Sorachi Ace?

I am trying to track down a medicinal sort of taste in a couple of my beers. I think I have traced it to Sorachi Ace. For two recent beers I used this hop as the bittering addition and both had a slightly medicinal bitterness.

Has anyone else experienced this? I brew almost exclusively IPAs and APAs with a smattering of other styles because I want to be reasonably trendy FWIW. Both these beers were, if not IPAs pretty hop forward.

Steve

Have not heard of medicinal flavors coming from a particular hop. Usually has to do with chlorine in the water, or using bleach as a sanitizer...

Turns out there are many ways that flavor can get in your homebrew... check out this article..

http://www.winning-homebrew.com/phenolic-flavors.html

Hope you find the culprit!
--LexusChris

Thanks for the link - useful. I still think this hop might be partially involved though, perhaps in combination with my water (which I don't filter and is a little chlorine tasting!) Thing is my other beers are good using the same water. My typical bittering hop is Magnum or Chinook for IPAs, or for less hoppy beers Willamette, Goldings etc.

Every one that has been a little suspect has had Sorachi Ace as the bittering hop. Phenolic is definitely the term.

OK so I have an IPA in secondary now ready to keg on Monday and I used Sorachi Ace as the bittering hop for this beer so I'll look specifically for this taste in that.

Next thing to do is brew one of the suspect beers again and use a different bittering hop. And possibly brewing the same one again with filtered water.

Looks like I have some work to do ... anyone else use Sorachi Ace in non Belgian beers?