Off taste - is this an infection or a fault in my process??

Every time I use 1056/001 yeast to brew IPA's or APA's, I have bad results. And it's always the same thing: Harshly bitter and almost astringent.

I needed an objective opinion so I had my wife try it...she said it "tastes like a chewed up aspirin". Wow.

But you know what?...she is ABSOLUTELY right. It seriously does remind me of Goody's headache powder--not sure if anyone's heard of this stuff...works really well to cure a headache but tastes horrible!

Anyway, I digress.

Anyone know what is going on?? I haven't really noticed it in the other beers that I brew but that might be because 1056/001 is so clean (ie, there is no lingering yeast flavor to cover up this taste--I don't know).

The worst part is the it tasted pretty good going into the keg. But after a few days in the keg, it developed the taste that I've described. It might have been there before going into the keg but it wasn't as obvious...or it was warm and flat and therefore I didn't get a good impression of it, haha. Either way, it became very pronounced a few days after kegging. And it's not even really drinkable at this point. Been kegged for about a month now. What a bummer.

EDIT: here's the recipe I used (a Dale's Pale Ale Clone)

8.75 lb Pale Malt (2 Row)
2.00 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L
1.50 lb Munich Malt - 10L
0.25 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L
0.85 oz Northern Brewer [10.60 %] (60 min) Hops 27.0 IBU
1.50 oz Cascade [7.50 %] (25 min) Hops 23.4 IBU
1.00 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [12.00 %] (10 min) Hops 13.0 IBU
1.00 oz Centennial [10.50 %] (0 min) Hops -
1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) Yeast-Ale - STARTER = yes

- Mashed at 155-156 (I know this is high but I've had problems with dry taste in the past so the high mash temp was sort of an experiment)
- Fly sparged @170F
- OG: 1.063
- FG: 1.017

I used store bought spring water and drinking water (both store brand).

1056 shouldn't give you any harsh flavors. It's a very nice yeast for doing IPAs.

What's your kegging process like? I'm going to take a guess and assume it's overcarbonated.

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

1056 shouldn't give you any harsh flavors. It's a very nice yeast for doing IPAs.

What's your kegging process like? I'm going to take a guess and assume it's overcarbonated.

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Yeah, I hear you...I know that 1056 ferments very clean.

Kegging process: rack beer into keg, seal, pressurize at about 30 PSI, shake a few times to get some CO2 into the beer, release all pressure from keg, set CO2 to 10psi, put into kegerator. It's usually ready around 1 week later.

What's your mash water profile?

wetherel said:

What's your mash water profile?

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I use store bought spring water and/or store bought drinking water (usually a combination of both) for everything except the starsan solution. Mash water, sparge water...both are store bought. Not sure what their profile is...I just assume it is acceptible and so I've never treated it. If this is an incorrect assumption, please let me know!