After Bottling My Beer tastes sweet (yuck)

[bobbytuck]

No, it's not esters or carbonation.

Thanks, oljimmy, for sharing the experiment and results!

 

[bcull]

I have a sweet batch of beer right now. Like you I used the Safale 04. Coincidence? I usually used liquid yeast but ran into a "dead" batch so used the dry yeast in an effort to save the batch. The brew is drinkable but tastes home brewed.

 

[bcull]

I have a sweet batch of beer right now. Like you I used the Safale 04. Coincidence? I usually used liquid yeast but ran into a "dead" batch so used the dry yeast in an effort to save the batch. The brew is drinkable but tastes home brewed.

 

[Boyinthabubble]

Having the same issue of sweetness after bottle conditioning my last two batches. The flavor doesnt increase and the beer seems a little cloudy (although I did stop using Whirlfloc tablets the last two times). It almost tastes slighty under attenuated but my FG is where I wanted it. No infection in the beer. Ive only caught a couple threads online with this issue because it doesnt seem that common. The first thing that caught my eye with the original poster is the fact he used OXYCLEAN. I mean, I know OXYCLEAN is chlorine free but what other chemicals or soapy additives are in there?? There was another thread by someone who isolated this issue which ended up being the result of a soap he used to clean his kegs with. I also have been using Oxyclean to soak my bottles for 24hrs with alot of rinsing inbetween. On bottling day I also use StarSan on all my bottles as well. After tgis issue, A couple brewers told me to stop using Oxyclean and switch to PBR. I also listened to a Beersmith podcast last night about cleaning and chemicals where the interviewee from 5 Star Chemicals (also a homebrewer) recommended against Oxyclean (but they are also the makers of PBW soooo I dunno).

Anyways, I will have to go back and clean all 100 or so bottles for my next batch and soak them in PBR instead and hopefully fix this issue. Will report back with results in a couple months.

 

[oljimmy]

Thanks for the update. I would love to see a solution to this problem. Your version sounds just like mine. I have occasionally worried about oxy as it leaves a residue but a good rinse plus starsan gets rid of it. Can't wait to hear how your experiment goes.

 

[Nickyssix]

Thanks Bobbytuck interesting thread. I too have had the odd dotted sweet brew here and there.. and just wanted to add another piece to this puzzle - my good friend and fellow experienced brewer has had this problem recently with 2 brews ive tasted and he carbs with Co2 - so i know this happens without any priming sugar involvement.
I have had the problem a couple of times - and wonder about acidulated malt to balance the ph.

 

[thiazzi]

Any chance some homebrew wizard has discovered the cause of this? Is there any chance it is Safale yeast to blame?

I am about to throw all my gear in the garbage for good over this recurring issue. You can only grimace through five gallons of oversweet failure beer so many times.

 

[Droidbrew]

Hi
Brand new to this forum so hello everyone. It was this thread that brought me here and I've got info to add.
It's only reading about the safeale 04 that I've realised that every time I've had this issue I've been using that yeast in my brew.
I use a BIAB setup with a no chill cube. I also have an Inkbird itc-310 controlling my fermentation fridge so
It's all pretty controlled and uber clean.
It's the only constant.

 

[oljimmy]

I had this issue using US-05 and WLP 001.

thiazzi are you measuring final gravity? This particular issue happens when you hit your expected final gravity and still discover an annoying sweet-ish cloying aroma. Your beer might just be under-attenuating.

If not, my bottling solution involved skipping the bottling bucket entirely. Cold-crash the fermented wort for a week to get it clear, siphon it straight into bottles without using a wand (takes some practice), use cooper's carbonating sugar drops rather than corn sugar in a bucket, cap and forget. Something in my old process, the sugar, the aeration, the plastic in the bucket, the wand... was making this happen. Simplify bottling and see what happens.

 

[thiazzi]

Droidbrew, I checked my "can't miss" honey wheat recipe that always turns out right and sure enough it doesn't use safale yeast. For my next batch I will definitely not use safale and I will report back here the results. It's going to be a while, though, since I have to drink 5 gallons of pumpkin failure beer by myself first (co-brewer gf will not drink the sweet failure, or drinks only enough to encourage me to continue in the hobby).

oljimmy, I measure final gravity and don't notice the dominating sweet flavor until after bottle conditioning. I disassemble all my gear each time and sanitize like it is my job, including drowning each bottle and all lines and bottling equipment for at least 2 minutes (usually longer). I do like the idea of just bottling out of the fermenter, but I have heard enough stories about carb duds attributed to carb drops to make me wary.

If my next batch fails I'm going to invest in kegging gear, and if that fails I'm going to quit, I think.

 

[oljimmy]

I've done probably 100-150 bottles with sugar drops, no duds. It's hard to see how it could fail unless you're cold crashing/lagering for 3-4 months and dropping all the available yeast out. In any case, I'll take the occasional dud over this horrible sickly-sweet thing that still haunts my nightmares and which almost knocked me out of homebrewing entirely.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I fermented a batch of beer using S-04 at around 60 degrees and got really strong what I would call peach flavors. I didn't find the flavor pleasant. At 65+ S-04 has been very good to me. The esters it throws at the higher temps are very nice. I even had one get away from me from me since I use a cooler with ice packs. It fermented at 80 degrees and there was fusals. I had saved one bottle of it for 4 months and the hot fusals had calmed down and the big esters were delicious. I wouldn't ferment that high on purpose because every bottle of that beer gave me a minor fusal headache, but I wouldn't ferment S-04 at 62 or below either. To use S-04 regularly, I would want to have a electronically controlled fermentation chamber.

BTW what's with everyone saying that "homebrew" flavor as if it's a bad thing?

 

[Boyinthabubble]

Ok, so almost 1 year and several batches later I have come to a conclusion to explain some of the contributing factors of this slightly sweet bi-product with my extract brewing setup. After thoroughly scrubbing all my bottles to get rid of any OXY residue and only using PBW it NEVER came back again except for ONE BATCH. This one batch mirrored some of the conditions that most likely contributed to the 2 in a row that had me scratching my head a year ago.

1) Both off beers were done using 1 packet of liquid yeast without a starter
2) Both off beers had a starting gravity around 1.070

After using both liquid as well as dry yeast (S-04 & S-05) and keeping the starting gravities around 1.058-1.060 or lower, I never had any issues again. For those 2 slightly sweet beer batches, even though my final gravity was in the correct range for the beer to be finished, the feedback I got from several brewery owners who gave me feedback told me two things

1) the beer didn't taste bad (like an infection, or any of the other off flavor suspects).
2) the beer just tastes like it's possibly under attenuated or slightly unfinished

For these reasons, the bottles needing to be cleaned more thoroughly with PBW and NOT OXY ( with the OXY possibly leaving a residue) might have been a small contributing factor. The sweet taste was most likely a result of a higher starting gravity in combination with use of a liquid yeast which resulted in an overall lower yeast cell count for what was needed for the beer to fully attenuate. In my naivete, I also didn't realize the speed at which liquid yeast loses about 20% of its viable yeast cells every month.
I still won't be using OXY anymore just as a precaution. Hope this helps anyone.