Holy Phenolics!

[thadius856]

AG brewer here, probably close to 50 batches under my belt now. The beer almost always comes out great, carbs up nicely, and goes down smooth. With one exception: a Fat Tire clone about 12 months ago that tasted medicinal. I chalked it up to not liking Belgian funk and moved on.

This batch (cream ale) tastes medicinal, like the acrid aftertaste on cheap cough syrup / Nyquil. I'm pretty sure it's the same taste that I got from the Fat Tire clone, so I'm starting to re-think it.

My wife can't taste what I'm going on about. My father and I are both pretty turned off by this batch. Gotta be phenolic, right?

I've been using the same water the whole time, equipment and technique the whole time. No, I don't use RO or distilled water, and I don't know my water profile, but it has not been a problem thus far. This is a recipe that I've brewed several times and only the first time it has come out like this.

Am I insane to suspect wild yeast / bacteria? My StarSan was getting rather cloudy by the time this batch went in.

 

[fearwig]

I am more inclined to say you have fermentation temperature or pitch rate issues but you didn't describe that setup or the strains used. 50 batches seems like a lot for that to just crop up now, but infections tend to manifest as more than just a distant off flavor.

 

[chickypad]

Could be a yeast issue but I also wonder if it could be chloramines in the water. I had the same thing happen about 3 years ago - two recipes I had brewed before (I always pay attention to pitch rates and temp control). I was in a new house but it didn't start happening until about 7-8 batches in. I think my city started using more chloramine - or there were some fluctuations month to month. I thought I had an infected batch but when it happened again I started using campden and thankfully haven't had the issue since. It's cheap and it might be worth a try. I think sensitivity to phenolics is pretty varied, I'm like you and find it a real turn off even though I like most Belgian styles otherwise.

 

[thadius856]

I am more inclined to say you have fermentation temperature or pitch rate issues but you didn't describe that setup or the strains used. 50 batches seems like a lot for that to just crop up now, but infections tend to manifest as more than just a distant off flavor.

Fermentation was in a 20 gal Vittles Vault (80# version). Fermentation chamber temperature controller probe was taped to the side of the fermenter below the liquid line.

OG was 1.040, batch size 10.5 gal. YeastCalc says 297b cells needed. I pitched two packets of pretty fresh Notty.

This is definitely more than an off-taste. It's super overpowering, especially since this cream ale has almost no body to hide it.

Edit: Didn't get to finish my thought because I'm brewing right meow.Anyway... Primary was 4 weeks long, used Nottingham ale yeast, liquid temperature between 59ºF and 62ºF the entire time. Performed weekly welfare checks and the first two weeks the Taylor analog refrigerator thermometer show that ambient air temp was slightly cooler than 59ºF.

Edit2: It fermented right next to 10.5 gal of barleywine brewed the previous day. Samples of barleywine at the 4 week mark don't have any phenolic flavors that I can detect. But maybe it's just hiding between the ~7 lbs of beechwood smoked malt. The barleywine used 4 packets of Nottingham ale yeast from the same batch code.

 

[thadius856]

Could be a yeast issue but I also wonder if it could be chloramines in the water. I had the same thing happen about 3 years ago - two recipes I had brewed before (I always pay attention to pitch rates and temp control). I was in a new house but it didn't start happening until about 7-8 batches in. I think my city started using more chloramine - or there were some fluctuations month to month. I thought I had an infected batch but when it happened again I started using campden and thankfully haven't had the issue since. It's cheap and it might be worth a try. I think sensitivity to phenolics is pretty varied, I'm like you and find it a real turn off even though I like most Belgian styles otherwise.

Hrm. Perhaps. Is there an affordable water test I can have performed? (edit: that includes a chloramine level analysis, of course)

Home Depot sent somebody out to do a free water test last year, but when he showed up, it became apparent he only cared about selling me a $12k water system and not measuring what was in my water. Every test he performed was qualitative ("look at all that cloudiness and sediment!"), except the water hardness test, which we determined was somewhere between 12 grains (205 ppm) and 14 grains (239 ppm).

 

[Wynne-R]

I’m not sure why you want a chloramine test. Commercial tapwater either has chlorine or chloramine. Campden works in either case. 1 tablet/20gal. It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it’s effective.

I don’t think the amount of chloramine is important. The taste threshold for chlorophenol is a few parts per billion, either you have it or you don’t. It is pretty stable, it mostly doesn’t react, but when it does it’s very bad.

With your alkalinity at 12 - 14 grains, you would probably benefit from some acid. You could get phenols in the sparge. Mine’s about half that and I can tell the difference when I forget to acidify the spargewater.

