Soapy after taste...

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Tagez

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Hello all,*

Just want to say thanks, this is a great website.

I'm currently on my fourth extract batch. My first two are finishing the third week bottle conditioning. One batch is still fermenting, the other is one week in the bottle. I tried all three beers tonight, two of them for the third time (Once a week for the last three weeks). One is a golden amber ale and the other is an IPA. When I tried them the first week they both had a soapy after taste. The amber had a problem with diacetyl, but that's another story! I wasn't worried due to it being the first week, I am now very worried. Both beers tasted just as bad as the first week but now with some carbonation. I followed all cleaning, rinsing, and sanitation steps as instructed (PBW, Starsan). *Boil went well, all times and temps right on. **

Here is a list of things I think I might have done wrong.*

Didn't aerate from pot to carboy. (just dumped)
Pitched yeast to hot. 1056 85º
Used Softened water (tap)
Bottled after only 2 weeks in *primary
Boiled only 3.5 gallon. Due to pot size at the time. *
Fermentation temp 63º-66º

Please help. *

* * *
 
Ahh, I remember these days. I started with Mr. Beer and soon moved up to extract brewing. But, no matter what I did, the beer was bland and "soupy" as you call it.

There are several things that lead to soupy beer. First, yeast give off a horrible flavor if they ferment at a higher temp than recommended. I don't know how long it took to get down to 65, but that could be one of the problems. If your yeast took off and fermented before it got down to 65, your done.

Next, the one problem ALL beginners make is allowing the beer to aerate. The guys that make awesome beer know that you cannot allow your beer to get near oxygen after fermentation. If you bottle, you need to shoot CO2 into the bottle prior to filling. You can accomplish this with a "beer gun" or just get a tank of co2 and fill the bottle prior to filling. Tanks and CO2 are cheap, so no one has the excuse not to get CO2. If your using a secondary, or a Korny Keg, fill with C02 prior to filling. Seriously, I belong to the biggest club in the US, and even though we talk about this all the time, a lot of people are too lazy to complete this step.

One other issue that hits home is the water supply. you mentioned "softened water," which is salty by nature. This is an ale killer. You never want salty water in a light ale. It will taste flat, soupy and generally awful. If you live in my area, north of Los Angeles, the Calcium Carbonates are 400 parts per billion, while normal households are 50parts per billion. This makes the water salty and hard. And, it is the ale killer. However, it tends to make dark beers warm and better.

To cure water problems, make sure that you add two filters; one at .50 microns for filtering hard particles and one that is made of carbon to filter out the chemicals. Taste the water and see if you would drink it without hesitation. As an example, I did the same and my water still tasted hard and like salty water. This taste is fine with dark beers and certain styles. However, because it created an unknown factor in the final beer, I had to switch to reverse osmosis filtered water. I go to the local grocery store and there is a machine out front that is reverse osmosis and it filters through a carbon filter.

Next, after using reverse osmosis water, you have to add back some chemistry. You'll have to read up for the details. You will need to do some research on what to add back, but I promise you, your beers will come out so much better than soup.

Good luck and if you follow the above suggestions, I promise you, your beers will come out good enough to compete.
 
put the bottles in a closet and taste them again in a month... or better yet 2.
 
the Calcium Carbonates are 400 parts per billion, while normal households are 50parts per billion. This makes the water salty and hard. And, it is the ale killer. However, it tends to make dark beers warm and better.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't chemical/mineral concentration in water measured in parts per million (ppm)? PPB would be a substantial difference. When it comes to home brewing, is it so delicate that it needs to be measure in parts per billion? I've never seen a practical application for PPB.
 
It's probably yeast autolysis, tastes kinda like beef stock when it's at the stage of being a mild off flavour as opposed to the really rank smell of a large body of autolysed yeast.
 
autolysis, the beer was only in the primary for 14 days. I'm thinking that's not the problem.
 
A quick google search mentions a lot of people can pick up a soapy flavor from some Hop. What was the recipe? Or at least what hop variety(s) did you use?
 
Ahh, I remember these days. I started with Mr. Beer and soon moved up to extract brewing. But, no matter what I did, the beer was bland and "soupy" as you call it.

There are several things that lead to soupy beer. First, yeast give off a horrible flavor if they ferment at a higher temp than recommended. I don't know how long it took to get down to 65, but that could be one of the problems. If your yeast took off and fermented before it got down to 65, your done.

Next, the one problem ALL beginners make is allowing the beer to aerate. The guys that make awesome beer know that you cannot allow your beer to get near oxygen after fermentation. If you bottle, you need to shoot CO2 into the bottle prior to filling. You can accomplish this with a "beer gun" or just get a tank of co2 and fill the bottle prior to filling. Tanks and CO2 are cheap, so no one has the excuse not to get CO2. If your using a secondary, or a Korny Keg, fill with C02 prior to filling. Seriously, I belong to the biggest club in the US, and even though we talk about this all the time, a lot of people are too lazy to complete this step.

One other issue that hits home is the water supply. you mentioned "softened water," which is salty by nature. This is an ale killer. You never want salty water in a light ale. It will taste flat, soupy and generally awful. If you live in my area, north of Los Angeles, the Calcium Carbonates are 400 parts per billion, while normal households are 50parts per billion. This makes the water salty and hard. And, it is the ale killer. However, it tends to make dark beers warm and better.

