Tasting too early?

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forkmantis

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Feb 19, 2007
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Location
Tyler, TX
I still consider myself a brewing n00b. I just started my 12th batch this weekend. I'd say that batches 4-8 ranged from acceptable to almost good, but then batches 9 and 10 dropped in quality, and batch 11 is what prompted me to write this message.

I took one bottle each from batches 9 and 10 to the homebrew store I deal with (we live 2 hours away and usually mail order, but were on a weekend trip, so we had a chance to drop by the store). They said the estery/fruity flavors I was getting were probably due to higher fermentation temperature (at the time, the temperature in my house was around 75 degrees on average).

At their suggestion, I lowered the temperature of my house a few degrees, and filled up a my bathtub full of cold water (68 deg F) and fermented batch 11, a red ale, in the cool water to maintain a low and constant temperature. I bottled it a week ago, after a week in the primary and 2 weeks in the secondary. I took a taste of it then and it seemed pretty good.

This weekend I was showing a friend how to homebrew. I wanted him to have a chance to taste something, so I cracked open a bottle from batch 11 for a preview. I didn't expect it to be great, since it has only been in the bottle for a week, but I was really surprised when we tasted it. It was horribly tart. I've never tasted anything like from any of my batches. I did some reading before the post, and am seriously hoping that I'm tasting the Acetaldehyde flavor describe here: http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html. The thing that surprised me the most is that this sour flavor was not present on the day I was bottling. My hope is that a little more time in the bottle is all I need. My fear is that I've somehow gotten an infection or have screwed up in some other way and have ruined the batch. This is by far the worst thing I've ever tasted from any of my batches of beer, so I'm not sure how to judge what's going on. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone locally who brews, and I won't be near my homebrew store for a while, so I was hoping that someone here could help me understand how to figure out what's going on with this batch of beer.
 
Did you clean the bottles well before putting the beer in them?
How do you transfer the beer from the fermenter to the bottles?
 
Could have been infected for sure...keep it bottled for another couple weeks, cross your fingers and try one again. Hopefully the taste will improve enough to be drinkable. Make sure to use a little OCD when cleaning/sanitizing your equipment even when bottling (siphon, bottles etc).
 
Well, I'm hoping it's not infection. I did clean my bottles and caps w/ betadine for the first time. I soaked each set of bottles in the betadine solution for >= 3 minutes, gave them a quick rinse w/ tap water, and then let them air dry for 30 min to an hour before bottling. I heated my priming sugar in water to 150 or so for 5 minutes, and then let it cool.

I've been very anal about cleaning on all of my prior batches, and to my knowledge have never done an inadequate job. I am open to the possibility that I have screwed it up this time around, it just hasn't been a problem in the past.

The thing that concerns me most is that what I tasted on bottling day tasted OK, yet what I tasted from two separate one week old bottles was unbearable. It's hard for me to imagine that priming sugar could do that under any normal circumstance.
 
even if it is infection, that can occur in individual bottles, not just the whole batch.
a few used bottles that didn't get all the organic residue cleaned off first isn't going to sanitize properly and could introduce a bug that ruins that bottle.

you might switch to a no-rinse sanitizer for your bottles...since rinsing in tap water simply re-introduces potential contaminants. I like one-step for bottle sanitizing.
 
malkore said:
even if it is infection, that can occur in individual bottles, not just the whole batch.
a few used bottles that didn't get all the organic residue cleaned off first isn't going to sanitize properly and could introduce a bug that ruins that bottle.

you might switch to a no-rinse sanitizer for your bottles...since rinsing in tap water simply re-introduces potential contaminants. I like one-step for bottle sanitizing.
I agree. There are two things that the Op said in the last post that "I" see wrong.
1- he rinsed with tap water after cleaning/sanitizing. What's the point of sanitizing of you are going to do that.
2- he did not boil the sugar and water.

To me that is 2 things that can open you up for a infection.
 
FSR402 said:
I agree. There are two things that the Op said in the last post that "I" see wrong.
1- he rinsed with tap water after cleaning/sanitizing. What's the point of sanitizing of you are going to do that.
2- he did not boil the sugar and water.

To me that is 2 things that can open you up for a infection.

Thanks for your response. Points taken.

I think I may need to brush up on my knowledge of sanitation. I'm going to go read the appropriate areas of the wiki and the howtobrew online book. The guy who taught me several years ago used bleach to clean, and would rinse w/ tapwater. The way he described it to me was something similar to "You want to rinse it well enough to get the bleach off, but not so much that you risk introducing anything nasty." That's kinda stuck in my mind, has worked for me several times in the past, and I guess I've never really re-examined my thinking on that.
 
FSR402 said:
.
1- he rinsed with tap water after cleaning/sanitizing. What's the point of sanitizing of you are going to do that.
I rinse with tap water and have never (yet) had an issue.

I'm inclined to think some of your bottles simply had some hard to see "crud" on the inside. No sanitizer in the world can make that go away. Stale beer left behind in empty bottles have a tendency to get very sticky and they need to be scrubbed real good with a bottle washing brush.

Now al that said...maybe it's not an infection. If the bottles are still green and conditioning, you may have tasted a strong yeasty bite. Set them aside for a few more weeks...making sure that they're chilled (once carb'd) and then give em another try.

