Beer always changes flavor within a day of kegging

[bradleypariah]

Here's an early update:
The beer is a super clear, ruby red with a lot of character. The recipe is in this thread somewhere.

The beer just started to show signs of proper lacing last night, and a small amount of hop aroma has returned, surprisingly enough.
So, to go from "Wow!", to absolute tasteless, metallic band aid, back to, "Hey! This is pretty good!" took 90 hours.
I drank three glasses (about two pints-worth) last night, and I felt very nice. Perhaps/hopefully tonight it will be even better.

All that said, I am still not completely happy. Although the initial metallic bite is subsiding, and I have accepted my net loss in hoppiness, somehow there is still some kind of off flavor that disappoints me. It's the same one I was complaining about initially, but letting the CO2 settle has somehow unpublicized it. Some kind of astringent "thinness" that's hard to put my finger on is still lingering there, and based on my experience, it is not going to go away. I believe the keg will empty while still showing signs of it. It is preventing my beer from tasting "pro". Perhaps this is the flaw in my water.

So! Early impressions to all your guys' input are that just about EVERYONE was right.

• Dropping the temp forced the yeast to drop out of suspension, along with a lot of flavor-masking hop particles
• Pushing higher-than-serving PSI onto the beer yields a very metallic and chemical flavor between the second and fourth days, possibly over-signaling the beer's less desirable attributes
• Once the CO2 starts to properly absorb, the hop aroma begins to return, but as to be expected, never gets back to the glory aroma of the beer's warmer carboy days
• Too early to tell, but the remaining off flavor might be able to be solved with Campden

I have this full keg to go through, and I have another beer in the basement (unfortunately not treated with Campden either). As soon as I tap that beer in the basement, I'll brew my next batch, which should be within a month, so I'll most likely be able to share my Campden findings within the next six weeks. Thank you all for your time!

 

[oujens]

I might have missed it, but what steps do you take to minimize o2 pickup during transfer? I've finally solved my kegging issues and little did I know I was suffering from oxidation. Even the slightest bit of o2 will diminish your hops. Probably another difference between your commercial keg and home brew.

 

[Trail]

Even the slightest bit of o2...

I have to disagree with you, strenuously.

Loads of very picky people brew beer without going nuts about CO2. Hell, cask ale is actually served by displacing served beer with air, and while oxidation happens, it isn't overnight and oxidation-released off flavors don't improve with time, even a little bit.

An indistinct, thin, "meh"-ness of flavor is a classic symptom of water chemistry problems. Bradleypariah should get labs run and make the appropriate corrections, and I bet you a pair of twelve-ounce "yeast samples" the issue goes away.

 

[casualbrewer]

Although I agree that the water is most likely the culprit, he listed using LME in his recipe. Perhaps he is sensitive to "extract twang". I know I can tell a difference.

 

[oujens]

I have to disagree with you, strenuously.



Loads of very picky people brew beer without going nuts about CO2. Hell, cask ale is actually served by displacing served beer with air, and while oxidation happens, it isn't overnight and oxidation-released off flavors don't improve with time, even a little bit.



An indistinct, thin, "meh"-ness of flavor is a classic symptom of water chemistry problems. Bradleypariah should get labs run and make the appropriate corrections, and I bet you a pair of twelve-ounce "yeast samples" the issue goes away.

I agree it takes time for oxidation to present itself and the OP needs to check water. However, later there is a description of "metallic, no hops" and in my experience has been related to oxidation. Wouldn't hurt to review that process as well.

 

[Ashevillain]

Gonna start throwing darts here... I've heard from someone at a LHBS in VA that beer that gets below freezing can develop metallic flavors... Unsure if this is remotely true or if the flavor is lasting, the guy might have had no idea. I definitely know most beer tastes better at 38 or higher, and I have never really seen the value of crashing to near freezing after several tries vs 36-38.

 

[dyqik]

I have to disagree with you, strenuously.

