weird off flavor/aftertaste

[lulubrewer]

Hi everyone,
I have a weird off flavor in my beers. The off flavor starts at week 2-3 after bottling. It is a bitter off flavor in the back of the roof of the mouth (nothing to do with hop bitterness). it is mainly an aftertaste. it is hard to describe and if I'm coming to you guys it is because I couldn't find it in the classic descriptors of off flavors.

I brew all grain.
2l yeast starter with liquid yeast vs rehydrated dry yeast: no difference.
tap water filtered through britta vs straight tap water: no difference.
I always use campdem tablets.
APA vs IPA: the IPA was better
English pale ale vs supper hoppy english pale: the supper hoppy one was worse.
2 Belgian Dark Strong Ales: not noticeable (beer was hiding it?)

What puzzles me is that it only comes after 2-3 weeks in bottle. The fermented wort tastes fine. Or maybe it is simply that it only comes through in a fully carbonated drink.

My water is as follows:
Alkalinity (as CaCO3) - 60 mg/L
pH - 8.7 (SU)
Calcium (as Ca) - 30 mg/L
Magnesium (as Mg) - 14 mg/L
Sodium (as Na) - 26 mg/L
Sulfate - 48 mg/L
Bicarbonate (as CaCO3) - 57 mg/L
Chloride - 40 mg/L
Hardness (as CaCO3) - 125 mg/L (7.3 grains/gallon)

which seems to be pretty average to me.

I just bough some colorphast and the final ph for the last batch (an ipa) is almost 5 (4.7 on the colorphast, but since they read 0.3 lower...). It seems high to me.

Anyways, I'm lost...

 

[Skiffy]

I had the same issue. Slight odd off taste peeking its head after a few weeks in the bottle. I would first confirm that the bottles aren't overcarbed and that you are putting them in the fridge for a bit before trying.

I haven't brewed enough lately to confirm that mash pH 100% solved my problem, but I believe it is the culprit. I can't explain the correlation. I'm not good enough at water chemistry to look at your profile and see if you would def have an issue, but I doubt it's a coincidence that the beers with dark grains (I'm assuming your Belgians aren't all Pilsner and dark syrup) are ok and your beers with light grain bills are not. Download a tool like Bru'n water and see if you have a mash pH issue. Then get yourself some lactic acid, a baby medicine syringe and see if that solves the problem. If it's not the culprit, it's good practice anyway.

 

[m00ps]

it might be a sanitation issue with your bottling regimen if it tastes fine at bottling and only appears AFTER weeks in the bottle. Ive had this happen with a few batches and once I stepped up my sanitation routine and made sure to get the cap on each bottle asap, it hasnt reared its head since

 

[lulubrewer]

Thanks for the replies.
the beers were not overcarbonated (the English pales were actually quite low).
The 2 Belgian dark they were using one pound of caramunich for one and of a combo of caramunich /specialB for the other, but it's a strong beer, so the off flavor may not be detectable if any.
I have measured the final pH of 2 other beers I had left:
hoppy APA: 4.9 (strong off flavor, 2 month old)
Hoppy English Bitter: 4.7 (medium off flavor, 4 months old)
Belgian Dark Strong: 4.7 (not detectable, 1 year old).

As for sanitation I will give the same answer as any homebrewer: "Me? a sanitation issue? no way!" just kidding. It's actually the first thing I thought about. So I was pretty thorough with my last batch. I even let everything sit in bleach for 30 min before cleaning with oxyclean and sanitizing with starsan. I also took the spigot of the bottling bucket apart and boiled it for 20 min. I don't think it could be anything at the bottle level, because I assume it would not be that consistant between each one of them.

I will brew something next weekend and try to treat my water and be extra careful about sanitation.

 

[flars]

I would skip the bleach and oxyclean for the bottles, unless they are full of crud. If your bottles are rinsed immediately after pouring and allowed to dry in a clean environment, the extra cleaning is not needed.
This will rule out the off taste from residual bleach or oxyclean, if the same off taste occurs again.

 

[The_Glue]

I have/had this, sometimes it goes away, sometimes it reappears, i did all kinds of water treatments, ph stuff, yeast stuff etc. The next time i will brew i will make sure i wont use hops stored in the freezer, maybe they got freezer burned by getting hot during shipping then getting back into the freezer. Yeah this is my latest idea.

