Big fault in a couple batches. Don't know what it is/what caused it.

[WrathsU]

The fault I am noticing smells and tastes strongly of hose water on a summer day when you first turn it on. I don't use hose water and I've had the majority of my batches come out smelling/tasting fine. Some information that might help diagnose what I am dealing with below.

1) My teacher in a home brew class brought in a beer with a fault that he called DMS. It smelled/tasted like what I am experiencing only not as pronounced.

2) I temperature ferment around 65 in a refrigerator that is holding its temperature steady.

3) I've brewed ~12-15 batches this year and 2 of them have had this fault to an extent where it is undrinkable, the other ones were fine.

4) I've given the first faulty batch (wheat pils)over 6 months to try and clear up to no avail. The second batch (oktoberfest fermented at 50F) is a couple months old and is still faulty as well.

5) I harvested American Ale II yeast from a pale ale that came out as my best batch of the year. I went to pitch it into a brown recently and upon smelling the first bottle it contained said fault. When I opened up a second bottle it smelled fine, worked fine. These bottles were harvested from the same batch and stored in the same conditions for the same amount of time.

6) Wort going into the carboy smells/tastes fine, beer coming out does not. I use diluted bleach to sanitize carboys and make sure to rinse thoroughly. This is the only thing I can think of that might be causing it other than under-sanitizing.

Thanks for your help!

 

[BryceL]

My first thought that comes to mind with DMS is, are you getting a steady boil consistently on your batches? Perhaps one a couple of the batches you didn't get a good enough boil going to drive off the DMS. The other thing that stands out is with the pils and the oktoberfest. You say you ferment at 65, is this for all your beers. If you did an oktoberfest with lager yeast at these temps you will get some off flavors (esters, not DMS). My last thought is the water. Do you use the same water from batch to batch?

edit: nevermind on the temperature comment. I just saw that you fermented at 50.

 

[cjb]

Did both the Pils and Oktoberfest use Pilsner malt as the base, while your other beers used 2-row? Did you do a vigorous 90-minute boil on those beers? If the fault is DMS, that could be the explanation.

 

[mcarb]

Do you boil with the lid off?

 

[bottlebomber]

Im more suspicious of the bleach water than anything else. Bleach can be very difficult to remove and even a little can ruin a batch of beer. Why not invest in some Starsan and see if the problem persists.

 

[android]

Im more suspicious of the bleach water than anything else. Bleach can be very difficult to remove and even a little can ruin a batch of beer. Why not invest in some Starsan and see if the problem persists.

i was thinking the same thing. chlorine in water can lead to plastic/bandaid type flavor.

 

[cjb]

Oh yeah - that was the other thing that stood out to me. Lose the bleach...a bottle of Star-san is cheap compared to a ruined batch of beer.

 

[bottlebomber]

i was thinking the same thing. chlorine in water can lead to plastic/bandaid type flavor.

That's the typical discription, but it can be more of a strange spicy/clovey flavor or sometimes a flavor that's harder to describe. Before I filtered my water I got some really hard to describe flavors, and usually just got the "it's infected" treatment, after I made the one simple change of eliminating chlorine from my brewday my beers have been clean as a whistle.

 

[WrathsU]

Did both the Pils and Oktoberfest use Pilsner malt as the base, while your other beers used 2-row? Did you do a vigorous 90-minute boil on those beers? If the fault is DMS, that could be the explanation.

The pils base malt was pilsner and the oktoberfest was 5lb vienna, 3lb munich, 2.5lb pils. Neither had a 90 minute boil, I used a 60min boil

Do you boil with the lid off?

Yes.

Im more suspicious of the bleach water than anything else. Bleach can be very difficult to remove and even a little can ruin a batch of beer. Why not invest in some Starsan and see if the problem persists.

That's the typical discription, but it can be more of a strange spicy/clovey flavor or sometimes a flavor that's harder to describe. Before I filtered my water I got some really hard to describe flavors, and usually just got the "it's infected" treatment, after I made the one simple change of eliminating chlorine from my brewday my beers have been clean as a whistle.

I've been meaning to get some starsan but I usually forget/am too lazy to go get it on brewday. Looks like that will be my next buy before my brew. I use tap water that is pretty good as far as content goes according to my local water report and comparing that to other brewing water guidelines. I guess I should get a filter for the tap though?

 

[bottlebomber]

I guess I should get a filter for the tap though?

Absolutely. Especially if you are doing AG. For some reason I still don't understand you can get away with using unfiltered water when your doing extract brews (or at least not that I noticed) but when I switched to AG it became an issue. If you can't come up with a filter right away at the very least use one campden tablet when your heating your strike and another half in your sparge to eliminate chlorine from your water.

 

[casebrew]

With Lagers, aren't you suppoded to allow them to warm a bit for a few days to drive off the ummm stuff that tastes like ummm,,,,, sometihng or other? Maybe he is brewing too cool?

But I'm a room temperature brewer on So. Cal, dunno from lagers.

 

[WrathsU]

For the Oktoberfest it was a week fermenting at 50, slowly ramping up to 65 and then back down to 50 for a few weeks if I recall correctly.