Bad flavor in last 3 AG beers

dragonlor: thanks for the feedback. Yeah I haven't even started to worry about my tubing since in the beginning I wasn't even using it (just wort free falling from tun to kettle). No change once I added tubing.

I've been fiddling for hours with my thermometer. Suddenly its reading 100% accurately so that's a little disconcerting (to say the least). Regardless, it wasn't accurate last night, it was reading 30F cool. I have two more thermometers I consider to be very simple but reliable and I'm going to use them and just hope for the best.

get a thermapen, i have a collection of thermometers, digital and analog, they all callibrate fine at 32, and 212. they all read different at 154. i have three cdn proaccurate digitals that all read at least 4 degrees low at 154. i found out that only the thermapen, and my glass lab thermometer were accurate in the 150-160 range. i was having the same problem as you are for a few batches out of the blue, and figured my thermometer problem. bought the thermapen, and mashed the next batch at 154. checked it with my old thermometer, and it read 146-148. so the funky batches had been getting mashed at 160+.

Yeah I'm definitely getting a thermapen. I got my morning coffee up to mash temp (154) and my analog and my new digital called it 154 but my CDN called it 134-144 depending on the depth etc. I was careful not to touch the mug etc. with any of them.

Side note...people really stare at you when you have three thermometers in your cup of morning joe.

A man with one watch always knows the time, a man with two watches has no idea what time it is...

Hopefully you're onto something with your thermometer being so miscalibrated at mash temps... I'll be checking mine against a lab thermometer tonight!!

Hehe nice quote I'll keep you all updated about how it goes with different thermometers.

I noticed on the CDN webpage it says 'for testing thin peaces of meat.' I wonder if this is a creative marketing technique of listing a defect as a feature. Sigh.

hey - i'm a little late jumping in on this, but just curious- did the three all grain batches that turned out great have darker grains in them (i think i'm hovering at ph)? - i'm just wondering what it was that made them so different... have you tried making the exact same beer (with the same temps, techniques etc) as one of the good ones? That might help narrow it down some.
i'm no expert, but i'm pretty sure, as has been pointed out, that pre-boil hot side aeration is not the culprit here (possibly not anywhere)...

Spearko - I was convinced that it was pH but then I did the same exact batch (granted with slightly different water) but no luck. I even tried a batch where I added 1tsp lactic to the strike and 1 tsp to the sparge. That didn't really give me any noticeable change.

I'm gonna brew tonight, so it'll be the moment of truth (or it will be in a week hehe) but the only thing that changed from good to bad brews was my new thermometer. I really, really, really hope it's it. I'm about ready to go back to extract *tears hair*

Thanks again for the advice everyone! If this solves it, I've learned a ton of useful stuff aside from my problem during this whole process.

There's two things i can suggest to you; I never heat my sparge water over 170 degrees as that can generate some off flavors. But... the last time I had a problem like this, it was because I had an accumulation of old wort that was deep in my drain valve on my boil kettle. I removed the drain valve and boiled it before i started brewing...and problem solved.

julson: I took your advice and added sparge water at 170F. Also if this doesn't fix it I'll disassemble the ball valve on my tun. I don't have one on my kettle. Maybe there is gunk in there.

I'm mid-brew now. Everything seems about the same so we'll see.

Well for the sake of anyone finding this thread later I thought I'd post my findings. It's been a couple months and I've discovered that:

- My main problem was my thermometer reading 30F too low.
- My water wasn't ideal so starting with RO water helps 'clean up' the flavor as well
- My pH was out of whack on many beers when I used tap water, even stouts!
- After 5 months of troubleshooting I find it hard to just enjoy the beers I brew, hehe.

So now I use EZWater and 100% RO to get predictable pH results. The flavor has been a lot better too. My dad and my brother both have the same thermometer as me and both of them give an error when you submerge them more than 1". So watch out for CDN 'thin meat' thermometers

Anyway, thanks again for all the help everyone! Just thought I'd wrap this thread up.

Very good! I just nailed my repeated off flavor as chloromine by accident. I forgot to use campden tablets on a batch recently and the flavor reappeared. Like you, I've also gone to RO water to start and use EZWater to calculate the salts needed for acceptable brewing water. My last two batches have been delightful and I'm beginning to enjoy my beers once again now that I've gone from acceptable to good. Next, take good to exceptional. At least this part of the road is more enjoyable.

pvtschultz said:

Very good! I just nailed my repeated off flavor as chloromine by accident. I forgot to use campden tablets on a batch recently and the flavor reappeared. Like you, I've also gone to RO water to start and use EZWater to calculate the salts needed for acceptable brewing water. My last two batches have been delightful and I'm beginning to enjoy my beers once again now that I've gone from acceptable to good. Next, take good to exceptional. At least this part of the road is more enjoyable.

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Pvtschultz, what are your starting values on the spreadsheet when you use RO?

I've just been using all zeros. I know that there's some minerals (especially sodium) that sneak through, but on the grand scale of things, the small amount has a negligible impact on pH and the rest of the suggested values are just that, suggestions. I haven't settled on a base water for my tastes just yet, but I'm getting close. I should have it down after a couple more yellow beers this summer though.