Loads of very picky people brew beer without going nuts about CO2. Hell, cask ale is actually served by displacing served beer with air, and while oxidation happens, it isn't overnight and oxidation-released off flavors don't improve with time, even a little bit.

Cask beer recipes are formulated for cask serving, and cask beer only lasts a few days in the cask after tapping due to oxidation. Carbonation happens in the cask by secondary fermentation there, so oxygen pickup in transferring is mitigated.

American craft beer recipes are not generally formulated for cask serving. American IPAs in particular are very prone to oxidation.

 

[bradleypariah]

I might have missed it, but what steps do you take to minimize o2 pickup during transfer?

CO2 transfer to keg. I use carboy caps like this one:

I plug my CO2 into the diagonal tube, and I stick my siphon wand into the center tube. I turn on CO2 at about 1 or 2 PSI. At this point, the siphon is sticking out of the beer, so it's just straight CO2 going into the carboy, and making its way through the siphon and tube. The tube end of the siphon is sitting in the sanitized keg, and it reaches the very bottom.

After running CO2 for about five seconds, and I'm pretty sure there's hardly any oxygen left in the carboy or the line, I push the siphon wand down into the beer. I just leave the CO2 on at about 1PSI. I start the wand at about the middle of the carboy, and wait till the beer level gets close, then slowly push it down, inch by inch as the beer level drops. Once the beer is low enough, I can see right through it, and I can see how close the wand is to the yeast cake. I tip the carboy, and push the wand as close as necessary to maximize liquid output, but minimize pickup of waste.

I pull the tube out of the keg, and seal the top. I apply 30PSI to the keg to get a good seal, then start purging in pulses. I keep purging till I've
exhausted all pressure. I then let it fill back up to 15-20 PSI, or whatever pressure I feel like carbonating at.

Any of that sound bad? Thanks for the response.

 

[bradleypariah]

I've heard from someone at a LHBS in VA that beer that gets below freezing can develop metallic flavors... Unsure if this is remotely true or if the flavor is lasting, the guy might have had no idea. I definitely know most beer tastes better at 38 or higher, and I have never really seen the value of crashing to near freezing after several tries vs 36-38.

I don't crash. I transfer to secondary to harvest my primary vessel's yeast, and my beer clears while in secondary. I do closed transfers to secondary using nothing but CO2. Like this:

I'll check the temp of my kegerator.

 

[oujens]

CO2 transfer to keg. I use carboy caps like this one:

I plug my CO2 into the diagonal tube, and I stick my siphon wand into the center tube. I turn on CO2 at about 1 or 2 PSI. At this point, the siphon is sticking out of the beer, so it's just straight CO2 going into the carboy, and making its way through the siphon and tube. The tube end of the siphon is sitting in the sanitized keg, and it reaches the very bottom.

After running CO2 for about five seconds, and I'm pretty sure there's hardly any oxygen left in the carboy or the line, I push the siphon wand down into the beer. I just leave the CO2 on at about 1PSI. I start the wand at about the middle of the carboy, and wait till the beer level gets close, then slowly push it down, inch by inch as the beer level drops. Once the beer is low enough, I can see right through it, and I can see how close the wand is to the yeast cake. I tip the carboy, and push the wand as close as necessary to maximize liquid output, but minimize pickup of waste.

I pull the tube out of the keg, and seal the top. I apply 30PSI to the keg to get a good seal, then start purging in pulses. I keep purging till I've
exhausted all pressure. I then let it fill back up to 15-20 PSI, or whatever pressure I feel like carbonating at.

Any of that sound bad? Thanks for the response.

Are you purging your keg prior to transfer? Without active yeast you could picking up some o2 if the keg is not purged prior to transfer.

 

[bradleypariah]

Are you purging your keg prior to transfer? Without active yeast you could picking up some o2 if the keg is not purged prior to transfer.

