3rd Ruined Batch. Please help...

[brewmeister69]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but you say your location is :

Fukushima City, Fukushima, JAPAN

One of the worlds worst nuclear disasters happened in the very city on 11 March 2011 resulting in a meltdown of three of the plant's six nuclear reactors..

If you really are living in that city , I'd hazard a guess and say your water may be contaminated..

If I were you I would be putting a Geiger counter on my brew just to check it's not hot with radioactive particles ...

 

[CB_in_Tokyo]

Hey Snow,

There is a very active Japan homebrewing community.

We have a thread here.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f234/home-brewing-japan-350223/index70.html

We also have a facebook group here
https://www.facebook.com/groups/409167752562778/

Maybe we can help you out with any Japan specific issues.

 

[snow16]

brewmeister69 - I don't take that comment the wrong way at all. I appreciate the thought. All I'll say on that subject is that although what happened here a few years ago was absolutely horrible, Fukushima is far from the nuclear wasteland that the media would have the world believe. There's a lot of work to be done here in many coastal areas, but generally speaking, most towns and cities throughout Fukushima have background radiation levels below the naturally occurring background radiation levels of many populous places throughout the world

I don't doubt that there are some sort of radioactive particles in my brewing water (probably everyone's brewing water, for that matter) - but I've never worried about them and I highly doubt that they are responsible for my medicinal off-flavors.

CB in Tokyo, thanks so much for the heads-up on the Japan home brewing community. I had no idea there were so many homebrewers here in Japan. I'll check out the thread and join the Facebook page.

Still waiting for the results of the water tests...

 

[fredthecat]

Hi, Im an expat homebrewer in korea. It took me a long time to get back to about 95% of the quality of beer I could make in north america. Here's my advice

1. Depending on where you get your yeast from it may be in very poor shape. it sat around too long or experienced temp fluctuation.
2. Use 100% bottled water with salts added and see if the taste disappears.
3. Don't use plastic equipment. I used glass in north america and switched to PET high quality jugs here intended for alcohol-still ended up tasting weird to me somehow.
4. check ALL of your ingredients. maybe take the leap to all-grain. I found out the DME i was using was actually made for the food industry or something, not specifically for brewing. Since I stopped using it I got rid of some quality issues.