Off Flavor

[Ogri]

When was the last time you took the spigot off the bottling bucket, disassembled it into its component parts, cleaned then sanitized before re-assembling?

 

[JeffoC6]

What about the caps you're using? Have you only used one batch of caps for all the batches you bottled?

No, I've bottled 30+ (1 gallon) batches with several different caps that I've purchased

 

[JeffoC6]

Its probably the bottles or the bottling bucket, that's what it was for me.
Run the bottles through the dish washer each time on sterilize and replace your b bucket and bottle filler.

So you're saying a 3 hour soak in B-Brite wouldn't clean them out thoroughly enough?

I don't use a bottling bucket. I rack from my primary to another clean, sanitized, 1 gallon glass carboy. Then from there I bottle using my autosiphon.

 

[JeffoC6]

When was the last time you took the spigot off the bottling bucket, disassembled it into its component parts, cleaned then sanitized before re-assembling?

I don't use a bottling bucket. I rack from my primary to another clean and sanitized 1-gallon glass carboy. From there I bottle.

 

[duboman]

Are you filling the bottles from the bottom up with a wand so you are not aerating the beer?

Do you see any bubbles in the hose as you bottle?

 

[danno_lee]

I just tasted my recent IPA. I hopped the hell out of it, used distilled water with a little bit of calcium chloride added (thanks Yooper!), was an absolute freak about santitation, have a temperature controlled fermentation chamber, that I kept at 62 degrees (US-05) the entire duration of fermentation, and at bottling, used distilled water to mix my priming sugar with. I'm STILL getting a weird off flavor. See below for the explination of this flavor. Why is this happening to me? I'm using distilled water!

I haven't brewed 1 single batch of homebrew that made me say "wow" since I started this hobby over a year ago. I'm about to give up...

"My homebrew tastes like I'm burping vinyl tubing and plastic bags" Caused by Chlorophenol

What might have happened?
Using bleach to clean your brewing equipment or having highly chlorinated tap water where you live is most likely the culprate for homebrew with a 'plasticy' finish..particularly noticeable when you burp.

Preventative steps / options:
1) Avoid chlorinated water by using distilled water from your local grocer
2) Pre-treat chlorinated tap water by boiling for 15-20 minutes then cooling. This will evaporate chlorine and remove excess amounts from the water.
3) Pre-treat water with a Campden Tablet (potassium metabisulfite). The Campden tablets act as a catalyst for Chlorophenol removal.

Distilled water is no good for brewing, as the distillation process robs the water of essential elements needed for beer. If you are not satisfied with your local tap water, and are going out of your way to pay for distilled, it would beige beneficial in the future to pay an extra dollar for spring water.

*edit* this is misinformed tripe. My apologies.

 

[JeffoC6]

Distilled water is no good for brewing, as the distillation process robs the water of essential elements needed for beer. If you are not satisfied with your local tap water, and are going out of your way to pay for distilled, it would beige beneficial in the future to pay an extra dollar for spring water.

That's what started this whole thing. I never used tap water, I went right for spring water, and had the same thing I'm talking about now. Yooper advised me that I should start using distilled (or RO) and add some calcium chloride to it to "build it back up," which is what I've been doing.

So basically spring water doesn't work, tap water won't work, and distilled water with calcium chloride hasn't worked.

 

[JeffoC6]

Are you filling the bottles from the bottom up with a wand so you are not aerating the beer?

Do you see any bubbles in the hose as you bottle?

I'm very good with the autosiphon, so I never have any bubbles/aeration. I also fill from the bottom up with the bottling wand, yes.

 

[JeffoC6]

Just had a though. When I dry hop, I boil my hop bag in tap water for approx. 3 minutes, then I shake out all the water and let it soak in my distilled water/starsan solution for a few minutes.

Could the boiling in regular tap water bring anything into the fold here?

 

[duboman]

Just had a though. When I dry hop, I boil my hop bag in tap water for approx. 3 minutes, then I shake out all the water and let it soak in my distilled water/starsan solution for a few minutes.

Could the boiling in regular tap water bring anything into the fold here?

No and disregard the other comment about distilled water not being good, it's a misinformed comment as you are building up as per Yoop's suggestion

At this point I think you really need to reevaluate your off flavor as we have all chimed in with everything pertaining to phenols and it seems like its something else.....

