Strange off flavor in some bottles of APA batch

[thamajam]

Ok so here is the deal. We brewed an AG batch of APA in February and I've been having a strange issue. It has been sitting in bottles for 5 or so weeks now and there is an off flavor that I'm having trouble putting into words in only some of the bottles. Some of the bottles taste hoppy and delicious, some of the bottles have this slightly overwhelming "old" off flavor. Forgive my lack of descriptors for it, I'm just not familiar with the taste in any other beer I've had. I will note though that I do get that off flavor very slightly in the good bottles. Definitely not enough for the unintiated to tell the difference though.

What's odd as well is that I seem to be able to predict which bottles will have the off flavor at pour. The beer in the off flavor bottles pours darker than the good bottles. The head is also more creamy (I get a solid, but wispier head on the good bottles).

I'm having a lot of trouble thinking this one through. The bottles were new and sanitized prior to bottling, dried on a bottle tree. I used a carboy transferred to bottling bucket at bottling time and racked onto the priming solution. I didn't cool the solution prior to transfer but I read that shouldn't be much of a problem. Caps were sanitized right before going on the bottles. Splashing during this stage was minimal.

Any idea what could have went wrong here? I thought it might be a whole batch thing but the fact that it's showing up to the extreme in only some bottles has me suspicious of something else.

 

[mychalg9]

I've had similar issues with a few batches. Im not even positive I have it figured out yet, but I have a good lead and am excited to try my next batch to test it out. Possible reasons could be: water profile, fermentation temps, infection, or (what I think was the case with mine) not boiling hard enough. With mine in particular I switched to bottled water, made a swamp cooler to control ferment temps, bought an immersion chiller, made sure my sanitation process was perfect, and hit all my gravity readings pretty much dead on. Still tasted funny. Then I read a thread about "how hard does your boil need to be?" and realized that my stove may not have been boiling the wort hard enough. It would only bubble directly above where the flames were (I used front and back burners at the same time). A few things happen when you dont boil hard enough: Low (no) hop utilization (which might explain your weird hoppiness issue), DMS doesnt boil off (which contributes a cooked vegetable kind of taste), and you dont get as good of a hot break. My APA tasted similar to what you describe in that a few bottles have some traces of hops, but not nearly what I would expect. And the beer tastes kind of sourly bitter (if that makes sense). So I have since bought a turkey fryer kit w/burner so I can try getting a much better boil to see if that fixes the problem. I should be trying this next week sometime so I'll keep this thread updated with my results. I am pretty confident my beer will improve.

What was your recipe?

 

[Yooper]

"Old" and darker color are classic signs of oxidation. What would be puzzling is why you have this in some bottles and not others, though. Maybe some weren't capped as soon as others? Maybe some bottles did have splashing? A clearing vessel with a lot of headspace? That is the only thing I can think of.

Edit- I just saw that you do have a hint of this flavor in all bottles, but it's worse in some of them. That really does point to oxidation.

 

[thamajam]

Interesting, I can't recall how vigorous our boil was. Most of the time we get a nice boil going but I do remember thinking that I should scale it back a bit at some point (we've brewed a few batches since this beer). Here is the recipe:

Malts:
American 2-row - 9lbs
White Wheat - 1lb
Caramel 60L - 1lb (probably a little heavy on caramel?)
Belgian Bisuit - .5lb

Hops:
Sorachi .5oz - First Wort
Sorachi .5oz - 15min
Amarillo 1oz - 5min
Amarillo 1oz - 2min
Amarillo 1oz - Dry Hop

Yeast:
Wyeast 1272 - American Ale II

Finings:
.5tsp Irish Moss

Water:
Milwaukee Water

I suppose it could be boil, but it's kind of strange that it's so pronounced in some bottles, and barely at all in others. We've never had this problem in any of our other batches and we've used the same electric stovetop. It definitely can get 7gals of wort boiling pretty hard, so I don't think I need a more powerful burner yet...but perhaps I scaled back the boil on this one, I'm having a hard time remembering.

 

[mychalg9]

Also make sure you dont have the lid covering the pot when you boil. I think Yooper has a good point about oxidation, could it be that some of your caps weren't as secure as others? I dont have experience with some coming out darker than others so the more experienced people on here (like Yooper) will probably be more reliable.

