Strange Plastic Taste?

Hey everyone. I just tried on of my brews that have been sitting for a week and a half in the bottles and they tasted plastic-y a little sour and a little sweet. Is this normal? I know that they haven't sit for the recomended amount of time, I just wanted to see if they tasted normal. this is my first batch and I don't know what to base any thing off of. Any help would be appreciated.

-N

maybe an infection!! Did at some point your fermentation stop, or didn't get to finish?
Look up Acetaldehyde: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Green_apples

Try one in six more days after four more days you let it sit in the fridge for two days.

First of all, at this point it is way too early to try to diagnose any problems with your beer. Any tries at all are just out of the blue guesses, especially not having any other information. (Would be like you saying you didn't feel good when you woke this morning and we replied, you must have a broken leg.....)

We don't know anything about your beer.... recipe (including yeast), any problems during boil, length of fermentation, more importantly temperatures during fermentation, gravity readings etc.,

and maybe your experience tasting different styles (yes, if you don't know what a style is supposed to taste like, it's possible one could assume that it's bad... when it isn't).

It was a Brewers Best English Brown ale and the SG was 1.046 and FG 1.012...Yeast was Danstar Nottingham. I followed the recipe to a tee with temperature etc. Does it matter that the primary was a plastic bucket? How often do these strange flavors wear off. It wasn't overwhelming it was just a plastic-y after taste. And I assume the sweetness was from the priming sugar. The slight bitterness is what is concerning.

any other thoughts?

I'll put a dollar on it that after another few weeks in the bottles it clears right up. Just hang in there.

balzern said:

It was a Brewers Best English Brown ale and the SG was 1.046 and FG 1.012...Yeast was Danstar Nottingham. I followed the recipe to a tee with temperature etc. Does it matter that the primary was a plastic bucket? How often do these strange flavors wear off. It wasn't overwhelming it was just a plastic-y after taste. And I assume the sweetness was from the priming sugar. The slight bitterness is what is concerning.

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Sometimes a "plastic" taste comes from surprising sources- not plastic, usually!

Chlorine or chloramines in the water are usually the culprit. If you used non-chlorinated water, it could be incomplete rinsing of bleach if you used bleach. Did you use tap water? That might be the first place to look.

The second culprit is stressed yeast. I just pitched out a batch of beer that used bad nottingham yeast (there is a recall on that lot#), but usually that strain is a winner for me. The issue with that yeast for me is that it tastes TERRIBLE if the fermentation temperature gets above 72 degrees or so. Since fermentation creates heat, in a 70 degree room, the fermenting beer can easily get up to 80 degrees. That creates some really awful flavors, including plastic-y flavors and banana or other "fruity" flavors.

The last thing I can think of is bacterial infection. But if you used sanitizer, that's not likely.

Yeah that is the weird thing. The room was at at a range of 66-68 degrees and I used filtered water...I sanitized everything multiple times, probably more than I had to.

My second batch had a plastic taste. I would maybe describe it as an inky aftertaste. I've discounted water and temp control in my case. Later I read in How To Brew about Maillard reactions leading to inky taste. Ever since then I started doing late extract additions and haven't had that flavor again. I think I've also read that wild yeast strains can lead to plastic taste. I'll probably never really know what it was, but I'll keep doing late extract additions (just remember to adjust your hops too).