No, because I'm transferring via a siphon hose. The keg's top is off, so the act of completely purging would be a little overboard. I've had people bite my head off on here for claiming that CO2 will rest as a bed in the bottom of a keg. I still believe cold gas will sit on the bottom for at least 10-20 minutes before completely dissipating, so I merely run the gas through the primary vessel while the wand is above the surface of the beer for several seconds.

In theory, that cold gas coming out the siphon tube into the keg should try to settle on the bottom of the keg first, simply because it's cold. After running the CO2 for several seconds, then I push the siphon wand into the beer. I was told by my LHBS owner that this would mean the beer is flowing down a siphon/hose that has been cleared of oxygen, and when the beer lands into the keg, it should have several inches of CO2 resting on top of it as the keg fills.

Considering that a lot of people say they don't even worry about oxygen, and they just auto-siphon with gravity right from an open bucket, with no ill effects, I feel like my steps are pretty good, if not possibly over the top. I could be wrong. I definitely don't mean to argue. I just want to get to the bottom of this.

 

[Trail]

I hate to add to the clamor, but man, I do exactly the same thing you do and I've never had any problems. Hell, the last keg I filled, I purged it (once, not nearly enough to remove all O2) then siphoned into it, slowly with a 3/16ths siphon. Plenty of time for air to get in. Then I closed the keg, kicked the pressure up, and did the roll-and-shake method to speed up the carbonation.

My stout got carbolic bite real bad, but a week later it was perfect. I was brewing a lot of stuff at the time so it took me almost three months to finish it, and there wasn't any hint of oxidation. Even after I shook it up with a headspace full of O2.

I see it this way: if it was that easy to ruin beer, humans would be far too stupid to figure out how to brew it.

 

[bradleypariah]

I agree with what previous posters have said.

http://www.mtangelor.org/general/page/public-works

Second paragraph on this page states they use a chlorination system.

The plot thickens! I called Public Works, and the chlorination system is for waste water only. They don't use anything to treat our water. Nothing. It is deep well water.
The head of public works said there are the following minerals in our water: fluoride, iron, manganese, sodium, calcium.
The sodium is 40ppm, and the fluoride is 0.3ppm.
http://www.mtangelor.org/sites/defa...eral/page/1354/mt_angelcity_2015_revision.pdf

Would any of these make beer taste medicinal?

Although I agree that the water is most likely the culprit, he listed using LME in his recipe. Perhaps he is sensitive to "extract twang". I know I can tell a difference.

As it so happens, I have recently dumped some coin to convert to all-grain. My last few toys are literally in the mail right now. I have everything I need to make a SMaSH IPA.
If all of my beers for six years always tasted weird to me because it turns out I dislike extract, that'd be quite interesting.

 

[bradleypariah]

The head of public works said there are the following minerals in our water: fluoride, iron, manganese, sodium, calcium.

Would any of these make beer taste medicinal?

Okay, John Palmer already answered this:
http://howtobrew.com/book/section-1/water-for-extract-brewing/home-water-treatment

I guess it could be iron and manganese. Does anyone have first hand experience to what off-flavors these give? Could these be my culprit?

 

[203PH]

Although I agree that the water is most likely the culprit, he listed using LME in his recipe. Perhaps he is sensitive to "extract twang". I know I can tell a difference.

Have to agree with this. My first batch was extract. Second and 3rd batches were "partial" extract batches. My buddy would always saw it was good, but there was a twang he could taste. Went to all grain, he never uttered that word again.

 

[TheMadKing]

I still really think OP is just noticing the normal changes of conditioning and is tasting too often to appreciate the finished beer. Beer always changes in the keg, for everyone and it gets better with time (usually)

 

[bradleypariah]

I still really think OP is just noticing the normal changes of conditioning and is tasting too often to appreciate the finished beer. Beer always changes in the keg, for everyone and it gets better with time (usually)

It's possible. It once again tastes better today than any day before. It's been in the keg for eight days now. Still has an off-flavor to me, though.

 

[day_trippr]

Pick one...