Very nice, congrats

So how were you getting chloramine with RO water? Or was that batch with tap?

It was with tap water, either as top-off or if I forgot to add the campden prior to mashing. I still use campden JIC. The one batch that sticks out was 50/50 tap to RO since I have a good feel for my tap water chemistry based on water reports. It was also one of those brew days where everything was rushed and the campden never made it out of my brew supplies box, the taste is quite detracting from an otherwise solid recipe.

kcpup: I dunno if this will help you but I found tihs very simple and easy to follow. In fact it's simple enough you probably know it already but he does address RO and how to deal with it and additions:


That's great about you figuring out it was chloramine. I should probably start adding campden too...just in case the filter has a bad day at the RO machine. They are practically free and flavorless so why not!

Glad to hear you nailed it down!

danio said:

I found out that my local grocery store dispenses RO water for 25 cents a gallon! Not bad, so I think I maybe even just do that for the sake of better water (city water smells and tastes terrible and lingers in your mouth).

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If your water smells and tastes horrible, then don't use it for brewing. Go with the RO water or make some RO water of your own.

The OP mentioned using spring water earlier. Is that an acceptable way to go and might it need checked/adjusted in any way to be ideal for brewing?

Congrats on getting through your issues. Pretty sure there's a whole bunch of us checking our thermometers right now. Although I felt for you the whole way through (just read the whole thread), there's a lot of good ideas and advice in here for future reference.

From what I learned (others more knowledgeable will jump in I'm sure) but basically spring water always has a profile so you just need to look it up on their website or call them if you want to really know whats going on. Sometimes if its spring 'drinking' water they add LOTS of minerals I've heard. I think they're all chlorine\chloramine free but you could add campden tablets for safeties sake.

Also, I think I said this earlier in the thread but a person could almost do a graphical troubleshooting flow-chart type thing for off flavors and troubles. Granted there are lists, but for example if you chose 'soapy flavor' from a list you could then see choices like 'did your temperature go above x degrees while still in the primary...yes\no' or 'what is your sanitizer' and see a list of sanitzers which would take you to the next set of graphics or text. Maybe an add on for Beersmith 3.0? Maybe it's just more fun to surf the forums tho!

Funny you should mention soapy. I just had a beer that had that flavor but it seems to be dissipating. Couldn't help but smile at your fear the bubbles comment because that's pretty much where I'm at too.

The whole RDWHAHB thing is IMO not a reality. More like strive for perfection on every benchmark, buy/build a fermentation chamber, worry about water quality, pitching the right amount of yeast and the list goes on. Then maybe we finally find a combo where everything works to put out consistently high quality beer. A person can make drinkable beer but in my experience, its very difficult to make great beer time and again unless all the ducks are lined up to near perfection. And that's not even taking into account flukes like a thermometer that reads different at various depths and other like anomalies that can crop up seemingly out of thin air.

Anyway, just venting a little. This thread hit home with me as I've been fighting a few issues I most recently believe to be tied to water chemistry. Hence the spring water question. Still having fun though but it can be maddening trying to pin down all the factors. For me, its still a work in progress and I've been at it for a few years now. Feeling like I'm pretty close now actually...famous last words.

The reason I mention the soapy is because I just had an IPA turn out that way. I let it sit waaaaayyyyyy to long in the primary at high temps after fermentation was 'done.' I controlled it during the first 1.5 weeks of course, but I took it out of my ferm. chamber and set it on the counter to make room for another batch I had to crash cool. Long story short after sitting on my shelf for a long time in the primary in an un-airconditioned house it tastes soapy. I kegged it a few weeks ago and its just as bad or even worse (?) as of today. So that's why it sprang to mind I don't mind though, I've made several of my best batches lately now that I've figured out my temps and water, so my confidence is back and I'm stoked to be brewing (and building a single tiered system!)

I agree on RDWHAHBing for the most part. It's a great attitude and is often the right answer for total beginners who taste 1-2 weeks in. However if you are consistently getting off flavors from EVERY beer and you already know what you are doing and what you can expect to be tasting, aging the crap out of your beer may not be the answer. In my albeit limited experience, most of the beers I make taste decent at 2.5 weeks in. Not perfect, kind of like ice tea, a little harsh, but pretty good! If there is an off flavor significant enough at that point to make me not want to finish the hydrometer sample chances are I botched something that RDWHAHBing won't fix.

Just my thoughts tho, what do I know?

if you use acids, use it in the mash and sparge. Most importantly the sparge. The ph goes up the lower the SG of the runnings.

you could also try batch sparging to see if you notice a difference.

I use hcl but only cause it makes some other changes to my water other than ph. many breweries use connercial grade so2 but sulpheric is nasty to work with. lactic can be hard to find though. If all else fails use an "acid blend" or some ascorbic.

Danio - sorry for delayed thank you. I appreciate the link to the youtube vid. Some was new, some confirmed, etc. A good use of time to watch.

Cheers