I entered in my first contest because I was looking for some feedback. All three judges stated there was a high degree of Phenolic flavors. So I did a search and these popped up as reasons for that
"Yeast strain; chlorophenols in the water; improper rinse of chlorine sanitizers; oversparging; sparging above pH 6.0; sparging above 170 degrees; wild yeast contamination"
so first off it was an extract batch so I think I can rule out the sparging problems. I use star san so I think I can rule out chlorine sanitizer as a problem. That leaves me with yeast strain, chlorophenols in my water and wild yeast contamination.
I used a starter with this batch but I also did some aggressive top cropping so I'm not sure about yeast strain. I did a 800 ml starter on a stir plate over night. I pitched it the next day and I had a krausen within 12 hours. When I was top cropping I wanted clean yeast so I skimmed the krausen the first two days and discarded because there was a lot of hop matter in the krausen the first two days. Do you think I took too much yeast off and caused the yeast to be strained causing the off flavors?
Not sure about the chlorophenols in my water. I have the city water report and it says we have about .92 ppm chlorine in our water. Would that show up in the beer after an hour long boil?
Since I was fermenting in an ale pail and I was top cropping I put the lid on top of the bucket but didn't snap it down because it would have been a pain to open all the time. could this pseudo-open fermentation lead to wild yeast getting in an producing these chlorophenols? I had a krausen within 12 hours so I would assume the 1056 had a pretty good hold right away.
Anything anyone else can think of that would cause these phenols to be so expressed?
"Yeast strain; chlorophenols in the water; improper rinse of chlorine sanitizers; oversparging; sparging above pH 6.0; sparging above 170 degrees; wild yeast contamination"
so first off it was an extract batch so I think I can rule out the sparging problems. I use star san so I think I can rule out chlorine sanitizer as a problem. That leaves me with yeast strain, chlorophenols in my water and wild yeast contamination.
I used a starter with this batch but I also did some aggressive top cropping so I'm not sure about yeast strain. I did a 800 ml starter on a stir plate over night. I pitched it the next day and I had a krausen within 12 hours. When I was top cropping I wanted clean yeast so I skimmed the krausen the first two days and discarded because there was a lot of hop matter in the krausen the first two days. Do you think I took too much yeast off and caused the yeast to be strained causing the off flavors?
Not sure about the chlorophenols in my water. I have the city water report and it says we have about .92 ppm chlorine in our water. Would that show up in the beer after an hour long boil?
Since I was fermenting in an ale pail and I was top cropping I put the lid on top of the bucket but didn't snap it down because it would have been a pain to open all the time. could this pseudo-open fermentation lead to wild yeast getting in an producing these chlorophenols? I had a krausen within 12 hours so I would assume the 1056 had a pretty good hold right away.
Anything anyone else can think of that would cause these phenols to be so expressed?