 

[thamajam]

"Old" and darker color are classic signs of oxidation. What would be puzzling is why you have this in some bottles and not others, though. Maybe some weren't capped as soon as others? Maybe some bottles did have splashing? A clearing vessel with a lot of headspace? That is the only thing I can think of.

Edit- I just saw that you do have a hint of this flavor in all bottles, but it's worse in some of them. That really does point to oxidation.

Yea oxidation ran through my head as well. I'm trying to run through why this batch would have been oxidized and others not though. After transferring to secondary I dropped the carboy a couple inches while holding the neck...it was enough to cause some beer to shoot out of the top of the carboy and onto my shirt, but the beer inside the carboy didn't look TOO disturbed by my clumsiness. Would this have been enough to cause some detectable oxidation?

mychalg9 - I make sure to not have the lid covering during boil, but I will be more aware of this in the future. We may have used it to get the wort up to a boil quicker but we're pretty inconsistent here. We certainly don't leave a lid on through the whole boil.

 

[Yooper]

Yea oxidation ran through my head as well. I'm trying to run through why this batch would have been oxidized and others not though. After transferring to secondary I dropped the carboy a couple inches while holding the neck...it was enough to cause some beer to shoot out of the top of the carboy and onto my shirt, but the beer inside the carboy didn't look TOO disturbed by my clumsiness. Would this have been enough to cause some detectable oxidation?
.

I'd guess so, if the headspace was a bit large and the carboy wasn't purged with c02 first. Oxygen is the death of beer. I know many people will tell you that headspace in a clearing vessel (not a true "secondary" if it's just for clearing) doesn't matter. And maybe sometimes the beer is fine. But I'm a winemaker, and would never move a beer or wine to a carboy with headspace after fermentation ends.

I'd avoid racking to a clearing vessel the next time, and keep the beer in the fermenter until packaging and see if that resolves the possible oxidation.

 

[thamajam]

I'd guess so, if the headspace was a bit large and the carboy wasn't purged with c02 first. Oxygen is the death of beer. I know many people will tell you that headspace in a clearing vessel (not a true "secondary" if it's just for clearing) doesn't matter. And maybe sometimes the beer is fine. But I'm a winemaker, and would never move a beer or wine to a carboy with headspace after fermentation ends.

I'd avoid racking to a clearing vessel the next time, and keep the beer in the fermenter until packaging and see if that resolves the possible oxidation.

Thanks for helping me troubleshoot. When do you think a clearing vessel is necessary? How necessary is it really to move the beer off of the yeast cake after the primary stage is finished and how long do you think you can leave the beer on the cake?

I hope it wasn't the 2 inch fall the carboy took because I did it again (ugh) when I transferred a batch of stout a couple days ago, though admittedly the sloshing as a result wasn't as bad (it didn't splash up onto my shirt this time!). The headspace in the vessel with the stout is fairly minimal and it's still expelling some trapped c02 a couple days after racking.

Would time in the bottling bucket (say I got pulled away while bottling) be enough time to for oxygen to seep in? Just want to make sure I'm more careful next time in all stages.

 

[thamajam]

I will also say that after dropping the APA secondary carboy after racking it (remember this was only a couple of inches, though the fact that it splashed up and onto my shirt tells me it hit with enough force to cause bubbles) there was a layer of white wispy foam or bubbles on the top of the beer for a few days. No such foam exists on top of the stout that we just racked.

 

[boo boo]

You'll have more worries than oxidation of your beer if you break those carboys.
They can be dangerous if they are glass.

 

[thamajam]

You'll have more worries than oxidation of your beer if you break those carboys.
They can be dangerous if they are glass.

Lol yes I know. Perhaps an investment in a carboy handle is in order.

 

[Yooper]

Thanks for helping me troubleshoot. When do you think a clearing vessel is necessary? How necessary is it really to move the beer off of the yeast cake after the primary stage is finished and how long do you think you can leave the beer on the cake?

I generally leave the beer in the fermenter 10-14 days before packaging, but with a beer that I dryhop it could be a little bit longer. Once the beer is fairly clear, I either package it then or I dryhop it for 5-7 days before packaging.

 

[Brewsader1]

Do you boil your caps to sanitize them? In my experience, this can make the plastic seal on some of them come off a bit, allowing for a poor seal potential oxidation in the bottle. I've been using some starsan now.