 

[leesmith]

The plot thickens! I called Public Works, and the chlorination system is for waste water only. They don't use anything to treat our water. Nothing. It is deep well water.
The head of public works said there are the following minerals in our water: fluoride, iron, manganese, sodium, calcium.
The sodium is 40ppm, and the fluoride is 0.3ppm.
http://www.mtangelor.org/sites/defa...eral/page/1354/mt_angelcity_2015_revision.pdf

Would any of these make beer taste medicinal?



As it so happens, I have recently dumped some coin to convert to all-grain. My last few toys are literally in the mail right now. I have everything I need to make a SMaSH IPA.
If all of my beers for six years always tasted weird to me because it turns out I dislike extract, that'd be quite interesting.

I don't know a lot about public water supplies. But the information on their website states that they operate, "...three large wells with chlorination injection systems....20 miles of main water lines run underground under the city. Those lines as well as the customer service lines are constantly being maintained." Maintained to me would involve sanitizing the pipes by putting a sanitizer in the water. The next paragraph then goes into detail about the way the waste water is treated.

The water itself may come from a good source and require no chlorination at the source but they are sending water through miles of underground pipe for people to drink. Hard to believe it would not require some preventative measures in order to insure the water is safe for drinking.

If it was me, I would test the water or not use it.

Now that your getting into all grain, its important to know your water. You'll need to at least adjust for the mash ph and without knowing the ion content of your water you'll be shooting blindly.

This is what you need to be concerned with as far as your water goes:
Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Chloride, Sulfate, Alkalinity, Bicarbonate, pH. Anything else could be detrimental to the beer.

Water high in iron and manganese is not good for brewing and could lead to off flavors. Also...lower sodium content is better...you could always add more if the style calls for it.

You will need to know the ph and the residual alkalinity of the water in order to calculate the acid addition you'll need for mashing.

This all may be too much info...and I don't understand it that well at times but it's important to know your existing water and then go from there.

A good link for much more detail on brewing water:
https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/water-knowledge

Once I began using a source of water that I knew how to work with my beers improved considerably. While I knew my tap water had chlorine in it and treated for it there were just some beers that didn't come out good even after treating for chlorine. And those were the beers I wanted to brew; light colored hoppy beers. My existing water and the ions in it were not right for the style. And along the way my recipe development and process improved also in order to produce the beers I wanted.

 

[bradleypariah]

Pick one...

I guess I would say chemical > petroleum > kerosene/plastic.

It's very faint, but if I tried to sell it at a grocery store, it wouldn't fly.
This beer has eight ounces of hops, plus it was aged with gin-soaked oak chips, so it does quite a good job at masking this flavor. My amber ales and my dark ales, not so much.

I even made a pumpkin beer last winter. It had it too. They always do, and it lasts for the entirety of the keg, which is sometimes over a month.

the information on their website states that they operate, "...three large wells with chlorination injection systems [...] This all may be too much info...and I don't understand it that well at times but it's important to know your existing water and then go from there.

I live in a really small town. We don't even have a grocery store. City Hall has two employees. When I called public works, the man in charge is the one who answered the phone. He told me specifically that the chlorine treatment systems were for the waste water only. He said they have to chlorinate it, and de-chlorinate it before returning it to the nearby river. Our water comes directly from a well, and it's very hard. The kind that leaves calcium rings on your toilet after only a week. I realize this doesn't speak well about my water, but I experienced the same flavors in two previous houses in different states that did not have such water.
I'm going to pay for a water test. Hopefully someone on here will be able to prescribe a solution. I'm keeping my eye on the "extract twang" possibility too.

 

[dyqik]

I guess I would say chemical > petroleum > kerosene/plastic.

It's very faint, but if I tried to sell it at a grocery store, it wouldn't fly.
This beer has eight ounces of hops, plus it was aged with gin-soaked oak chips, so it does quite a good job at masking this flavor. My amber ales and my dark ales, not so much.

That's how I'd describe the off-taste due to chlorine, the one time I had it.

 

[leesmith]

I guess I would say chemical > petroleum > kerosene/plastic.



