Bottled Water quality?

[direwolf4]

so i recently tasted a friend, not a BMC drinker, on my Extra Pale Ale that i made from extract syrup and he detected 'ammonia or chlorine' in the finish.

a few others were unable to detect the 'issue' and i cant find it either.

i use starsan and my sanitizing techniques are considered quite good.

perhaps the issue is the top-off water i use when i brew with extract?

i use Kirkland (Costco brand) bottled water as my top-off water,
is that OK?

 

[llazy_llama]

I think other people have used Kirkland without noticing chlorine off flavors. I'm not 100% sure about that though, as I belive Kirkland is just carbon filtered municipal tap water. Try doing a few small batches and tweaking things until you get rid of the flavor. My guess it that if you switched to distilled water, you'd probably be fine.

Since you say you use the bottled water for top-off, does that mean you're using tap water for the boil? If so, know that any chloramine in the tap water (which many cities use) will not be removed by boiling. To get rid of that, you'll have to use something like campden tablets.

Personally, I think your boil water is probably the culprit here.

 

[direwolf4]

denver tap in the boil...

 

[llazy_llama]

Bam! Am I good, or am I good?

Yep, replace that Denver tap water with bottled water, and call it a day. Either that or invest in campden tablets, whichever is cheaper/easier for you.

 

[direwolf4]

thanks llama...

 

[AFAJ Brew Guy]

so i recently tasted a friend, not a BMC drinker, on my Extra Pale Ale that i made from extract syrup and he detected 'ammonia or chlorine' in the finish.

No else seemed to notice that he was tasting his friend, that there it iself could be the issue

Anyway glad you solved it.

 

[llazy_llama]

No else seemed to notice that he was tasting his friend, that there it iself could be the issue

Anyway glad you solved it.

Hey, before I got married, I had plenty of friends I didn't mind tasting.