davidpkiely
New Member
I have been homebrewing for about 3 years now and with the exception of a few batches, I have almost always had a similar outcome in terms of an off flavor. The beer tastes great on the front and always to character, but the finish has a very earthy taste to it. Although this may sound weird, it almost reminds me of sucking on an icicle. I think that I have evaluated every variable and isolated the cause. I have used bottled, filtered, and tap water from 2 different locations/states. I have used chlorine based cleaners and sanitizers and now use non-chlorine-- OxyClean and Idophore. I also thought that it was off flavor from trube, so I eventually started using a secondary. Now for a while, I was so hell bent on sanitation that I wanted my wort to touch as little as possible so I never strained out my hops. With my last few batches, I did start straining out my hops before pitching yeast, and I didn't taste this off flavor in the final prodcut. The latest batch that I brewed was a Double Red Ale and I dry hopped with an ounce of whole leaf Cascades (in the secondary). Now, truth be told, 2 days ago I was throwing back a few Kolsch's while I was kegging, and in retrospect, I think I made an error, solidifying my assuptions-- the off flavors came from the hops. I always use my glass carboy as my secondary, so of course I had to use a sanitized coat hanger to snag the nylon bag of hops. I then pulled about half of the bag up and out of the hole while I siphoned into my barrel. When I did this, obviously, the hops were squeezed and the hops didn't just drain naturally. Some of the liquid was forced out. I took a taste before sealing and adding pressure and thought that I tasted this same icicle flavor. I force carbonated last night, took another sample to evaluate again today, and the earthy flavor is totally there.
Has anyone else encountered this and are my assumptions right?
Has anyone else encountered this and are my assumptions right?