To cure water problems, make sure that you add two filters; one at .50 microns for filtering hard particles and one that is made of carbon to filter out the chemicals. Taste the water and see if you would drink it without hesitation. As an example, I did the same and my water still tasted hard and like salty water. This taste is fine with dark beers and certain styles. However, because it created an unknown factor in the final beer, I had to switch to reverse osmosis filtered water. I go to the local grocery store and there is a machine out front that is reverse osmosis and it filters through a carbon filter.

Next, after using reverse osmosis water, you have to add back some chemistry. You'll have to read up for the details. You will need to do some research on what to add back, but I promise you, your beers will come out so much better than soup.

Good luck and if you follow the above suggestions, I promise you, your beers will come out good enough to compete.


If this step of pourging bottles with CO2 is really necessary, I will quit this hobby right now. Seems like overkill to me.
 
Two of the things that I see as a problem are 1) not leaving the beer in the primary long enough and 2) using tap water. To solve the first problem, leave your beer on the yeast for a minimum of 3 weeks. That will give the yeast plenty of time to clean up after themselves. To solve the second problem, start using the Reverse Osmosis (RO) water as suggested above. Don't worry about the water chemistry part just yet since you're doing extract batches, since that part has already been done for you when they made the extract. Another plus of using RO water is that it doesn't have any chlorine or chloramine in it, which is toxic to yeast and causes them to give off off-flavors.

Pitching hot, isn't a big problem, as long as you are able to get it down to fermenting temps relatively quickly (within 2 hours). Oxyegenation (sp?) is also recommended before pitching your yeast, since the yeast need the oxygen to reproduce and solidify their cell walls while in the wort.

Check out the off-flavors section of How to Brew by John Palmer.
 
It is extreme overkill

your right, for some it's overkill. Try this instead; freeze your beer and bottles down as close to 32 degrees. Slowly poor beer into bottle with foam to the top rim and cap. Pouring quickly will aerate yor beer, which will make it taste dull and like cardboard, good luck.
 
Soapy flavors can have several origins:

Soap. Literally. If you used soap to clean your equipment and failed to rinse it thoroughly, the flavor can be present in your beer.

Hops. Galena, Hallertauer, Nugget, and other varieties have been blamed.

High fermentation temperatures. Yeast get angry and make your beer taste bad. More accurately, the yeast can produce fatty acids that make your beer taste like soap.

Trub decomposition. Supposedly letting a beer sit on the trub for too long can result in fatty acids being produced/released in the trub. John Palmer's book says this is a common cause of soapy flavors. I suspect the reasons stated above are more common.

Strange ingredients. Too broad a topic to describe here. Suffice it to say that if you put weird stuff in your beer, it may taste weird.

You mentioned using softened water. That may have had an undesirable effect, also. I can't say for sure that softened water would cause a soapy flavor. I do know that using salt based water softeners for brewing liquor is never recommended, usually due to the high sodium/potassium content of such water.
 
your right, for some it's overkill. Try this instead; freeze your beer and bottles down as close to 32 degrees. Slowly poor beer into bottle with foam to the top rim and cap. Pouring quickly will aerate yor beer, which will make it taste dull and like cardboard, good luck.

How is this related to putting co2 in the bottle? The way I see it (and I am still new to all this ) completely airating your beer then bottling it is not the same as having a little bit ofc oxygen in the headspace. Plus the co2 generated from the priming sugar will form a barrier from th oxygen in the headspace and the beer. So as long as you don't go around shaking it up while it is being stored un the bottle you should be fine. Is this wrong?
 
What did you sanitize with? I've used a bleach solution before and ended up with a soapy/chemical taste in the bottles.
 
I've made a lot of batches of beer in the 2 years I've been doing it. I can attest to the oxygen in the headspace causing some off flavors. All of my beers have the same "off" flavor that is attributed to oxygenation. The only thing I can attribute this to is the 2" of headspace beneath the cap being filled with oxygen. When the priming sugar is consumed and CO2 is released, the oxygen doesn't magically disappear. It, along with the CO2, gets forced into solution via the excess pressure.

For this reason, I am very happily embarking on the journey to kegging. I will be kegging my beers come January, from now on. No more dull "cardboard" for me.

Also, to the OP. Soapy taste is either yeast autolysis or unrinsed soap deposits on brewing equipment. I really had to convince my mother that my beer was safe to drink eventhough no soap is ever used to clean anything, bottles included. I go so far as to rinse the dish cloths thoroughly before cleaning any equipment to remove any residual soap left in the fibres after the washer/dryer cycle.
 
I am sensitive to some hops and get that soapy taste when other people don't. My best example is Dale's Pale Ale. Everyone loves it, everyone raves about it; it makes me gag.

I'm sure there are other causes of this taste, but every time I have tasted it in a beer, it was a pale ale. I just had one this week from a brewpub where I detected it slightly. The soapy taste I get from Dale's overwhelms me.
 
My guess is that you are using an ion exchange water softener to soften the water. This strips out the calcium (which is probably needed) and adds a lot of sodium (which is not needed). However, I've never heard of sodium causing a soapy taste.

-a.
 
How is this related to putting co2 in the bottle? The way I see it (and I am still new to all this ) completely airating your beer then bottling it is not the same as having a little bit ofc oxygen in the headspace. Plus the co2 generated from the priming sugar will form a barrier from th oxygen in the headspace and the beer. So as long as you don't go around shaking it up while it is being stored un the bottle you should be fine. Is this wrong?

Bottle conditioning is another good way to keep your beer away from aeration. But, if you go back and read the whole conversation, you would see that one of the bloggers didn't want to add CO2 to the bottle and thought it was too much. I was giving him alternatives so that he doesn't give up.
 

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