metal taste in my ale beer

hey i have recently bottled my 2nd batch of beer , but unfortunatly it has a slight metal taste to it. iv been reading all the other posts about what causes it and iv narrowed it down to a couple things, but still need some clarification. i have an aluminum pot but it has been boiled atleast 10 times with water and heated up once in the stove. so despite the scratches inside the pot i think the oxidized layer is plenty good.

i also recently made a bottling bucket with a SS spigot. and it came with a nut which i put on the spigot real tight and when i tightened it on the spigot i actually was ripping apart the nut and leaving marks and bits of metal falling off. i didnt realize this until after i bottled. i dont know what the nut is made of but i know the spigot that it came with is made of SS. so anyways i put a new nut on the spigot. but also somethin im considering here is the fact that i make my beer with a coopers pre hopped malt extract beer kits that come in a can. if you dont know many ppl including myself heat the can in hot water so it can be opened and poured easyily and also once it was opened i poured the majority into my pot then i poured boiling hot water inside the can to get all the good stuff out. but now im wondering if the can can handle the boiling water and i wonder if this is perhaps where the metal taste came from.

Don't worry about the equipment. Tell us about the yeast strain and the temperature in the room where your fermentation is, and whether this is grain or extract. Thanks!!!

iambeer said:

Don't worry about the equipment. Tell us about the yeast strain and the temperature in the room where your fermentation is, and whether this is grain or extract. Thanks!!!

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its a coopers real ale prehopped extract kit which comes in a can and if comes with a gold yeast packet that says coopers on it. this last batch i fermented in mg basement which has ambient temp of 63f. but with the fermentation maybe it was like 68f. also i added bentonite to this batch of beer which was a first time trying it in beer. i had succes using it as a stabilizer in my wine so i thought id try it in beer to calm down the aggressive fermentation.

Why did you want to quell the fermentation? What's your time frame right now? Could still be a "green" beer.

The first places I'd look would be the extract, your brewing water, and your bottle caps. The extract from a can sometimes generates odd flavors, especially if its old. Your brew water may have a metallic taste to it, especially if it's from your tap. Any flavors from the water are going to impact the flavor of the beer. If your bottle caps happen to have some rust on the under side, it can impact the beer flavor.

JJL said:

The first places I'd look would be the extract, your brewing water, and your bottle caps. The extract from a can sometimes generates odd flavors, especially if its old. Your brew water may have a metallic taste to it, especially if it's from your tap. Any flavors from the water are going to impact the flavor of the beer. If your bottle caps happen to have some rust on the under side, it can impact the beer flavor.

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Thanks for the additional considerations , but Iv already thought about those and I doubt any of those are the problem. I use RO water , i iodophored my caps and my extract from the can is from a trusted LHBS.

twistr25 said:

Why did you want to quell the fermentation? What's your time frame right now? Could still be a "green" beer.

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So i can get more wort in the fermenter bentonite is great at calming down home made brew, I started using it in wine and moved it over to the beer. Adding bentonite has been working like a charm for me so far. yes its been carbonating for 3 weeks so far.

Im going to do an update here as iv actually found some new results from my beer. I seen someone posting in another thread about metal tastes in beer and how it can come from residue on your drinking glass. This is interesting and perhaps its exactly why I was having problems with the beers i was drinking. They were basically saying in their post that residue from dirty water or soap or something can create the metal taste in beer. I believe this is why I was having funky metal in my beer because the all the metal beers were from glasses that were in the dish washer.

Also me and the roommates have been being lazy lately and instead of buying the "official" dishwasher soap we have just been using less amounts of regular dish soap... hmm could this be adding to the problem ? lol All I know is after reading that I tried the drink rite from the bottle and they are JUST FINE ! actually they tasted pretty good for 3 weeks carbonation.

shanek17 said:

Im going to do an update here as iv actually found some new results from my beer. I seen someone posting in another thread about metal tastes in beer and how it can come from residue on your drinking glass. This is interesting and perhaps its exactly why I was having problems with the beers i was drinking. They were basically saying in their post that residue from dirty water or soap or something can create the metal taste in beer. I believe this is why I was having funky metal in my beer because the all the metal beers were from glasses that were in the dish washer.

Also me and the roommates have been being lazy lately and instead of buying the "official" dishwasher soap we have just been using less amounts of regular dish soap... hmm could this be adding to the problem ? lol All I know is after reading that I tried the drink rite from the bottle and they are JUST FINE ! actually they tasted pretty good for 3 weeks carbonation.

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I had never heard of or considered that before. Can you provide a link to the thread you were reading? I would like to investigate further.

shanek17 said:

...Also me and the roommates have been being lazy lately and instead of buying the "official" dishwasher soap we have just been using less amounts of regular dish soap...

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I love the way you prioritized things, why buying soap if you can put the saved money on new beer ?

Nice to see you like this kit, I started carbonation this morning(real ale). The taste went from very bad (last week, from primary) to something better (today, cold, undercarbed of course) but far from a good tasting beer.

DrawTap88 said:

I had never heard of or considered that before. Can you provide a link to the thread you were reading? I would like to investigate further.

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sorry i cant find it. i dont remember if i read that on a beer forum or just google. but i just was plowing through the internet info and came across that. i think it may just be the dishwasher water and soap combination, not sure. but for the sake of experimentation i will try a beer from a dishwashed glass and see if the metal taste persists.

I have a metallic taste in my first batch.. It was a Irish Red extract kit from MidWest. I know for a fact that it was not my glassware as the taste was still there when I brought it to homebrew club. I am thinking it is either my water or the cheap Muntons yeast in the kit.

TBaGZ said:

I have a metallic taste in my first batch.. It was a Irish Red extract kit from MidWest. I know for a fact that it was not my glassware as the taste was still there when I brought it to homebrew club. I am thinking it is either my water or the cheap Muntons yeast in the kit.

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That was my first kit, I didn't have the metallic taste, but I think my water is pretty good and I went out and bought Nottingham's instead of using the Muntons, so short answer, could be

http://www.kroc.org/Links/TroubleshootingGuide.htm

I found this guide, with common off flavours in beer, it describes metallic flavour and the reasons of it.

DrawTap88 said:

I had never heard of or considered that before. Can you provide a link to the thread you were reading? I would like to investigate further.

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just doing an update , i believe i already mentioned in my other post that the metal taste is now gone. i did say i would try some beers out of glasses from dishwasher and i did just that. i tried glasses from cupboard and even freshly washed glasses from dishwasher. and they tasted just fine. so i guess it probably wasnt my glasses after all. some of you may say the beer is still young but i tried the beers a day or 2 after experincing the metal and noticed there just fine. so i do not know. however now im wondering if its somethin to do with my diet , perhaps something i was eating? hmmm a mystery.... but the important thing is my beers taste great!

I just came across this information well i was reading searching for info about oxidized wine, and I thought it may be relevant here to beer as well. What do yall think ?

Acetaldehyde
Acetaldehyde is an intermediate product of yeast fermentation; however, it is more commonly associated with ethanol oxidation catalysed by the enzyme ethanol dehydrogenase. Acetaldehyde production is also associated with the presence of surface film forming yeasts and bacteria, such as acetic acid bacteria, which form the compound by the decarboxylation of pyruvate. The sensory threshold for acetaldehyde is 100-125 mg/L. Beyond this level it imparts a sherry type character to the wine which can also be described as green apple, sour and metallic. Acetaldehyde intoxication is also implicated in hangovers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_fault