Good taste at kegging, but not after aging and drinkin...

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One more tip- when you take them apart, do it one at a time. Put the stuff that comes out of the "in" side on one side of your sink, and the "out" stuff on the other. They look the same, but they are not! If you do more than one keg, you'll be likely to mix up a part or two, and then you'll have so many problems you'll hate me for telling you to take them apart! The "out" posts and the "in" posts are ever so slightly different, too, and they are not interchangeable.

So, I put the "out" stuff in a different bowl than the "in" parts, and just lay the long diptube on the counter next to the "out" parts. It sounds silly, but trust me on this!
 
One more tip- when you take them apart, do it one at a time. Put the stuff that comes out of the "in" side on one side of your sink, and the "out" stuff on the other. They look the same, but they are not! If you do more than one keg, you'll be likely to mix up a part or two, and then you'll have so many problems you'll hate me for telling you to take them apart! The "out" posts and the "in" posts are ever so slightly different, too, and they are not interchangeable.

So, I put the "out" stuff in a different bowl than the "in" parts, and just lay the long diptube on the counter next to the "out" parts. It sounds silly, but trust me on this!

Copy that. Sounds like a good idea. I am hoping this is my problem and not the water I have been using, although dfohio said that this was his problem exactly.
 
So, I put the "out" stuff in a different bowl than the "in" parts, and just lay the long diptube on the counter next to the "out" parts. It sounds silly, but trust me on this!

I conserve a bit more water/sanitizer than Yooper and just do one post at a time in the same bowl...

Good advice though! Don't get em mixed up, attaching a gas QD to a liquid post is very annoying.
 
This is kind of reviving a dead topic, but I'm curious if my (or anyone else's) suggestion solved the OP's problem. Any news, zinger?
 
The beer is next on deck. I did check the plug valves on one other keg and they were clean. I shot CO2 in the top of the one that's on deck to clear it of oxygen, so we will see what the problem is here shortly. I am probably about a week away from tapping this and will keep updating as we go. I still need to take the top off and see if ladling it out into a glass yields different results.
 
Not sure......I would try a batch age it in a secondary instead of the keg. Force carb it instead of using the sugar. Just leave it at 10 psi for a week to two weeks and see if there is a difference. I never use priming solution whe I have CO2

+1 on this....... why mess with the sugar when C02 is available. I do 10g batches and usually bottle half and keg half. When I rack to keg I immediately purge any O2 then condition at 15 psi for 5-7 days and then drink it up.
Good luck:mug:
 
Update - I am still having this problem. Kegs are clean. Poppets are clean. Water is natural spring water. I blanketed the top airspace with CO2. This was my last extract batch with spring water before moving to a filtered home water setup.

I am not sure if it's good practice, but I put everything, including the trub, in the fermenter. Is this bad practice? Like I said, it tastes very good at transfer from the secondary to the keg, but not from the keg. Ideas?

Also, I might try and stop using priming sugar and just force carb with CO2 for a week. Ideas?
 
I find a hard time believing it is the priming sugar. What are you using to clean the kegs before sanitizing? I soured a couple beers (not on purpose) and had an infection in a secondary that took the flavor out of another batch before I realized that sanitizing is not the end all if you don't start with clean surfaces in all your containers. An overnight soak in a PBW solution usually does the trick for any container. I don't think just using a brush and hand cleaning does the trick. If there are still bits of stuff stuck inside the keg, Star San will only temporarily sanitize the surface. Eventually some bugs can make their way back out from the insides of the dirt after soaking in beer for a few days.
 
I think one contributor to your problem is you are aging your beers far too long. If you do things right, you should be able to drink an ale with a gravity less than 1.055 two to three weeks after boiling. I am convinced that many homebrewers are overaging their low to moderate OG beers.

The last beer I made was an American pale ale (OG = 52, about 35 IBUs) that I brewed on Dec 28, racked into a corny keg and carbed to 2.0 volumes of CO2 on January 5, transfered to my keg freezer and started drinking it on January 9. The beer was still slightly cloudy but tasted great. This was less than 2 weeks from grain to glass. Two weeks later it still tastes great. I took it to my local homebrew club meeting this Tuesday, and got good reviews of it.

I don't normally rush it that fast, but I wanted to push the timeline to an extreme to see what it would be like in that short a time. I would suggest you try leaving your beer in primary for 2 weeks, then rack straight to a keg, purge the air with CO2, carb it up, cold crash it if you can in a fridge or outside depending on you climate, then put it in your serving fridge a week after cold crashing started. I think you'll be pleased at how it tastes.
 
I would look into your water source, or over aging. I find that it should carb at room temp in two weeks and after about a month, they should be perfect to taste. If you are naturally carbing your kegs, then do be sure to seat the lid and purge the headspace O2, but otherwise, the remaining O2 should be consumed by the yeast.

Something that I find myself doing as of late is to rinse my kegs, boil all of the pieces and then add boiling water inside the keg and shake it with the lid on, but no posts attached. This is sure to kill off anything attempting to live in there that sanitizer might miss. Then I use my Idophor sanitizer and shake it all around. Then I make sure (although it is no rinse) to remove all remnants of the Idophor and then again with the boiling water. I do this to ease my mind, to kill everything and to make sure that in the end, I have a completely broken down and cleaned keg.

