Wet Bottles + foil + oven = BAD SMELL???

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homebrewflyfish

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Today I was bottling and I baked the bottles in the oven. When I went to bottle, the bottles had a terrible smell in them. I can't really describe it...just really bad...maybe a sulphery and burnt chemicals are good descriptors. The thing is I've done this many times before and never had this problem.

Here's exactly what I did...

Rinsed my bottles with a jet rinser. Shook out as much water as I could, but they weren't dry inside. Put foil on top. Stacked them in the oven. Baked 350 for about 2 hours. Let them cool in the oven. Then right before bottling took the foil off and bam...a nasty, nasty smell.

I actually ended up pulling out as many previously sterilized bottles as I could find and used those. The smell was so bad I was afraid it would ruin all the work and time spent waiting for my saison to dry out.

Given that I've never had this problem and Palmer recommends the method I'm trying to figure out what went wrong. All the bottles were clean as I'm very careful to rinse them right away, but I did NOT use a soaking cleanser.

I searched the forums and only found one post about this. A few of the possible thoughts from there...

-Too hot, too long (what would this matter for the bottles?)
-Foil in the oven for that long creates an issue (Is this true?)
-Wet bottles creates an issue (something in the NYC water?)

Anybody have any thoughts on this? Why would there be such a bad smell? Maybe it's fumes from the water evaporating that had no place to go? The foil as the culprit seems odd given that it's frequently used in ovens. Do you think the smell will affect the beer?

I know I can try leaving the foil off until after or just use Starsan/Iodophor, and I'll try that next time. (I know, I know I should just keg, but I don't have space in my small NYC apartment ;-)

Rather than alternative methods, I'm really looking to get to the root of this problem to understand why exactly it happened. What is this nasty smell from and why it's happening?

Any thoughts?

Thanks very much for your help.
 
Sorry, I can't explain the smell, but...

I disagree that you don't have room to keg. One 5 gallon Cornelius keg takes up less square footage of floor space than 2+ cases of bottles.

Also, try Star San. It's awesome.
 
I'm not sure if this is it or not, but I noticed in each bottle there's a little "puddle" formed on the side of each. They were laying on their side and any leftover water must have collected here. Do you think the water getting super hot inside the bottle did something to the glass? Or maybe just fumes from the water itself (chlorine, fluoride, etc.)?

A few bad bottles were used...on the one hand I want to make sure there's no chemical reaction that would make it unhealthy to drink. On the other hand I fear they'll smell/taste bad. Sigh...seems like there's always something.
 
I oven bake bottle a lot of times and I use the same steps you did.

The only things I can think of are maybe one or two bottles had junk in them still and that smelled bad.

Or your water just smells bad.

It is best to have a small amount of water in the bottles (just the residual amount after washing) because the steam created really helps the sanitation.

Foil in the oven is not an issue.
 
That's the thing...they all smelled bad. Like 50 bottles. That said, some were worse than others, which may correlate to ones that I left more water in (some I shook out better). So I don't think its a dirty bottle issue per se.

It is a REALLY bad smell that is still apparent today. The closest thing I come to as a description is this: imagine you boil shellfish (lobster, crab, clams, etc) in the same pot of water all day, then let the water boil down to concentrated calciumish shell juice...yeah I think it kinda smells like that. Not something you want in your meticulously doted over saison.

As I mentioned there's an oval shaped area inside the bottle where it's clear the water sat and simmered. Perhaps 350 was too hot and caused some kind of reaction?

I also don't doubt that the NYC tap water has stuff in it that would be bad.
 
I think it must be the water. 350º is hotter than it needs to be but that shouldn't matter. Does your tap water smell bad when you drink it?

fwiw. I use 175 for 45 minutes.
 
Municipal water supplies are in a constant state of flux. They are always tinkering and adding different chemicals to try and balance or combat problems. Having lived in and around NYC I can tell you that I hate the water. I never liked drinking it from the tap and the day I found that you can filter your water was a blessed day. I remember having to let the glass sit for a few minutes to allow the cloud to settle, does it still do that?

My guess is that something was up with the water, could have been a pipe/water main issue, etc.
 
Yeah...NYC tap water still gets cloudy sometimes and settles...kind of like a well poured Guinness...I always assumed that was just air bubbles.

Anyway I don't really drink it and I use Poland Spring for brewing, but I thought it'd be good enough for bottle rinsing!!!
 
this reminds me how thankful I am that I saved up the whopping $30 to buy a vinator and bottle tree...baking bottles just seems like way more work than I want on bottling day
 
The advantage to baking the bottles is that you don't do it on bottling day. You wrap the tops in foil, bake them, let them cool, and box them. Then on bottling day you just take you box out and bottle. It takes a good 25-30 minutes off my bottling time on bottling day.
 
I agree with Boerderij_Kabouter. I've always done this and it's great. It really takes no time at all if you are diligent about cleaning your bottles right after you drink a beer out of one. You just set it and forget it, let it cool, and all your bottles are sterilized until you need them.

Something went horribly wrong this time and I think I'll make sure they've all drip dried before baking and also wait until after to put the foil on. Also, I will use lower temps. But I personally feel this is pretty easy and worth doing.

I'm actually kind of shocked that my issue outlined above has happened to so few people. Only one or two other threads on this topic on this site...

Maybe I'll never know.
 
What happened? Totally curious as we just did our first batch and have the same issue upon bottling. Hoping we don't have our first batch ruined in 2 weeks.
 
Wondering what the final outcome was for anyone who encountered this issue? I had the same problem with my most recent batch, strange shellfish(ish) smell. I was pressed on time so ended up bottling despite the smell and now I'm hoping it's not a complete loss.
 
I don't have the answer. Aside from the bottles not being really clean (brushed!) before they went into the oven, maybe some leftover detergent, water and aluminum together at high temps? Maybe 350-400F is too high?

Why not just Starsan clean bottles (bottle brushed with washing soda, and well rinsed) right before use? Or keg it.
 
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