It's very faint, but if I tried to sell it at a grocery store, it wouldn't fly.

This beer has eight ounces of hops, plus it was aged with gin-soaked oak chips, so it does quite a good job at masking this flavor. My amber ales and my dark ales, not so much.



I even made a pumpkin beer last winter. It had it too. They always do, and it lasts for the entirety of the keg, which is sometimes over a month.







I live in a really small town. We don't even have a grocery store. City Hall has two employees. When I called public works, the man in charge is the one who answered the phone. He told me specifically that the chlorine treatment systems were for the waste water only. He said they have to chlorinate it, and de-chlorinate it before returning it to the nearby river. Our water comes directly from a well, and it's very hard. The kind that leaves calcium rings on your toilet after only a week. I realize this doesn't speak well about my water, but I experienced the same flavors in two previous houses in different states that did not have such water.

I'm going to pay for a water test. Hopefully someone on here will be able to prescribe a solution. I'm keeping my eye on the "extract twang" possibility too.

Once you know the make up of your water you will be able to determine what to do.

Either way this is worth the effort. Good luck. Hope to see some updates once you get things figured out.

I used a friends test kit and determined my water was just too off to work with. I tested another friends well water who had said I could get water at his house and his was too off and I'd have to cut it with distilled water in order to use it. Too much hassle. I got an RO system after having used bottled water for a couple years. The RO system will pay for itself in about a year and I have a blank slate to start with as far as my water goes.

 

[bradleypariah]

I'm wondering if I would be doing this forum a disservice if I added campden to my mash water. If I change two variables on my next brew day (going all grain and treating the water), we won't know if it was the campden solving the problem, or if I was sensitive to extract twang.

If I changed both of those variables and it was still there, further variables to look into would be the manganese, calcium, and/or iron.

 

[dyqik]

I'm wondering if I would be doing this forum a disservice if I added campden to my mash water. If I change two variables on my next brew day (going all grain and treating the water), we won't know if it was the campden solving the problem, or if I was sensitive to extract twang.

If I changed both of those variables and it was still there, further variables to look into would be the manganese, calcium, and/or iron.

Use the Campden. You can always go back and do an extract batch with Campden sometime when you don't have enough time for an all-grain batch. Meanwhile, you decrease your chances of wasting money on/having to drink a bad batch of beer.

 

[bradleypariah]

All this sounds like is you're getting co2 bite from trying the beer too soon [...] The proper name is "Carbonic Bite"

I hate to add to the clamor, but man, I do exactly the same thing you do and I've never had any problems. [...] My stout got carbolic bite real bad, but a week later it was perfect.

I still really think OP is just noticing the normal changes of conditioning and is tasting too often to appreciate the finished beer. Beer always changes in the keg, for everyone and it gets better with time (usually)

DING DING DINGGG!!!

We have a winner. I still have not made my first all-grain batch, nor have I made a beer with treated water. This is my last extract batch I had in the basement. It's been sitting down there for about a month. I promised myself not to taste it immediately after kegging.

Since I recently reported that my previous beer was growing on me after 96 hours, I waited a full four days after kegging to try this batch. No sneaking sips, no nothing. I did let some sediment blow off yesterday, and I smelled the glass, but I poured it down the drain.

Dudes, I'm an idiot. I effing love this beer. I'm not saying that drunkenly; I'm only a couple sips in. This is nearly the exact same recipe as the previous beer, only with added Willamette hops, and there's no gin-soaked oak in this one. This beer has no noticeable trace of the flavor trend I've been experiencing ever since I started kegging 2-3 years ago. If I bought this beer from the grocer, I'd be pleased as punch.

I feel super dumb. I just needed patience on the last step. I'm good at not kegging too early, I just have seen so much content out there about burst carbing, I thought it was okay to do. Turns out I'm really sensitive to it, and I was killing my kegs (with help of course) before a lot of them ever had a chance to absorb the CO2 and get good.

