Well, I just meant that chemical artificial lemon like you would expect soap to taste like, or lysol. Bottles were very well cleaned, some were never even used before so, unlikely the same contaminate in all bottles. Being a soda, there was no 'primary' fermentation stage... just direct to bottle, tested 4 days later then 1 week later, 2, 3, 4 weeks... on the 5th week I just dumped it.
Not too worried... thing is, after we mixed it, we gave it a taste before bottling, and kinda tasted 'off' right from the start. Just hoped maybe after a week it would improve but didn't.
I used B.Brite cleaner (which is pink powder). I had some left over from making beer. I soak for 10min, scrub with a bottle cleaner, then rinse 3x to get everything out. Haven't brewed in a while and used the last of the cleaner yesterday for the root beer, so plan to buy Star San next.
Been about 12h now and bottles are already pretty hard, using 500ml PET brown bottles and new (sanitized) caps. For that lime soda, after about 4 days, bottles were super hard, moved them from upstairs to the cold cellar. I also tested a bottle and carbonation was fine but again, tasted like how lemon all-purpose cleaner smells.
Root beer wise, tested before bottling and already tasted great... albeit flat and warm but, unlike the lime, it at least tasted good before bottling. I'm 75% certain it was just a bad bottle of extract.
Hopefully comes out well... had everything except the maltodextrin. That Zatarain's definitely has a hint of wintergreen or something, smelled it soon as the bottle was opened, but again, tasted a bit at bottling time and was pretty good already.