Another brew down the drain ??

[pilgrimhudd]

Damp bar towel is a good description of my clansman beer thats fermenting at the moment, this is the 2nd time ive brewed it, it tasted great and smelled bad both times it was fermenting so hopefully should be the same for you!

 

[Mugatu78]

Great advice all round as always. Thanks very much. Definitely going to give thorough clean and do a simple brew. One stage fermentation and not open it on e as you say.
Really appreciate advice all of you.
Great forum this
I will update how/when i get this sorted as hopefully will help someone else.
Thanks again
I will also write out and post full details of my process and ingredients etc

 

[Mugatu78]

Weird. A brew i bottled which smelled and tasted rank about 5 /6weeks ago has started to mellow and taste drinkable not good but a hell of an improvement, the batch after actually smelled not bad in secondary but i primed in king keg with brown sugar as i have used in my bottles and it has that same rank taste smell the prwvious bottled batch did, it would seem my off flavour/smells are produced during primary and second/priming fermentation. I assume the king keg will mellow as the bottles bid but they are still not great. I cant be under pitching as i use one pack for mby 18 litresby the time im ready to prime from 23 litre batch and surely not over pitching with one pack as seen folks using two plenty times on here. Ahhh man. Kill me now

 

[Brew_DD2]

Get pitching cooler and and ditch the secondary transfer. I have also started getting my beer out of the fermenter as soon as I have achieved FG as I had a terrible problem with oxidation-esque off flavours for a long time and couldn't pin it down. I know others will have never have encountered this issue, but it was the final thing I tried, after spending months trying all sorts of things; from water treatment to minimising O2 exposure.

 

[Mugatu78]

Get pitching cooler and and ditch the secondary transfer. I have also started getting my beer out of the fermenter as soon as I have achieved FG as I had a terrible problem with oxidation-esque off flavours for a long time and couldn't pin it down. I know others will have never have encountered this issue, but it was the final thing I tried, after spending months trying all sorts of things; from water treatment to minimising O2 exposure.

Thanks for reply, yep im ready for giving up with this tbh. I will try pitching cooler. Thanks. Wondering if i shlould Try just pitch a half pack of yeast also but clutching at straws really ,next brew is gny be a smash. Keep it simple but tbh all brews habe been kinda simple and i just follow basic 60min mash 67deg and 60min boil its not like im trying anything mad so not sure if it will matter ingredient wise whats in there.
Thanks again anyway.
Appreciated

 

[Brew_DD2]

I would stick with pitching the same tbh. Try a new fermenter. Keep everything as simple as possible. SMASH sounds great. Try it with no dry hop and get it out of the fermenter as soon as you reach your FG. I couldn't believe that was what was causing my off flavour, but all of my batches have been spot on since shortening the time the beer spends on the yeast cake.

I know it sounds obvious but really try to avoid splashing when racking to bottles/keg. I ditched the siphon and went back to a spigot because I wasn't satisfied that I could siphon well enough not to splash and introduce a load of oxygen.

Stick at it. I know how soul destroying it can be, but you'll get past it.

 

[Mugatu78]

Ok. Thanks very much. My fv is a bucket or carboy so kinda have to use the syphon for now but will try be careful with it. Got a new bucket aswell and gny clean and boil everything i can too

 

[Brew_DD2]

Ok. Thanks very much. My fv is a bucket or carboy so kinda have to use the syphon for now but will try be careful with it. Got a new bucket aswell and gny clean and boil everything i can too

Try a spigot on one of the buckets if you can.

 

[SmallSpacesBrewing]

I hope you find the cause of this. Interesting read. Keep us posted . There is always something to learn.

 

[Bill_g]

After reading most of the previous postings I can see there's been a lot of good advice already. I had a batch of Punk IPA that went really bad and had to go down the drain - it's a sad day when that happens. The taste was like it had been brewed in an old car tyre i.e. rubbery / phenolic nasty taste. I made 4 changes in one go which so far has cured the problem

• I increased my kettle size to 50 litres so allowing for a vigorous boil of 30+ litres of wort with no boil overs.
  
• Got a new stainless fermenter. I noticed my old polythene one was scratched and I suspected impossible to sterilise fully.
• stopped aerating wort with air stone and air pump. I decided this was too risky as impossible to filter air fully and clean air stone properly.
• I use a plate cooler and now pump recirculate hot wort through it for the last 10 minutes of boil to ensure full sterilisation of the cooling system.

it struck me from your initial description that you are carrying something from one batch to another, so the fermenter seems most likely which I think I read you have now replaced.
One further thing is that whilst at a local brewery open evening, the head brewer expressed his detestation of home brew saying that it always just tastes like home brew. If I recall he put it down to cooling too slowly and there is an off flavour that can develop very quickly if the beer lingers in the 35C range too long.
I'm a bit unconvinced about this final point. I cool my wort with the plate cooler quickly but still don't get the beautifully clean flavour of a great commercial beer from a well kept hand pump. It's by no means horrible, and maybe just has more character! But I'd love to achieve that totally clean flavour one day.

Good luck and I'll look back in a few weeks to see if you've located the problem, so keep us posted.

 

[Ghillie]

Santising.