And DON'T forget to post the results so others can learn. ;)
 
Its not that tap water DOES introduce nasties...simply that it *could*.

also, years ago, bleach was the #1 sanitizer, and does need to be rinsed a bit. nowadays, stuff like one-step, star-san, iodophor....none of which need any rinsing, have made sanitizing a snap. I have all 3 in my arsenal for different needs. star-san is the most versatile, and can be used as a spray solution on oddly shaped equipment (theifs, auto siphon, hoses, etc) and its less 'toxic' than bleach.
 
One note for you kinda off the path of how this thread is progressing. After your beer is in the bottle for a week, the yeast are workin hard to carbonate your beer, and they will provide a different flavor than right out of secondary, which is when they're mostly dormant becuase they're basically done with the food you'd already given them. I've had beers that taste like CRAP at 1-4 weeks, then by week 5, it was the best beer I've yet made. I've also had a beer that tasted better at week 2 than it did at week 6, and kept dropping off fast. I'm not even as experienced as you (9 batches so far), but I've really learned that every beer is different and acts differently, and more importantly, ages differently. This just means that frequent quality control testing is mandatory to make sure you drink the beer when its at its best.
 
what temp are you letting the bottles sit at? you mentioned in your first message that you needed to do some slight chilling of the beer during fermentation. are you continuing to do this chill during bottling/aging? I am certainly no expert, but i think ive had a case of what you are experiencing.

No matter what the issue, i always drink what i brew. if you find that the batch went aloof, i would still recommend choking it down. Its yours and thats whats beautiful. I hate hearing about people dumping the batch.
 
BierMuncher: Thanks for the feedback. After doing a little reading, I've seen a few people claim that rinsing w/ water is not necessarily unacceptable. That's reassuring. I'll be sure to post back to this thread later as I give the bottles more time and taste them again.

malkore: I had been using one-step in the past. I tried the iodophor at the suggestion of my homebrew store. The bottle said that air drying was OK, but when I bottled I started cleaning too late in the game for them to completely air dry. I figured it was better to rinse them off than to risk leaving any iodophor in the bottles.

Rook: Thanks... that's the most encouraging thing I've read so far. After 2 not-so-good batches, I had such high hopes for this one. After all, you're supposed to get better over time, not worse, right? I honestly think I flipped out a little when I tasted this one (prematurely, I'm sure) and it was by far the worst I've ever made. Maybe if I give it some time it will turn out to be an OK batch.

TURBOANSARI: I'm currently storing the bottles in a cabinet in my kitchen. I'd assume the temperature hovers around 72 or so. My master closet may be as much as 3-4 degrees cooler. Perhaps I should let my bottles age there?

---------------------------------

This whole situation has prompted me to reexamine my understanding of sanitation. I realized after one or two paragraphs of reading at howtobrew.com that I'd completely missed out on a big distinction. I never realized that cleaning and sanitizing were not one in the same. For all of the batches I've brewed so far, I've never really done a separate process for cleaning and sanitizing. This has me wondering what some of your best practices on bottle cleaning are? Perhaps this is worthy of a new thread? I just want to know what the more experience folks here find to be the quickest, most effective, and easiest process for cleaning and sanitizing bottles.
 
1. Bottle brush
2. Bottle sprayer
3. Starsan
4. Run your dishwasher empty no soap on full hot and use the racks to dry your bottles out.
 
Thanks, Drunkensatyr. Why didn't I think to use the dish washer to dry the bottles??? I'll try that next time.

So you're from Dallas, eh? I'm 2 hours East of you, but I order my supplies from the Dallas area.
 
Yeah, Tyler isn't that far from here. You buying from HomebrewHQ? Grate shop. If you are evern in the Dallas area, lemmie know. Always up to meeting a few other brewers and having a "sampling session"
 
Yup, Homebrew HQ it is. Nice guys. I've only been in the store twice, but both times their guys spent a lot of time w/ me and were super helpful.

I may take you up on your offer. Not knowing any local homebrewers, I don't get to talk about it very often. And, of course, I'd love to do some beer tasting.
 
OK. To follow up, the red ale has not gotten any better. Furthermore, the batch I had started brewing just prior to my first post in this thread is similarly ruined. In all of the reading and thinking I've done since them, I'm almost certain that it's related to a big misunderstanding on my part. Until now, I don't think it ever registered with me that cleaning and sanitizing were two separate tasks. So in preparation for these batches, I created an iodophor solution, soaked my carboys and bottles, and scrubbed with my bottle brushes, but I never scrubbed w/ a cleaner. I'll be brewing my next batch tomorrow, and feel a little more confident in my understanding of cleaning/sanitization.

Thanks for all of the responses.
 
Yup you can't sanitize something that is dirty.....

On a side note: I never ment to say that rinsing with tap water would get you infected, just that it "could".
 
FSR402 said:
On a side note: I never ment to say that rinsing with tap water would get you infected, just that it "could".

Yup... no problem. But I do want to eliminate variables from my process. I did purchase some starsan the last time I bought supplies, since it's no-rinse, and I won't have to worry about the possibility of rinsing introducing an infection. After 2 spoiled batches in a row, I'm determined to make this next batch a success.
 
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