Recurring off flavor

Do you use municipal water? If you do , what do you treat it with? What yeast are you using? What is the wort temperature in the first three days of active fermentation? How long do you primary?

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What are you doing to aerate your wort? Sometimes, diacetyl pops up later if the precursor for it is present, so that's something to think about too.

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stevereno30 said:

I do use municipal water. I add a quarter campden tablet to my strike and Sparge Water. My yeast is us 05. My wort temperature is 65 +- 0.2 for the entirety of fermentation. I primary for 2-3 weeks then keg. Carbonic acid is possible, but my beers seem to be under carbonated no matter how high I set the co2 and no matter how long I let it sit around 15psi at 40f... Keg carbonation has been frustratingly difficult for me.


I dump my wort between my fermenter and my rinsed kettle until there is so much foam the lid just barely fits. I will definitely check my gravity to make sure it hasn't dropped since kegging.

Thanks for the quick replies!

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stevereno30 said:

This is exactly what I thought, but the water isn't consistent. I've used water from my tap diluted with distilled water (my water is way to hard even for the darkest stouts), and I've used water from my sister's house who has a profile vastly different from mine. Either way, I've ran my water reports through brun water to make sure everything is OK on each of the three brews in question. Also, for the gravity question earlier, my gravity is about where it was at kegging.

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stevereno30 said:

Hey everyone. I've been brewing beer every two weeks this entire summer and have been loving it, except for one extremely annoying problem: every single brew has had the exact same off flavor. Thus far I've brewed a blonde ale, brown ale, pale ale and oktoberfest. My oktoberfest is lagering, and I'm planning on aging it a month, but other than that unfinished beer, the others have the same taste.

The flavor is unlike anything I know. It is kind of metallic, but also kind of pear peach like, but also kind of alcoholic. Describing flavors is not my strong suit. In every beer, the flavor was non existent when kegging. They all had a nice strong malt character and were quite delicious. After carbing and conditioning, the malt character disappeared almost entirely to be replaced by this awful flavor.

Now for some info on my setup... I'm doing all grain in an orange barrel cooler tun with stainless fittings. My mash pH has always fallen between 5.2 and 5.8. I boil in an aluminum turkey fryer and chill using a home made counterflow copper chiller. I ferment in buckets in a kegerator controlled by a brewpi. I pitch dry yeast directly without rehydration (next batch I'm going to rehydrate at 100F and cool my yeast cream to fermentation temp before pitching). I sanitize everything with StarSan except for the mash tun chiller and brew kettle. Those I just rinse with clean water and let air dry then sanitize with boiling water before using again.

The only thing I haven't tried yet is ditching all grain and going back to extract. This flavor never appeared in any beer brewed before all grain. If it was a slight taste, it would be tolerable yet frustrating. But this is making brewing a waste of time and money. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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