Second batch has a bit of a medicine taste....

I brewed an IPA extract kit from Northern Brewer. I followed the steps exactly, but I did add a little extra hops (I dry hopped with a half ounce of Cascade which wasn't in the recipe.) I hit the target OG exactly (1.064) and it after 2 weeks it was holding steady at 1.015, so I racked to secondary, dry hopped for about 4 days, then cold crashed for another 2, then bottled. Also, I should mention that I was very careful about fermentation temps. It stayed between 65 and 68 degrees the entire time. This was my second batch, and my first one fermented around 80 degrees and tasted like burnt rubber/bananas. Also, everything that I used was cleaned, rinsed, then sanitized with Star San as per the instructions.

The beer has been in bottles for 10 days now, and I just tried one to see how it's coming along. The carbonation is pretty good, and it looks great. Upon tasting, it as a bit of a medicine flavor toward the end. Is this the "green" taste that people talk about when trying beers that aren't fully conditioned? I'm just wondering if I should expect it to go away. Other than that, it really tastes pretty good.

To me green doesn't equal medicine. Sounds like a water problem. Are you using tap water?

I agree -- if you're confident about your cleaning/sanitizing procedure I would look at the water you're using...

+1 to water, but it also could just be that it needed time. was it a "mediciny" taste or would "band-aid" be a better descriptor?

also, you should have avoided throwing that bottle of aspirin in there...

The water was tap water which I had left out overnight (at least 24 hours) so the chlorine would out-gas. The top-off water was boiled, and cooled tap water that I put in a sanitized carboy the night before.

I did just brew my third batch a few days ago and used distilled water, because I learned that the extract already has all of the needed minerals in it. It will be interesting to compare them.

These flavors comprise part of a class of compounds called phenols. Phenolic flavors can come from wild yeast. The best cure is to improve your sanitation procedures and or to replace your yeast culture.

Chlorine can also give rise to this flavor, forming what are called chlorophenols. Always use dechlorinated water(preboiled or carbon filtered), and be sure that you throughly rinse any bleach off of your equipment after sanitizing.

I got this info from the troubleshooting guided in Homebrewing for Dummies, its my Brewing Bible, I refer to it all the time.....P.S. not implying your a Dummie for the record...

upperNY01brewer said:

These flavors comprise part of a class of compounds called phenols. Phenolic flavors can come from wild yeast. The best cure is to improve your sanitation procedures and or to replace your yeast culture.

Chlorine can also give rise to this flavor, forming what are called chlorophenols. Always use dechlorinated water(preboiled or carbon filtered), and be sure that you throughly rinse any bleach off of your equipment after sanitizing.

I got this info from the troubleshooting guided in Homebrewing for Dummies, its my Brewing Bible, I refer to it all the time.....P.S. not implying your a Dummie for the record...

Click to expand...

Dang. So, I'm guessing this isn't going to go away with time?

McDingleberry said:

Dang. So, I'm guessing this isn't going to go away with time?

Click to expand...

I also had a bad batch and waited about 4 months and nothing good came with time......but you never know,set it aside and move onto your next brew and learn from what may have happened. I did just that and have had another 6 really fine brews that Ive done.

My first batch had that medicine taste McDingle, and no it hasn't gone away over 8 weeks of aging unfortunately. I was confused about no-rinse sanitizers and found some c-brite in my fermenter kit. I didn't rinse it out thoroughly enough and voila! Nasty medicinal stout. I'm not giving up on it yet. It attenuated to a reasonable FG and I'm going to try covering up that phenol taste with strong coffee flavor addition at bottling. Maybe chocolate extract too. Let me know how your beer fares with aging.

Update:

I have now opened two more bottles, and neither of them had this taste at all. In fact, they were delicious! I am hoping that this was a problem with just that one bottle. It was a re-used Sierra Nevada bottle that went through the dishwasher before being rinsed with Star San, so maybe there was a tiny bit of dishwasher detergent left in the bottle? Either way, I'm glad it's not something that effected the entire batch.