Try using RO for the sparge. It worked for me before I got into water treatment.

 

[CaveBrewing]

Or just use bottled water on your next batch. I had a bad problem with chlorimine in my tap water and it was still bad even with campden tablets.

 

[pdxal]

Fat Tire is Belgian?
I thought it was an American beer (pale/amber ale) made by New Belgium. It shouldn't have any "Belgian" taste to it.
My guess is chlorine/chloramines as noted before or infection since those are the more common causes of phenolic off tastes. Infection should be sour or buttery too, though.

 

[thadius856]

Hrm. Good point. I probably used WY 1272 American Ale II. "Belgian" is probably just how I sold other people into drinking the keg for me.

Unfortunately, BeerSmith ate that recipe, and 6 months of other brews. Sigh. Will never know for sure what I used.

 

[thadius856]

Been thinking a lot about this today. Something screams to me that it's not Chloramine. I mean, I'll add campden from here out, but there's two things that make me doubt that conclusion.

1) If you let a glass of that Fat Tire clone sit for 10 minutes, then drank it, it'd leave a whitish film on the sides and bottom of the glass. It seemed to get slightly better with age, but still very forward after 3-4 weeks in a keg.

2) Pulled another glass of the cream ale today. Much less present. The beer is clearer now, but still a bit cloudy. Nowhere near the transparent straw color that BierMuncher gets in his pictures.

 

[fearwig]

Phenols from sparge (tannins) taste rather different from other phenol flavors. This is more band-aidy or diapery, right? I've got to lean "temporary change in water content" at this point, since it sounds like you have a handle on ferm conditions. Chloramine is the most common culprit for that, though, unless you have a surface source of water. Do you?

 

[thadius856]

Negative. No surface source of water.

I think it band-aid'y. Would love to get a second opinion tho. My tastes aren't super easy to quantify.

Anybody in the Sacramento area with trained tastebuds?

 

[pdxal]

Sounds like there is a batch made with RO water in your future...

 

[thadius856]

Sounds like there is a batch made with RO water in your future...

Perhaps, but if a campden tablet can convert Chloramine and add to mouth feel, why bother with RO water? Are there other things lurking in my water I need to treat for or avoid?

Buying 3 jugs, scrubbing the hell out of them, and schlepping 15 gallons of RO water home from the store is a whole lot more work than dissolving a tablet.

 

[nckmsn]

AG brewer here, probably close to 50 batches under my belt now. The beer almost always comes out great, carbs up nicely, and goes down smooth. With one exception: a Fat Tire clone about 12 months ago that tasted medicinal. I chalked it up to not liking Belgian funk and moved on.

This batch (cream ale) tastes medicinal, like the acrid aftertaste on cheap cough syrup / Nyquil. I'm pretty sure it's the same taste that I got from the Fat Tire clone, so I'm starting to re-think it.

My wife can't taste what I'm going on about. My father and I are both pretty turned off by this batch. Gotta be phenolic, right?

I've been using the same water the whole time, equipment and technique the whole time. No, I don't use RO or distilled water, and I don't know my water profile, but it has not been a problem thus far. This is a recipe that I've brewed several times and only the first time it has come out like this.

Am I insane to suspect wild yeast / bacteria? My StarSan was getting rather cloudy by the time this batch went in.

I hate phenols. I am super sensitive to them and can taste it many commercial brews. About 1 year ago after brewing for more than 15 years without an infected/spoiled beer, I started getting phenolic off flavors in my beers. I would be able to vaguely taste it out of the fermenter and then it would progressively get worse to the point that it was undrinkable in approx. 45 days. Others could drink the beer without detecting the phenols but would comment on it affecting the mouthfeel and would pick up other off flavors that brought on a general review that there was something wrong with the beer.

This totally came out of nowhere. I didn't change anything in my brewing process and it kept showing up in about 5 brews over more than a year of brewing. I ended up replacing almost all of my hoses and siphons to try and eliminate possible problems.

Not sure if this might be a clue, but the one brew that didn't have them flavor was a pilsner that I lagered for several months.

Here is the crazy thing that for points to water chemistry. A friend homebrewer of mine that lived about 6 miles from me was getting the same problem and he hasn't had any problems like this for 20 plus years. This was so frustrating to us that we actually stopped brewing for more than a year. We finally started brewing again and we haven't had a problem in about 10 total brews between the two of us.

I did do some research on the water chemistry in the area (Salt lake City) and did find some mention of Bromine or Bromide or something like that. Upon further research I found that this stuff could survive a boil. I think that they were putting this stuff in the water for a year or so but stopped. Or me and my buddy simultaneously had a miracle happen that stopped the damn phenol from showing up in our beers.