 

[Mugatu78]

After reading most of the previous postings I can see there's been a lot of good advice already. I had a batch of Punk IPA that went really bad and had to go down the drain - it's a sad day when that happens. The taste was like it had been brewed in an old car tyre i.e. rubbery / phenolic nasty taste. I made 4 changes in one go which so far has cured the problem

• I increased my kettle size to 50 litres so allowing for a vigorous boil of 30+ litres of wort with no boil overs.
  
• Got a new stainless fermenter. I noticed my old polythene one was scratched and I suspected impossible to sterilise fully.
• stopped aerating wort with air stone and air pump. I decided this was too risky as impossible to filter air fully and clean air stone properly.
• I use a plate cooler and now pump recirculate hot wort through it for the last 10 minutes of boil to ensure full sterilisation of the cooling system.

it struck me from your initial description that you are carrying something from one batch to another, so the fermenter seems most likely which I think I read you have now replaced.
One further thing is that whilst at a local brewery open evening, the head brewer expressed his detestation of home brew saying that it always just tastes like home brew. If I recall he put it down to cooling too slowly and there is an off flavour that can develop very quickly if the beer lingers in the 35C range too long.
I'm a bit unconvinced about this final point. I cool my wort with the plate cooler quickly but still don't get the beautifully clean flavour of a great commercial beer from a well kept hand pump. It's by no means horrible, and maybe just has more character! But I'd love to achieve that totally clean flavour one day.

Good luck and I'll look back in a few weeks to see if you've located the problem, so keep us posted.

Great reply and thanks for taking the time. Yes i will absolutely update if and when i get it right.
Thankyou.

 

[Davvy]

As with everyone else's advice - go back to basics, so sanitation, good eqipment, good water (as you are in Fife - there should be no problems in your good/Soft water), etc, etc...

One other thought is that you may think that as you ferment you will get clean "Beer" fermentation flavours - this is always not so due to many yeasts produce variable fermentation gasses, etc. So the finished beer may be perfectly true to type (if you have not done anything too mad), but the fermentation , and conditioning stage may give some "off" flavours, but they should clean up for the most part with time.

Once in bottle or keg - minimum 2 weeks before drinking is my best advice for this one.
If you are in a keg of some description - either make sure you have a CO2 head or you prime.

As with other people's comments if you log everything you do on your brew day with ingredients - the forum members can have a go at identifying anything amiss.

For me - back to basics - so no mad 27 ingredient list brews to start with, also a yeast that performs quickly is good advice to anyone starting off. Try a Kolsh type with simply using something like Marris otter as a base malt, and a reliable fast yeast - try Crossmyloof - their pale ale, or Califonia common are good examples...

All the best with the next steps...

David.

 

[Mugatu78]

As with everyone else's advice - go back to basics, so sanitation, good eqipment, good water (as you are in Fife - there should be no problems in your good/Soft water), etc, etc...

One other thought is that you may think that as you ferment you will get clean "Beer" fermentation flavours - this is always not so due to many yeasts produce variable fermentation gasses, etc. So the finished beer may be perfectly true to type (if you have not done anything too mad), but the fermentation , and conditioning stage may give some "off" flavours, but they should clean up for the most part with time.

Once in bottle or keg - minimum 2 weeks before drinking is my best advice for this one.
If you are in a keg of some description - either make sure you have a CO2 head or you prime.

As with other people's comments if you log everything you do on your brew day with ingredients - the forum members can have a go at identifying anything amiss.

For me - back to basics - so no mad 27 ingredient list brews to start with, also a yeast that performs quickly is good advice to anyone starting off. Try a Kolsh type with simply using something like Marris otter as a base malt, and a reliable fast yeast - try Crossmyloof - their pale ale, or Califonia common are good examples...

All the best with the next steps...

David.

Great. Will do thanks very much. All good stuff. Yes definitely keeping next brew very simple and clean.

 

[strange-steve]

@Davvy Don't propegate the misconception that soft water is good for brewing. Unless you're brewing a pilsner or similar then hard water is almost certainly better for brewing.

 

[ExpatBrewer]

Which yeast? I, and quite a few others have experienced ongoing "chemical" off tastes when using US-05. Many of my batches ended up with excessive phenolics - "band-aid" type flavours. Really horrible and never goes away. The issue only happened with this yeast. Never figured out why and in the end I just stopped using it.

 

[Mugatu78]

Yeah ive used 4 different yeasts. So4or 5 (the blue one) mageove jack ale yeast and cross my loof. All had same issues unfortunately, thanks very much for input though. Appreciated as always

 

[strange-steve]

Which yeast? I, and quite a few others have experienced ongoing "chemical" off tastes when using US-05. Many of my batches ended up with excessive phenolics - "band-aid" type flavours. Really horrible and never goes away. The issue only happened with this yeast. Never figured out why and in the end I just stopped using it.

Isn't US-05 POF-ve?

 

[SmallSpacesBrewing]

Isn't US-05 POF-ve?

Ive used us-05 a lot. And I've always been happy with the result. It atenuates well. Clears well to.

 

[user 23602]

I'm new to all this and have had the exact same concerns. But as others said, the 'off' smell and the funny look... I just let it ride. I always ferment for 3 weeks and then transfer into second fermentation for 3-5 days depending on what additions I want to add. By the time I get to bottling, the smell has gone and it looks okay.