Problem with color after bottling

[brebersold]

My most recent batch was an IPA that had the most beautiful color after the fermentation and dry hopping were complete (calculated MCU at 8.5). I tried it on bottling day and everything, flavor, aroma, and color were what I wanted. I tried a bottle about a week later and everything was identical and I was still happy.
After about two weeks after bottling I began noticing a significant change in color especially, but also in the aroma and flavor. I don't want to use the color grey as to how it was changing but that is the closest way to describe it that I can come up with. It is much darker and opaque. When I empty the sediment at the end of a pour I really see the grey color.
I've brewed my share of contaminated beers and the flavor and aroma do not remind me of a contamination issue. But it is significantly different. It is not a bad beer but very much degraded from what it started out.

Two days before bottling I soak the bottles in a bleach bath over night. The next day I take the brush to them, and then soak them in a bleach bath over night again. On bottling day I thoroughly rinse them out, then soak them in star san for two min, then place them on a sanitized bottling tree. I boil the caps. I added 1/2 cup corn sugar to the bottling bucket.

Any advice would be extremely welcomed.

As a side question, can the caps be soaked in the star san instead of boiled?

 

[PHDrunk]

Personally, I wouldn't use bleach to clean anything my beer touches. I've heard tell others do, but I would personally worry about residue. It seems conceivable to me that bleach could react over time to give off colors and flavors, though I have no evidence to back that up.

I would recommend either PBW or Oxiclean Free to clean all your brewing equipment and Star San for sanitization. Star San should be fine for your bottle caps.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[ajdelange]

If by becoming darker and opaque you mean that it has become turbid then the problem is infection and there isn't much you can do at this point.

 

[Yooper]

Sounds like oxidation. The loss of aroma from the hops is common, and that's why IPAs are drunk fresh, but the change in flavor and color points to oxidation.

Oxidation will get worse with time, so if the beer is drinkable now, drink up!

As long as you rinsed the bleach VERY well, so that no odor of bleach remained at all, it's not an issue.

No need to boil the caps- just a quick soak in sanitizer is more than enough.

 

[brebersold]

Thanks.

I opened another one today and it was fine, exactly what it is supposed to look like, so it isn't happening in every bottle.

 

[ajdelange]

Definitely sounds like infection. You are lucky it didn't hit all the bottles.

 

[flars]

Is the level of carbonation the same in a not so good bottle as the good bottle? I wonder if boiling the caps could have weakened the effectiveness of the seals of some caps allowing oxidation.

 

[FourSeasonAngler]

I'd wager oxidation as well. Do you have access to a tank of CO2?

I battled the exact same issue on every beer I bottled straight from primary to bottling bucket (about 7 batches).

Once I started kegging, these issues disappeared. After a few fully kegged batches turning out great I decided to bottle a small percentage of the beer before it went into the keg as a test on my next batch of IPA.

On three 12 oz bottles I flushed exceptionally cleaned and sanitized bottles with CO2 and pushed beer into them using CO2 pressure. For the other 3 beers I bottled as I normally would have without flushing the bottles with CO2 first.

All 6 bottles received a measured dose of corn sugar dissolved in boiled water that should have given me 2.4 vol/Co2. At 4 weeks, 8 weeks & 12 weeks conditioning in my pantry at 72F +/- I opened bottles to compare taste, aroma, color.

The results on week 4 were almost inconclusive but weeks 8 and 12 were night and day. The beers that had been kept from oxygen through bottling remained clean, clear and crisp with only a slight loss of hop aroma and a very mellowed hop taste after 12 weeks. The "possibly" oxidized bottled on week 8 were very noticeably a different color. The original beer was a slightly orangish-gold with good clarity but the O2 bottles had lost the orange and gold and started to turn a murky hazy brown. All hop aroma was lost by week 12, and the hop flavor had been muddled to the point where is was only an indiscernible general bitterness. The light biscuity malt background flavor of the original beer that complimented things so well had transitioned to a very earthy and dull breadiness that had zero appeal.

*edit* Also I did notice the dark sediment in the "O2" bottles in weeks 4, 8 & 12.

