Soapy smell in secondary?

[Saints1313]

There was a post here a while back about a soapy taste/smell on their brew and i cant seem to find the thread. The brew is about 3 weeks old, and all of a sudden has a soapy smell.....can anyone give advice or what happened?

 

[Laouboy]

what did you use to clean the secondary,sometimes with cleaners you need to give it a nice rinse, I use StarSan, it is a non-rinse cleaner and leaves foam to get in the hard to reach areas

 

[SKMO]

3 Weeks old as in 3 weeks in fermentor, or 3 weeks after bottling? Still in the fermentor I assume because you mentioned nothing about taste.

I've had smells from beer in the fermentor that would singe your hair, a soapy beer would be a big improvement and something to look forward to drinking. But ultimately they (the smells) all go away and life is good.

If you are talking about beer 3 weeks bottled and conditioned and you for sure smell soap strong enough you were afraid to take a drink you might have issues. Perhaps just a wussy? Just kidding, sorry.

Info about recipe, yeast, temps etc might be helpful, but if you are sniffing your fermy I'd say leave the thing alone and bottle it when it's ready. Then give it some bottle time.

Some talk about soap flavors here, but doubt this has anything to do with it:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html