Caribou Slobber...A little off

I just Kegged my first run of caribou slobber and it tastes/smells a little off. I have all new lines, faucets, QD's the whole nine yards. Everything was cleaned with PBW and sanitized with Star-san, all cleaning was done well, racked and kegged on foam.

The beer just after kegging (pulled though system) smells a little like sulfur. I am waiting for it to fully carb before I dump it but it is worrying me. I used San Antonio tap water and did a full volume boil and was pretty though on cleaning. The sulfur smell kinda reminds me of starsan smell, since I racked and kegged on foam, could this have contaminated the batch?

I read the forum on carbonic acid and contaminated CO2, I got my tank at a fire store, is this an issue?

Hope I get the drink a home brew it will get better, worried...

Star San should not be a problem unless you mixed large quantities of it into your beer. And even then , I'm not sure if that would give you a sulfury flavor/smell. Sulfur flavor/smell is usually associated with a stressed fermentation, or even a regular fermentation depending on the yeast, or skunked beer. What yeast did you use and at what temps? Did you protect the beer from the light while it fermented?

I suppose some hops might be considered sulfury too (like Summit).

Give a week or two in the keg and a few pulls before you call it a loss. I know my first pull or two in a keg normally has the most sediment and is subject to weird flavors. Be patient and let us know in a week!

Just an update but it has been almost 7 weeks and the beer is still a little off as far as taste and smell go. It has gotten significantly better but still not a beer i would go for. Will this beer continue to get better like it has, if so how long is the average time to let it sit before its "good"? Does kegging and chilling after 3 weeks have any effect on taste?

abarhan said:

Just an update but it has been almost 7 weeks and the beer is still a little off as far as taste and smell go. It has gotten significantly better but still not a beer i would go for. Will this beer continue to get better like it has, if so how long is the average time to let it sit before its "good"? Does kegging and chilling after 3 weeks have any effect on taste?

Click to expand...

Generally, flavors will mellow with time. However, sulfury flavors may not and need some active degassing to be removed from the beer. If your beer tastes sulfur-y going into a package (keg or bottle), it is probably going to taste sulfur-y coming out of the package. If it is in a keg, you might try carbing it up and then releasing the pressure to try to get the sulfur pushed out.

I wonder if it could it be DMS?

--UPDATE--

So after getting very frustrated with the past two bad batches I brewed two more, a Irish Red and a Amber Ale. I just racked the out of the primary after 3 weeks and tasted them and they were fine. Kegged and pressurized to 12psi and two days later same off flavor. I used bottled water on the latest two batched to eliminate chorine and covered the fermentors with a box the whole time. The room was kept 65-75 and was about 70° for the most part. The kegs were taken all the way apart and soaked in PBW and sanitized with Star san before racking. All parts were sanitized properly prior to beer/wort touching. The lines were cleaned with PBW and sanitized with StarSan, everything taken apart and cleaned and sanitized.

The only thing I can think of is the CO2, its a 20LB tank from a A-1 Fire in San Antonio. I can imagine that the molecular structure has changed to cause an off flavor but I am at a loss on this issue.

Is there any place to send sample for diagnoses of off flavors? I have read a few posts about bad CO2 but they all lead to extremely unlikely for that to be the issue.

The beer tasted fine when racked into the keg so it has to be something in the kegging system I would think, Can an infection grow/appear in 24hrs?

Any one in San Antonio wanna help me out before I pull all my hair out?

abarhan said:

--UPDATE--

So after getting very frustrated with the past two bad batches I brewed two more, a Irish Red and a Amber Ale. I just racked the out of the primary after 3 weeks and tasted them and they were fine. Kegged and pressurized to 12psi and two days later same off flavor. I used bottled water on the latest two batched to eliminate chorine and covered the fermentors with a box the whole time. The room was kept 65-75 and was about 70° for the most part. The kegs were taken all the way apart and soaked in PBW and sanitized with Star san before racking. All parts were sanitized properly prior to beer/wort touching. The lines were cleaned with PBW and sanitized with StarSan, everything taken apart and cleaned and sanitized.

The only thing I can think of is the CO2, its a 20LB tank from a A-1 Fire in San Antonio. I can imagine that the molecular structure has changed to cause an off flavor but I am at a loss on this issue.

Is there any place to send sample for diagnoses of off flavors? I have read a few posts about bad CO2 but they all lead to extremely unlikely for that to be the issue.

The beer tasted fine when racked into the keg so it has to be something in the kegging system I would think, Can an infection grow/appear in 24hrs?

Any one in San Antonio wanna help me out before I pull all my hair out?

Click to expand...

I agree that it sounds like the problem is with the kegging setup. An infection can not appear overnight and I have not heard of one producing the kind of flavors you are describing. I know nothing about kegging, so am little help here, but I might try getting another CO2 tank. I would also try bottle conditioning half of your next batch and see if you still get the off flavors. Must be frustrating, but at least you are narrowing in on the problem. Good luck.