disheartened

[Brew_DD2]

I had big issues with all of my brews coming out with a horrible sickly chemically sherry taste to them. I changed to spigots from siphoning and it made a huge difference. I think I must have been introducing a huge amount of oxygen at the bottling stage. The beer was horrible and I was putting it down to cleaning agents, to infection and even process even though I'm super careful with all of the above.

Definitely need to know what off flavour it is before we're able to make a diagnosis though.

 

[Cwrw666]

I've never been able to make a decent stout using my own water supply (very acid spring water) so my last brew (stout) I used ashbeck just because it's slightly alkaline. Bottled it last week and it tastes very promising.

 

[GerritT]

i can relate to that, beer i drink now ,i would never have drank before, but even the wife spat my my beer in the sink,

That's.. harsh ._. my missus never does that. I'm very curious in your beer!

 

[Saisonator]

Ashbeck has an Alkalinity of CaCO3 15ppm, it should be quite a long way from right for any dark beer.

 

[OlsBean]

Could you not do a Good Quality Kit, that way if turns out fine you can eliminate Fermenting, Racking and Conditioning and you can focus on your Mashing.

 

[Covrich]

I live very close and I can clarify the water is fine.. I do add some treatment but the water in this area is good for brewing for most styles at least.

I have offered to bottle swap before but I can understand if you do not wish to do that. But either way a second opinion by another brewer whoever that may be may be a big help

I dont know what to suggest to be honest other than go through every single step you do here one by one.. including when you syphone how you clean is the taint consistent from brew to brew

 

[yeastinfection]

wow guys,thank you for do many replies,
ill try and answer all the questions but i think the best solution is to take up an offer of a taste session from covrich,
ive looked through one of my books that has a problem guide, and alot of the descriptions overlap taste wise,
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
so brews ive done are varied, some are from greg hughes ESB and others have been from geterbrewed and the homebrewcompany ,
they have come with different yeasts ,some dried some smack packs, i even made a stir plate to try and boost yeast cells incase the yeast is stressed, small pack for 23ltrs,
i use a syphon to bottle and ive batch primed and bottle primed, i cant actually say that anything ive changed has made any difference, as i said before the only one i know the cause of was the hobble wobble, i know it burned to the element as it looked like a block of coal when i finished, like one of you guys said,it tastes smokey,

time wise,, i did a helles bock in oct 2016 and still have the bottles, i tried 2 at the weekend and binned them both, thats about 16months ,, and still the same,

yeast,, all kits came with a different yeast,

water ,, tap and bottled,,

ive cooled and transferred and ive also no chilled and transfered the following day, neither was any worse or better,
the thing thats throws me the most is if i put all my beers in a row and try them side by side,, theres not a huge amount of difference, ?
i shall contact Rich and get him to sign a disclaimer in case i poison him...
like i said i have a recipe ready to go but im unwilling to to brew it as im sure it will end up like the others,

oh my kit is an Ace micro brew jobby, never had an issue using it, temps seem fine when checked with my thermometer,
i mash @65*c and ferment @18*c in a fridge,
2 +2+2 and then they stay @10* untill i need the fridge again,
ive brewed hobble wobble,,ESB,,woodfords wherry kit,,helles bock,irish red ale,a couple ipa ans then went back to basics with Smash x3 ,

thanks again for all your replies,, really appreciated :bow::bow::bow::bow:

 

[BeerCat]

I have thrown lots of beers away myself and now i wont bottle anything that tastes rank ( a very big anymore) as in my experience time wont fix my mistakes (well not mine anyway). Only had one beer that i have thrown away though in the last 30+ brews( touch wood) and i think that was because it was not temp controlled and fermented too low, not enough yeast.
I started withj an inherited 45 yeasr old or more burco boiler with an exposed 3kw element. It was black after i used it and one day i accidently turned it on empty. It pinged and loads of carbon fell off. If i wasnt so obsessed i would of given up by now as i really was rubbish, just ask my Mrs. Anyway once the burco overheated and died my beers funnily enough became drinkable. Covrich will sort you out. I bet you will be brewing awesome beer before long.

 

[Covrich]

Sure we can arrange something I can swing by one day or evening and grab a bottle and can see, ill post back tomorrow to your PM but I have had a long day working in Leeds and am knackered

Other side suggestion is take your kit or get ingredients for a 1 gallon brew.. Heck for the sake of 50p buy a 5l water bottle from tesco use that to ferment it in!! (eliminate a suspect of a dodgy fermenter), small batch with the purpose of trying to detect where teh brew goes bad.. draw and sample at every stage.. do you notice if it tastes okay from post fermentation?

It is frustrating but there has to be something just one small thing that is causing this.. the fact you say they are all the same I wonder if they are all tainted with the same thing or infected with something which carries over.

if you had some spare hops you could grab some jars of H$B malt extract from the Arena Tesco but I am not convinced about how good the beer with that is.

The fact you state a wherry kit had the same suggests the boiling mashing part may not be the culprit.

 

[Clint]

Good point there with the wherry kit!

 

[Saisonator]

Anyway, crap beer or not, I doubt anybody is ever going to better your user name :thumb1:
You'll get there.