Now, I know folks that bottle condition all of their beers and have no problem with these off-flavors, so maybe it was something in my process that cause MY issues. However, nailing it down to the presence of O2 in my bottles and in the vessel while transferring/bottling was a huge revelation.

Do some research on bottling systems for commercial applications and you will see that good breweries go to extensive lengths to keep O2 away from their beer post fermentation.

 

[flars]

I'd wager oxidation as well. Do you have access to a tank of CO2?

I battled the exact same issue on every beer I bottled straight from primary to bottling bucket (about 7 batches).

Once I started kegging, these issues disappeared. After a few fully kegged batches turning out great I decided to bottle a small percentage of the beer before it went into the keg as a test on my next batch of IPA.

On three 12 oz bottles I flushed exceptionally cleaned and sanitized bottles with CO2 and pushed beer into them using CO2 pressure. For the other 3 beers I bottled as I normally would have without flushing the bottles with CO2 first.

All 6 bottles received a measured dose of corn sugar dissolved in boiled water that should have given me 2.4 vol/Co2. At 4 weeks, 8 weeks & 12 weeks conditioning in my pantry at 72F +/- I opened bottles to compare taste, aroma, color.

The results on week 4 were almost inconclusive but weeks 8 and 12 were night and day. The beers that had been kept from oxygen through bottling remained clean, clear and crisp with only a slight loss of hop aroma and a very mellowed hop taste after 12 weeks. The "possibly" oxidized bottled on week 8 were very noticeably a different color. The original beer was a slightly orangish-gold with good clarity but the O2 bottles had lost the orange and gold and started to turn a murky hazy brown. All hop aroma was lost by week 12, and the hop flavor had been muddled to the point where is was only an indiscernible general bitterness. The light biscuity malt background flavor of the original beer that complimented things so well had transitioned to a very earthy and dull breadiness that had zero appeal.

*edit* Also I did notice the dark sediment in the "O2" bottles in weeks 4, 8 & 12.

Now, I know folks that bottle condition all of their beers and have no problem with these off-flavors, so maybe it was something in my process that cause MY issues. However, nailing it down to the presence of O2 in my bottles and in the vessel while transferring/bottling was a huge revelation.

Do some research on bottling systems for commercial applications and you will see that good breweries go to extensive lengths to keep O2 away from their beer post fermentation.

Do you have any ideas on how air might be getting introduced into your bottles? During bottle conditioning, do you tip your bottles to keep the yeast in suspension? I did this once and oxidized nearly a full batch of red ale.

 

[FourSeasonAngler]

Do you have any ideas on how air might be getting introduced into your bottles? During bottle conditioning, do you tip your bottles to keep the yeast in suspension? I did this once and oxidized nearly a full batch of red ale.

It was either during my transfer, racking or bottling.

 

[PHDrunk]

(Off topic, sorry)

@FourSeasonAngler, how do you fill your bottles with CO2? Do you need a fixture separate from a typical quick disconnect?

 

[brebersold]

The carbonation seems pretty close to the same level on all of the beers, however, after opening some of the brews I have noticed that some of the seals on the caps have deteriorated slightly.

FourSeasonAngler- you seem to be describing what I am witnessing so I'll check my technique on transferring to bottling bucket and into bottle to make sure no air is in the tubing and start soaking caps in star san, not boiling

 

[troy2000]

Whether it really makes a difference or not I don't know, but I've always used oxygen barrier caps when I bottle. They're only about a buck more per bag than the plain ones, if I remember right.

Once in a while I get ambitious and dunk them in sanitizer, but most of the time I don't bother. Out of maybe a dozen batches over the last year I've had one infected bottle - and it tasted wonderful. Wish I had thought to save the dregs...

 

[FourSeasonAngler]

(Off topic, sorry)

@FourSeasonAngler, how do you fill your bottles with CO2? Do you need a fixture separate from a typical quick disconnect?

I have swivel nuts on my QDs so I just unscrew the QD and put the end of the CO2 hose with the swivel nut in the bottle, give it a 4 to 5 second blast of CO2 @ 3psi, then fill the bottle.

I know it doesn't remove 100% of the O2, but for sure there is less O2 in there after flushing than before.