Either that or you need to contact the provider of the water you're buying and verify it has no chlorine or chloramines in it.

 

[JeffoC6]

No and disregard the other comment about distilled water not being good, it's a misinformed comment as you are building up as per Yoop's suggestion

At this point I think you really need to reevaluate your off flavor as we have all chimed in with everything pertaining to phenols and it seems like its something else.....

Either that or you need to contact the provider of the water you're buying and verify it has no chlorine or chloramines in it.

The only way I can describe it is that when I burp it tastes like plastic. I've googled that and many people have the exact same thing, and it's due to chlorine in water. I dont' know what else it could be

 

[duboman]

I agree that's what it sounds like but I'll be damned if this thread hasn't covered everything involved so contact the supplier of the water you are buying

 

[Brewskii]

My opinion is your drinking the beer too green. I have been brewing a long time and I have noticed around 5 weeks in the bottle beers get much better. Those that taste good earlier, have strong flavors that mask the taste of green beer like IPAs or have unique yeast based flavor like wheats.
More dark malt based beers (porters/stouts) and also higher gravity beers(Belgians) ; the better they will taste with age.
There are exceptions and it took me a while to find a sweet spot for the beers I like. If you are brewing American ales, not too dark, not too strong, set one or more in a closet for amonth or two and try it again. Im betting the taste your experiencing is from the yeast.

 

[MagicSmoker]

It seems the sanitation part of your process is fine, but what about the rest of the process? That is, do you mainly brew with extract and steeped specialty grains, BIAB or 3 tier all grain? Have you checked the pH of your water? Of the mash (and sparge), if applicable? Like you, I was getting a weird off flavor (astringent and faintly soapy) in each of my batches, and also like you I was meticulous about sanitation, temperature control, and trying different recipes, all to no avail.

I have moved from extract + specialty grains to partial mash to all grain BIAB and each time I got this weird flavor, and I was just about to throw in the towel and resume buying $10 six packs from Total Wine (wait - I never stopped doing that?!) when I decided wth, might as well spend another $60 and get a pH meter. What a surprise to find out that both the bottled spring water and the activated carbon filtered water from my tap were decidedly alkaline (pH of 8.0 to 8.3)! I bought that dubious "5.2" mash additive (NOT RECOMMENDED!) for my next batch and when I measured the pH of the mash it was 6.8!?! I hurriedly added a couple tsp of "5.2" and that did bring the pH down to 5.2, but when I sparged the grain bag (I use the dunk in a separate pot of sparge water method of BIAB) the pH there was 7.5! Everything I've read has said that letting pH rise above 6 during mashing or sparging results in tannin extraction, and tannins are polyphenols... see the connection here: polyphenols can be turned into chlorophenols by the HCl in your stomach.

So, check the pH of your mash/sparge/steeping water, whichever applies.

 

[danno_lee]

No and disregard the other comment about distilled water not being good, it's a misinformed comment as you are building up as per Yoop's suggestion

At this point I think you really need to reevaluate your off flavor as we have all chimed in with everything pertaining to phenols and it seems like its something else.....

Either that or you need to contact the provider of the water you're buying and verify it has no chlorine or chloramines in it.

You're right, I was misinformed. Many apologies, I was going off of information I got from a food scientist, so I didn't doubt the accuracy. Here is relatively good proof of my error.

http://homebrewdude.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/can-you-brew-with-distilled-water/

 

[JeffoC6]

My opinion is your drinking the beer too green. I have been brewing a long time and I have noticed around 5 weeks in the bottle beers get much better. Those that taste good earlier, have strong flavors that mask the taste of green beer like IPAs or have unique yeast based flavor like wheats.
More dark malt based beers (porters/stouts) and also higher gravity beers(Belgians) ; the better they will taste with age.
There are exceptions and it took me a while to find a sweet spot for the beers I like. If you are brewing American ales, not too dark, not too strong, set one or more in a closet for amonth or two and try it again. Im betting the taste your experiencing is from the yeast.

Some of the beers i brewed were fresh. Some were in bottles for 2 months. One was in bottles for a year. They all have the same off flavor. Plus, aren't we supposed to be drinking hop bomb ipa's as fresh as possible?