 

[Dutto]

With all this talk about "burning" the wort I had a think and decided that the reason it doesn't happen to me is that:

1. I use a "Paella Cooker" gas ring that has an inner and outer ring so that the heat is evenly dispersed.
2. I stir the wort quite regularly until it boils in order to decrease the time it takes to get to the boil.
3. My taste-buds are so knackered that I can't taste the "burnt" flavour.

Just a thought, but maybe keeping the wort moving until it starts to boil will stop the "burnt" flavour from occurring.:thumb:

 

[IainM]

With all this talk about "burning" the wort I had a think and decided that the reason it doesn't happen to me is that:

1. I use a "Paella Cooker" gas ring that has an inner and outer ring so that the heat is evenly dispersed.
2. I stir the wort quite regularly until it boils in order to decrease the time it takes to get to the boil.
3. My taste-buds are so knackered that I can't taste the "burnt" flavour.

Just a thought, but maybe keeping the wort moving until it starts to boil will stop the "burnt" flavour from occurring.:thumb:

I suspect #2 is the most important.

 

[yeastinfection]

Sure we can arrange something I can swing by one day or evening and grab a bottle and can see, ill post back tomorrow to your PM but I have had a long day working in Leeds and am knackered

Other side suggestion is take your kit or get ingredients for a 1 gallon brew.. Heck for the sake of 50p buy a 5l water bottle from tesco use that to ferment it in!! (eliminate a suspect of a dodgy fermenter), small batch with the purpose of trying to detect where teh brew goes bad.. draw and sample at every stage.. do you notice if it tastes okay from post fermentation?

It is frustrating but there has to be something just one small thing that is causing this.. the fact you say they are all the same I wonder if they are all tainted with the same thing or infected with something which carries over.

if you had some spare hops you could grab some jars of H$B malt extract from the Arena Tesco but I am not convinced about how good the beer with that is.

The fact you state a wherry kit had the same suggests the boiling mashing part may not be the culprit.

hi cov.
my last 3 brews were back to basics, 3 x smash. small batches for the reason you mentioned, and a new fermentor ,still not good,

 

[foxbat]

I suspect #2 is the most important.

Definitely it is. If you can't wipe down to the element afterwards with your finger then you at least have sugar caramelisation and at worst burned sugars. Stirring regularly during the ramp up to the boil is critical. Once it's boiling it can be left alone.

 

[Covrich]

I rarely stir on the ramp up but its gas and I don't appear to my knowledge get much negative effect from it..

However since you said you had it on a wherry kit, makes me think its a fermentation issue or not related to the AG mash part of the process.

1) as already mentioned what sanitising products are used and methods.
2) you use a fridge.. I haven't got much on that but coudl it in some way be contaminated
3) does the wort taste okay before bottling?
4) depending on 3) your shyphon could that in some way be compromised and I dare say do you suck it?? I know many people will say I sucked for 20 years never a problem but some people may.
5) bottles sanitising and cleaning them.. IF and IF they contained an infected beer could these not be clear of the infection before you stick beer in.

Anyway ill reply to your Pm later and we can arrange something, ill drop a beer around aswell.. I don't know when it will be as me and teh wife are ships in the night and with kids ect but we can get something sorted and we can both report back here and see if collectively we can all help get you sorted because you shouldn't be getting poising and its a real shame you are not making great beer and having better luck with this hobby.

 

[Bigcol49]

If it tastes like Fosters you've got serious problems

Hi!
That's the first time I've seen Fosters and taste in the same sentence.

 

[Cwrw666]

I've got an Ace boiler with an element not actually in the wort. However, I never stir the wort and always get burned on wort on the bottom of the boiler, but never have any burned flavours in my beer. Just thought I'd mention that.

 

[AdeDunn]

I've got an Ace boiler with an element not actually in the wort. However, I never stir the wort and always get burned on wort on the bottom of the boiler, but never have any burned flavours in my beer. Just thought I'd mention that.

ACE boiler here too. I stir the wort when bringing to the boil, and stir lots when raising the temp for mash out when mashing too. I always come away with a small horseshoe of stuck on flour though.

As to Wherry, both my Wherry kit and Headcracker kit came out with an unpleasant black treacle flavour. Fairly certain this came from fermenting during warm weather, but give you have temp control this seems unlikely to be the problem.

Don't suppose you are cleaning your equipment with a source of chlorine (eg. VWP, Milton etc)? If not really well rinsed this ruins beer very effectively (I switched to percarbonate for cleaning myself). Same with the chlorine in tap water.

To be honest though, I only ever had one kit produce beer I actually liked (a dry hopped Wilko's Golden Ale kit), the rest all tasted funky in a bad way in one way or another (the tweaked Wilko's cerveza was and is just too sweet for me), sooner or later. It could just be that you don't like kit beers, I know I don't.

 

[MickDundee]

Don't suppose you are cleaning your equipment with a source of chlorine (eg. VWP, Milton etc)? If not really well rinsed this ruins beer very effectively (I switched to percarbonate for cleaning myself).

I thought that would irritate your skin!