Vinyl flavor from Calcium Chloride?

[TheMerkle]

I'm not so new to brewing but I'm still fairly new to water chemistry.
I recently brewed an IIPA with RO water and added small amounts of calcium chloride, calcium sulfate, and magnesium sulfate as per BrewCipher. I cleaned and sanitized equipment with tap water from a backyard hose. Nine BJCP judges have tasted the beer and 6 did not detect it, but two said there was a mild vinyl/plastic off flavor, and the ninth said it tasted like licking a br and new pool floaty.

I've been doing my homework and ive spotted recommendations to only use carbon filtered/campden treated/RO water for rinsing and sanitizing, but I've used hose water for that purposes in the past.

Is it even possible for high levels of chlorides from the brewing salts to cause these flavors? Perhaps they compound with my rinse water problem?

 

[MDExile]

Is it possible that the flavor is residual from the rinse water from the hose?

Have you ever taken a drink of water from the garden hose? Especially in the summer, after the water has been in the hose in the sun?

 

[maida7]

I really don't think CaCL is the issue.

What is the source of your brewing water? If that came out the hose then I think that's your problem.

If the hose water is just for cleaning then I think it's less likely but who knows.

Could just be phenols from a wild yeast infection.

 

[TheMerkle]

I also posed the question on another forum, and it definitely seems reasonable to suspect the hose water, even if only used as rinse water, to be the culprit.

 

[Homercidal]

I've never tasted PVC from a beer to which CaCl was added. I use it pretty much every time I brew. I add it back in to RO water with some CaS04 for flavor.

I *might* be possible that you got some PVC from the garden hose if you didn't let it run completely through. But even rinse water wouldn't leave enough residue to allow it to be noticed in the final beer.

Maybe you used some RO water from a chlorinated source and the RO process didn't remove all the chlorine?

 

[jmcquesten]

I just dumped a batch due to a vinyl taste from a hose. Funny thing is, I know not to fill from a hose but I got lazy. 3 weeks later, dipa down the drain. It got worse as it fermented.

 

[Rhaop]

I stopped filling from a short black rubber hose i have even thou i've never had off flavors, i still use it with hot water to rinse with

 

[ECBrew]

Some BJCP judges, well, just don't give good input. Beer is very subjective and you cannot control what they might have drank before your entry, nor any other factors that could have adulterated their perception. Beyond that, some of them just don't have good palates. 3 out of 9 tasted the off flavor, not a very solid consensus if you ask me. On a side note, if you are using a hose for filling brewing vessels obviously a drinking water/RV hose should be used. I've never had a problem in using a normal hose and it's water for cleaning or sanitation purposes. Either way I'm fairly certain the problem is not with your use of calcium chloride, but that doesn't rule out the various other factors that could have affected your beer and/or ratings (yeast, etc). Either way, take those BJCP judging sheets with a few grains of salt.

 

[MaxStout]

As others have mentioned, it's likely the garden hose. Stop using that and bring your water tap to kettle using a clean bucket or a pot.

If you must use a hose, buy a potable water hose, the kind used for campers. Use it for brewing and nothing else.

 

[TheMerkle]

Thanks for all the input so far. The hose has been replaced with a brew house dedicated rv hose because it certainly cant HURT, but I really appreciate the comment about the judges and the possibility that they may have just missed the mark... I'm telling ya, I'm usually pretty sensitive to PVC flavors and I just don't get it.

This all leads me to my next question, though, and its this: Should I even be bothering with chloride additions? I typically brew lighter/hoppier/crisp/drier styles. If I'm reading everything right then the chloride additions are to accentuate malt profiles and soften hop harshness. I know John Palmer's How To Brew lists the acceptable range of brewing water chlorides to start at a big ole' goose egg.

In my IPA I targeted a .7-.8 chloride to sulfate ratio with each ion in the 50-150 range but by many other suggestions I should be less worried about the ratio per say, and more concerned with overall levels. Would it be wiser to target desired sulfate levels and add no more chlorides than what come circumstantially? Even if that put me more into a .2 or .3 chloride to sulfate ratio?