 

[The_Glue]

Also i forgot this but i have seen a quite technical post which basically said that it could be benefical to add the first bittering hops later in the boil.
Like you do a 60min boil but the first time you will add hops will be at 30.

 

[Bellybuster]

Only thing that gets added during bottling......sugar. Try making a simple syrup or changing your sugar source for carbing

 

[masonsjax]

Maybe it's oxidation? If so, be very careful when racking to the bottling bucket or stirring in priming sugar.

 

[bigdongsr94]

I believe I am in same boat. I recently went from cutting RO with some tap to all RO. I build my water. I make all light colored beers but my pH is always great. I control fermentation temp or monitor it if control is not needed with basement temps. My crush is good, I backed it off to about 35 so that it wasn't too tight. I have done full volume, biab and now I'm to a traditional cooler mash tun and a single batch or fly sparge. So needless to say I've been all over with this. The taste comes after fermentation a week or two later in the bottle or very quickly in the keg, day or two. I'm drinking a pale all that was yoopers house ale with a bit more hops. It's a pretty dark recipe for a pale and still came out with a bitter after taste. My wife might think it's hops but I'm a hop head, it's not hop bitterness. Bitter somewhat astringent. Suggest something, I've probably done it..

 

[The_Glue]

I believe I am in same boat. I recently went from cutting RO with some tap to all RO. I build my water. I make all light colored beers but my pH is always great. I control fermentation temp or monitor it if control is not needed with basement temps. My crush is good, I backed it off to about 35 so that it wasn't too tight. I have done full volume, biab and now I'm to a traditional cooler mash tun and a single batch or fly sparge. So needless to say I've been all over with this. The taste comes after fermentation a week or two later in the bottle or very quickly in the keg, day or two. I'm drinking a pale all that was yoopers house ale with a bit more hops. It's a pretty dark recipe for a pale and still came out with a bitter after taste. My wife might think it's hops but I'm a hop head, it's not hop bitterness. Bitter somewhat astringent. Suggest something, I've probably done it..

Once i pasteurized some bottles after bottling (i had to add some yeast and boiled priming sugar individually to the bottles after that) but the whole batch was missing that aftertaste so i am not sure if that was effective but if it is an infection it would go away probably.
I havent brewed in a few months but if i will get that taste again i will go back to the basics and start with kit beers then extract beers then all-grain etc. and see where it goes wrong.

 

[Balloonknot]

Remember carbonation will add a level of acidity to your beer. I find most brews become more bitter after carbonation, bottle or keg. The trick to overcoming this change in flavor is to not taste test the beer before carbonation or sample bottles as carbonation progresses. If you dont notice the change, you wont be bothered by it.

Now if it isnt bitterness your tasting, than dont mind me . I for one cant not sample a beer before its carbonated. Just read some of the comments and see you already said the bottles were undercarbonated so thats definately not it.

This after taste, does it hang around in your mouth?

 

[lulubrewer]

Sorry for the week delay,
I brewed a Belgian Wit last weekend. 100% distilled water following the "Water Primer" thread to add just enough calcium chloride and 2% acid malt. I completed with phosphoric acid to get a good mash ph. All this using colorphast ph strips to control and adjust. We shall see in a few weeks if the problem was the water.
I also tried to be pretty thorough with sanitation.

I am drinking my last very hoppy APA as I am typing. It seems to be a little less pronounced than I remember. There is definitely a soapy quality to the off flavor
I think there was a correlation with the amount of hops used in my brews, my hoppyer beers seem to have more of the off flavor.

As for your replies: I used bleach for the last batch only (hoppy APA), and prior to oxyclean versatile free. I then sanitized with starsan. I was thinking that using both a base (bleach) and an acid (startsan) would help me get rid of any potential infection issue.
But the bleach is not my the problem since I had the off flavor before using it.

As for oxidation, when I bottle I always have a few bottles that I completly screwed up at bottling (lots of foam, bubbles in the tube, etc...). I mark them so I can compare them with the other bottle and I never noticed a big difference with the other bottles (less flavor after a while, but not a difference in the off flavor we are talking about here.)
I bought a new filler, I will see...

 

[masonsjax]

I wouldn't rely on the test strips to check pH. They are not accurate for use in brewing. Better to just follow the primer, or better yet enter your recipe into brunwater or similar software to calculate adjustments and save up for a good pH meter for fine tuning.

Hopefully what you did is close enough to give you an answer on whether the problem was water related or not though. Fingers crossed!