I still bought campden and gypsum, and I have everything I need (minus needing one replacement wall for my grain hopper) for my first all-grain batch, which will hopefully be boiled this weekend. Hopefully I'll come up with a brand new batch of questions, and I'll be quite thankful this forum is here.

Thank you all so much for weighing in with your thoughts. Overcoming this one simple, stupid thing has given me a world of confidence. Cheers!

 

[Revvy]

Yeah, my experience, especially with new brewers, is that the simplest answer is usually right... and usually the answer is one of the many forms of green beer.... I've been answering brewers questions for over a decade... and most of them are just variations of the same theme.. lack of patience, lack of letting the beer come into it's own.

People want to over analyze, over complicate, put forward their "pet" answers which may have been valid for them, BUT often in my experience the clue and the answer are often right within the original post. Carbolic bite is one of the most common things that come up here... whether it's a first time brewer sticking his nose over the arilock of their first batch and panicking at the "sour, metallic" smell their smelling, to leaning into their keezer and almost fainting, to what you described.... this ain't the first rodeo with this issue.

Glad it worked out.

 

[Revvy]

Oh and don't stop using campden, it's one of the best things we can do as a brewer, especially if we DON'T want to mess with using RO water and playing with water chemistry... it's cheap, easy to do, and can't hurt. So use it.

 

[zifferent]

Ok, everyone has had their pet problem and solution aired and here's one that is different. Use star san pre-ferment and iodophor post-ferment.

Star San has a soda-like phosphoric acid flavor that is hard to shake post-ferment, but yeast love pre-ferment. Iodine flavor is minimal as it dissipates over time, and may come off as a metallic flavor, but I haven't noticed it.

Seriously, a no-rinse formula of iodophor is the way to go.

 

[leesmith]

DING DING DINGGG!!!



We have a winner. I still have not made my first all-grain batch, nor have I made a beer with treated water. This is my last extract batch I had in the basement. It's been sitting down there for about a month. I promised myself not to taste it immediately after kegging.



Since I recently reported that my previous beer was growing on me after 96 hours, I waited a full four days after kegging to try this batch. No sneaking sips, no nothing. I did let some sediment blow off yesterday, and I smelled the glass, but I poured it down the drain.



Dudes, I'm an idiot. I effing love this beer. I'm not saying that drunkenly; I'm only a couple sips in. This is nearly the exact same recipe as the previous beer, only with added Willamette hops, and there's no gin-soaked oak in this one. This beer has no noticeable trace of the flavor trend I've been experiencing ever since I started kegging 2-3 years ago. If I bought this beer from the grocer, I'd be pleased as punch.



I feel super dumb. I just needed patience on the last step. I'm good at not kegging too early, I just have seen so much content out there about burst carbing, I thought it was okay to do. Turns out I'm really sensitive to it, and I was killing my kegs (with help of course) before a lot of them ever had a chance to absorb the CO2 and get good.



I still bought campden and gypsum, and I have everything I need (minus needing one replacement wall for my grain hopper) for my first all-grain batch, which will hopefully be boiled this weekend. Hopefully I'll come up with a brand new batch of questions, and I'll be quite thankful this forum is here.



Thank you all so much for weighing in with your thoughts. Overcoming this one simple, stupid thing has given me a world of confidence. Cheers!

Would like to hear some updates if you have brewed again?
Any changes?

 

[Trail]

Ok, everyone has had their pet problem and solution aired and here's one that is different. Use star san pre-ferment and iodophor post-ferment.

Star San has a soda-like phosphoric acid flavor that is hard to shake post-ferment, but yeast love pre-ferment. Iodine flavor is minimal as it dissipates over time, and may come off as a metallic flavor, but I haven't noticed it.

Seriously, a no-rinse formula of iodophor is the way to go.

Oh, that's interesting. So you'd say for final sanitization of a keg, iodophor's the way to go?

How long does it taste the flavor to dissipate? Will it dissipate if you pour the beer in and pressurize before it goes?