To that end, it really sounds to me that you just don't like beer. Send it to me, I will be sure to drink it up for you at no expense. :D
 
Have you tried getting a new racking can and siphon tubing? If could be happening during the racking process.
 
Are you using tap water when you boil your priming sugar? I don't know if that little amount of water(chloramines?) will give you off flavors or not. But beers I brewed before I filtered my water turned out nasty.

You might want to consider changing sanitizers for a batch, maybe you have a critter that's immune to what your using.
 
I find a hard time believing it is the priming sugar. What are you using to clean the kegs before sanitizing? I soured a couple beers (not on purpose) and had an infection in a secondary that took the flavor out of another batch before I realized that sanitizing is not the end all if you don't start with clean surfaces in all your containers. An overnight soak in a PBW solution usually does the trick for any container. I don't think just using a brush and hand cleaning does the trick. If there are still bits of stuff stuck inside the keg, Star San will only temporarily sanitize the surface. Eventually some bugs can make their way back out from the insides of the dirt after soaking in beer for a few days.

I am using the brewclean one step sanitizer. I think a lot of people use this and I haven't heard of many problems.
 
I think one contributor to your problem is you are aging your beers far too long. If you do things right, you should be able to drink an ale with a gravity less than 1.055 two to three weeks after boiling. I am convinced that many homebrewers are overaging their low to moderate OG beers.

The last beer I made was an American pale ale (OG = 52, about 35 IBUs) that I brewed on Dec 28, racked into a corny keg and carbed to 2.0 volumes of CO2 on January 5, transfered to my keg freezer and started drinking it on January 9. The beer was still slightly cloudy but tasted great. This was less than 2 weeks from grain to glass. Two weeks later it still tastes great. I took it to my local homebrew club meeting this Tuesday, and got good reviews of it.

I don't normally rush it that fast, but I wanted to push the timeline to an extreme to see what it would be like in that short a time. I would suggest you try leaving your beer in primary for 2 weeks, then rack straight to a keg, purge the air with CO2, carb it up, cold crash it if you can in a fridge or outside depending on you climate, then put it in your serving fridge a week after cold crashing started. I think you'll be pleased at how it tastes.

My latest beer I just transferred to the secondary will be going into the keg this weekend. I am going to test out this theory and see if it could be the case. I always thought that you aged them for 6-8 weeks though for the best, non-green taste...
 
I would look into your water source, or over aging. I find that it should carb at room temp in two weeks and after about a month, they should be perfect to taste. If you are naturally carbing your kegs, then do be sure to seat the lid and purge the headspace O2, but otherwise, the remaining O2 should be consumed by the yeast.

Something that I find myself doing as of late is to rinse my kegs, boil all of the pieces and then add boiling water inside the keg and shake it with the lid on, but no posts attached. This is sure to kill off anything attempting to live in there that sanitizer might miss. Then I use my Idophor sanitizer and shake it all around. Then I make sure (although it is no rinse) to remove all remnants of the Idophor and then again with the boiling water. I do this to ease my mind, to kill everything and to make sure that in the end, I have a completely broken down and cleaned keg.

To that end, it really sounds to me that you just don't like beer. Send it to me, I will be sure to drink it up for you at no expense. :D

I love beer more than you can imagine, LOL. We are all members of the same pitfall here...

I will try cleaning the kegs a little better next time. I am purging the headspace of O2 when kegging. I think on this latest batch, I am going to force carb with no priming sugar...
 
Have you tried getting a new racking can and siphon tubing? If could be happening during the racking process.

I use an auto siphon that I take apart and clean every time. I don't think it is this, but it could be happening during the racking process...
 
I'm most interested in the GLBC Christmas Ale clone recipe... :D

Lbs. Type
1.00 GR127B Cara Red 20
0.75 GR32B Crystal 60 (Muntons)
0.25 GR30B Chocolate Malt (Muntons)
2.00 Clover Honey
6.00 Briess DME Pilsen

Weight (oz) Hop AA AAU Boil Time Utilization IBU
1 Nugget / 12.8/ 12.8/ 20/ 0.08/ 15.4
1 Spalt / 1.5/ 1.5/ 2/ 0.011/ 0.3
1 Galena / 14.1/14.1/ 60/ 0.133/ 28

US-05.

Add cinnamon and nutmeg extract at secondary...
 
Are you using tap water when you boil your priming sugar? I don't know if that little amount of water(chloramines?) will give you off flavors or not. But beers I brewed before I filtered my water turned out nasty.

You might want to consider changing sanitizers for a batch, maybe you have a critter that's immune to what your using.

I am using spring water when I boil for priming. My first beer with home filtered water is on deck next, so we will see if that's the problem.

I really think it's my priming sugar or water...
 
I wish you luck finding it. I had a couple of kegs do that and it was very frustrating. I ripped down the offending keg and soaked everything starsan overnight, then I soaked it in iodophor overnight, when I kegged my next batch I sanitized as normal. The nasties haven't come back so I think the double tap finished them.
 
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