bandaid taste

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lostspring

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My first beer has been bottled four weeks now. When drinking you get kind of a bandaid backtaste. Not real strong but noticable. I searched and found that it is from chlorine. I am on well water and used only starsan. I did delable my bottles with an oxyclean soak but rinsed very well. I did have a boilover when I added the hops and lost much of the bittering hops. It was a Midwest kit Big Ben Pale Ale extract with steeping grains.
Is there anything else that might cause this taste?
I am well into my pipeline and hope I don't have a major flaw somewhere.
Thanks for any help or ideas.
 
I've mentioned this before and I have no evidence of it, but I had this taste several times and attributed to poor sanitization and either a wild yeast or bacteria from my kitchen. Specifically, I got water that had been sitting in my sink (cooling) in a starter or yeast container that was transferred to my beer. I'm convinced I 'picked something up' from my sink. Twice in beers this happened (had to go back and check my notes) and the beers were awful and bandaidy.

Maybe it's just me.
 
a few of us, myself included, have really wrestled with this off-flavor. I have dumped 5-6 batches due to this. Unfortunately, it doesn't go away with aging, but seems to get worse.

It does come down to one of two things: either some or all of the water you're using has chlorines or chloramines (which are even harder deal with - this is what I have in my water), or you have an infection on some peice of equipment.

I never figured out conclusively what was causing the problem for me, but my best guess is that, even though I was using bottled water from the store, I would make starters with tap-water or add small amounts of tap water to top-off, thinking small amounts would be ok. I was mixing my star-san with water from my basement utility sink and not placing sanitized bottles upside-down to drain properly before bottling, so there was always a little pool of the stuff at the bottom of each bottle. I think it was likely this seemingly minimal contact with my tap water that was ruining batches on a variable scale, depending on how much contact each batch had....(some were undrinkable, others just had a slight taste of bandaid in the aroma - or the burp).

My solution was to start treating all brewing water with Campden tabs, and to mix up my sanitizer with distilled water, with the added benefit that it can be reused as long as it stays clean.

Just to be safe, though, and because after 6 batches or so of this I was determined not to waste any more freakin' beer, I tossed all but the newest of my fermentors, my bottling set-up and hoses, and replaced all this stuff. I decided to do this in part because I had used the buckets for a variety of soaking and cleaning operations and scratched them all up pretty bad before I realized that scratches can harbor bacteria....even if they weren't the culprit this time, they could easily have started causing me problems....

basically, I gave myself a new process and a fresh start, and things have been great ever since. I know this doesn't solve your problem, but hopefully it will give you things to consider/think about. good luck.
 
I tried to take careful notes and I don't show anything. I mixed five gallons of starsan in one of my fermenter buckets and submerged all of my equipment while I was cooling the wort, I used an IC chiller. I took the equipment out as I needed it. I am not saying that that it isn't it but nothing obvious.
 
This batch was fermented at a pretty steady 64deg and the yeast was Muntons dry yeast.
I was just rereading my notes. I had to add 3/4 gal of topoff water so as not to take any chances I used a bottled gal of water that we had stored. I just read the label. Damn. Bottled from municipal water of Champaign,Illinois. Would 3/4 gal be enough? I guess it would seeing as how the taste is there. I have 5 batches done sofar but in reading my notes I only used this water in the first and fifth batch. The fifth batch just went into the fermentor on Thursday. An American Cream Ale. I quess I will have to wait and see.
There's a lesson learned.
Thanks for the help guys.
 
I made that american cream ale too! It was a brewers best kit and thats the one that had that slight backtaste of bandaids... havent had it with any other beer.
 
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