something. I use SaniClean to sanitize (made by the Star San folks...it's a little weaker and doesn't foam).

Evan! said:

Yeah, I don't usually dump them though, I use my infected batches for such things as the liquid bowl in my smoker. I've made 325 gallons of beer over the past 20 months, so losing 5 gallons, while sucky, isn't that big of a deal. I really liked Jamil and Jon's discussion of infected batches in their Flanders Red episode. He was like, you really need to have the right bugs doing the right job to get the right result for a soured beer. You can't just take an infected batch and say it's a soured version. Sorry, it's just an infected batch, dump it, you suck.

hahaha. Word.

Click to expand...

You've got 3-4 adults over 21 in your home right? Since 100gallons per year/persom is the legal limit on brewing...

holjim said:

I usually just top off with tap water (Los Angeles) so who knows? You could definitely be on to something. I use SaniClean to sanitize (made by the Star San folks...it's a little weaker and doesn't foam).

Click to expand...

According to this report: http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp001965.jsp LA has been switching to chloramines since 2006, so your tap water, unless you've got some sort of filter, is probably the source of your band-aid taste. If that's the case, you'll need to either:
1) Get a decent filter to remove as much of the chloramines as possible.
2) Use campden tablets to convert the chloramines into something harmless to your beer.
3) Use bottled water.

Happy Brewing,
Dom