Odd flavor in my beer...

Okay, I've semi-successfully brewed a drinkable beer from all grain but I have an odd flavor in the beer I can't really describe. I've looked at the websites that go through all the off and/or bad flavors but none of them seem to be what I detect in the beer. Could it be a clash with hops and/or grains? Here is the Beersmith recipe that I used. IBU's where low for the style as I not a big hop person, could it be that not enough hops were used to balance out the recipe?

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 6.00 gal
Boil Size: 7.18 gal
Estimated OG: 1.057 SG
Estimated Color: 11.2 SRM
Estimated IBU: 15.5 IBU
Brewhouse Efficiency: 78.00 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes
Ingredients:
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Amount Item Type % or IBU
9 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US, Malteurop (1.8 SRM) Grain 79.16 %
12.0 oz Melanoiden Malt (36.0 SRM) Grain 6.60 %
4.0 oz Wheat Malt, Franco Belges (34.5 SRM) Grain 2.20 %
1.0 oz Black Malt, De-Bittered, Castle (742.0 SRMGrain 0.53 %
1.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (108.0 SRM) Grain 0.53 %
1.00 oz Tradition [4.90 %] (57 min) Hops 14.1 IBU
0.50 oz Liberty [4.70 %] (5 min) Hops 1.4 IBU
0.28 tsp Irish Moss, Super Moss HB (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1 lbs 4.0 oz Brown Sugar, Light (8.0 SRM) Sugar 10.99 %
1 Pkgs American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056) Yeast-Ale
Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body
Total Grain Weight: 10.12 lb
----------------------------
Single Infusion, Medium Body
Step Time Name Description Step Temp
60 min Mash In Add 3.16 gal of water at 165.9 F 154.0 F
10 min Mash Out Add 1.77 gal of water at 196.6 F 168.0 F

Is it brewed already, bottled, for how long or still fermenting? I know it is hard to do this, but you will need to try to explain the off flavor, compare with something, perhaps looking at the wheel of flavors, like here http://www.beerflavorwheel.com/ or http://brewiki.org/BeerFlavours

It's been brewed and bottled. Was brewed in April, primary for 7 days, secondary (better bottle) until August, racked without aeration to a keg, then pushed with CO2 through my homemade filter which is a standard 2½×10 housing with a .35um polyethylene filter. The housing was fastidiously cleaned and rinsed and the filter was cleaned with bleach and cycled (force filled and emptied) multiple times with clean fresh water and then run with fresh tap water for about 6 gallons until no detectable chlorine odor was perceived. Then it was hooked up the CO2 and with about 5psi pushed into a better bottle with my priming sugar, again without aeration, then bottled. It's been about 12 days since it was bottled and has decent carbonation but it's not fully carbed yet.

I'll sample some more tonight and see if I can pinpoint the flavor off that wheel.

IMO thats a pretty low IBU for that gravity. Maybe you have too much maltiness? I decided to "edit" my blonde ale recipe (bad idea) and cut the hops in half. The result was a barley pop. It is malty and barleyish, but almost sweet. I should've just kept the hops in there...

Agreed, that's a really low IBU. I don't know what this finished at OG wise, but it's sure to be a malty beer either way. The other thing is that it's getting a little long in the tooth - it was probably ready to drink in June/July, if you had any flaws in all those transfers you may be getting some oxidation, especially given the lack of hops. Last thing, why filter? It's been conditioning for nearly 6 months, surely it's bright by now.

Thanks for the replies. I'll sample some more tonight and see if I can pin down the flavor. Wish I had a homebrewer "expert" near me that I could say, "Here, tell me what is wrong with this."

Take it to your lhbs and see what they say. I plan on doing this tomorrow with a couple of beers that has the same weird off-flavor.

I just can't seem to place the flavor. I could be over powering malt and/or with a slight medicinal "hint", it's just hard to place. I'll see about taking it to my LHBS but that is a good hour drive for me. Guess I'll couple that with a purchase of some sort to "kill 2 birds with 1 stone."

The good thing is that my latest porter does NOT have the flavor and even tho it's still it had a nice flavor.

Is it astringent? "Hot" alcohol taste like cheap liquor? Buttery? Like smelly socks? Don't know if those descriptors help you.

"Medicinal" is usually phenols.. either from chlorine in your municipal water or sanitation process or from high fermentation temps. I suppose hot alcohol could be construed as medicinal, but I sort of doubt that's it given how long this one was conditioning.

"Medicinal" also leads me to think phenols, chlorophenols in particular. Chlorine/chloramine reacts with yeast to form chlorophenols, which have a much lower taste threshold than chlorine does. This means that even though the chlorine had been rinsed out of the filter enough that it couldn't be detected, there may have been enough of it still present to form detectable levels of chlorophenols. I've read threads here about off-flavors that turned out to be from the tiny amount of residual chlorine left by rinsing bottles with chlorinated tap water before bottling.

Oxygenation is another possible cause. It's actually a bit of a challenge to prevent oxygenation when using a filtration set-up like you describe.

Another set of taste buds might aid in describing the off flavor. It doesn't have to be an "expert homebrewer", just someone else who can bring another prespective to it. Someone who's at least a beer drinker would be preferred, but really anyone else tasting it might be helpful.

+1 to another set of buds. My girlfriend often helps me and she's more of a wine drinker.

My wife could help me but all I can seem to get out of her is, "..this is bitter." with her nose turned up. I'll see if I can get some friends to help with the flavor description. It just could very well be chlorophenol, introduced from the filter. The water itself, for the brew, was filtered through a carbon block odor and taste filter which should have mostly been chlorine free. Our municipal supply uses chlorine instead of chloramine as far as I know.

I've got off this Monday so I plan on brewing Biermunchers Cream of Three Crops using some well water from my parents deep well; now that is good water. I may just starting using that water for all my brewing.

A little update here. I waited a bit longer and cracked open another beer tonight (as I type this) and the background flavor I spoke of has all but disappeared. This bottle (hoping it's all the rest) tastes fine. I doubt it would win any awards but it's definitely something that I'll drink and enjoy. I would have figured that sitting so long in the secondary would have been all that was needed but after priming and bottle conditioning for almost a month, it seems to have improved this beer to "acceptable" range.

My porter has been in the secondary for 16 days and doesn't have anything "floating" on the surface so I'm thinking 21 days total in secondary and going to bottle that one up too, then wait 30 days to sample before I make any assessments of my brewing skills. LOL

Well, time to see if another bottle tastes the same as the first one.....

...in a familiar, proprietary hops infused fermented malt beverage consuming vessel...