All my beers are terrible.

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So, can we summarize, so the OP can start working on fixing the problem?

1. Water. Easiest check is to buy SPRING WATER from the store for brewing. See what happens. Or use campden tablets to eliminate chloramine.

2. If making a starter, feel free to shake it up as much as you want, but I always chill the starter and pour off the oxygenated wort and only pitch the yeast sediment.

3. Ferment at proper temp range 65-70 for most ale yeast.

4. Don't use bleach. Chlorine in any form is bad for brewing. There are alternatives that are very inexpensive, don't require rinsing, and won't negatively impact your beer.

5. Clean and sanitize ALL equipment, including the spigot assembly in your bottling bucket.

I think the water is the most likely culprit, based on your description. I'd probably get spring water from the store and see what happens. After that, decide if that fixed the problem and decide if campden tablets are the answer (I hate the thought of adding any chemical that I didn't' have to, but wine makers us this stuff ALL the time!)
 
The same thing is happening after you pitch on your wort. They're reproducing mostly at 1st. Then start fermenting out the rest of the sugars. So it is essentially the same. It must reproduce in sufficient numbers to tackle all those sugars in the wort. The starter doesn't accomplish all of this. It just reduces the lag time by getting closer to the amount of yeast cells needed.
 
I love the "I'm no expert...BUT" disclaimer before you give the wrong advice to someone who really needs anything but. It does not really matter what a month in the primary "SOUNDS" like to you, because anyone that I know who makes awesome beer (including me, not blowing my own horn but my beer is often as good as many craft beer offerings) leave their beers on primaries for more than a month at least. Often, I will brew up 5-6 beers in a 2 week span and just leave them... bottling them slowly as I need the beer, over a 3-4 month period.

To OP, looks like you are getting some good advice from some other posters though, and I would suspect that this is most likely a water issue. Personally, I had serious problems with Rubbery/Bandaid before and it happened to be from my starters - I was shaking my starters during fermentation and then pitching the entire, oxidized starter liquid on my batch. As soon as I started decanting the liquid the problem went away. Are you doing this?

Point taken, my apologies. I'll keep my opinions to myself until I'm at the level where I know I'm right haha.
 
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