Festival landlords favourite TCP.

[Spit]

Hi all I'm new to the forum and pretty new to brewing although had much success with kits since March last year. I've done 3 or 4 youngs kits all excellent coopers larger and stout with again excellent results but have recently done the festival landlords favourite all seemed ok until bottling when I opened my conditioning cabinet i could smell TCP. Conditioned for two weeks and cracked a bottle out of interest and Sure enough a taste of TCP. left it a couple of weeks and just had another taste no improvement. Anyone had this problem and any ideas what might have gone wrong. Is it ok to drink wouldn't like to waste it although it is pretty grim. Shall give it a month and see what happens. Thanks.

 

[Obadiah Boondoggle]

I don't think another month would make a difference

Here is the scientific explanation - I think the brew has been infected with wild yeast

(b) Phenols
One of the most flavour-intense group of substances causing beer taint is the chlorinated phenols, such as TCP, generating flavour described as Medicinal, Disinfectant. The range of individual taster’s sensitivity to these compounds can vary by several orders of magnitude, so that some individuals are virtually “taste blind” to chlorophenols.
These compounds are usually generated by reaction between chlorine (such as Towns Water disinfected with Cl2, or inappropriate use of hypochlorite in beer vessels and mains) with phenols in water or beer (often contaminated steam, used for plant or container sterilisation); prolonged and excessive exposure of beer lines in draught beer installations to beer line cleaner is also a classic source of this beer taint.
Control is achieved by elimination or tightly controlled use of hypochlorite and carbon filtration of all relevant water supplies to remove any Cl2 residues.
Related Phenolic taint can be due to wild yeast infection. In this case the flavour taint is described as Medicinal or Cloves and is usually due to the synthesis by the wild yeast of 4-vinyl guaiacol.

 

[Cestrian]

TCP is usually from chlorine not rinsed properly after sanitisation or chloramine in tap water. This won’t go away unfortunately. If you’ve got tap water that smells like chlorine treat your water with a Campden tablet. Don’t use bleach to clean or sanitise your bottles or equipment. I’ve ditched so much beer because of bleach it brings a tear to my eye.

 

[Spit]

Thanks for that. I sanitised bottles with chemsan as directed and rinced with clean water using one of those bottle washers you push down and it squirts water into the bottles i guess i could have a problem there as the beer in the fv smelt fine. First problem I've had guessing it won't be my last.

 

[Cestrian]

Chemsan is similar to starsan I think, so wont be that. Try a campden tablet in your water. It could actually be an infection, but hard to tell now.

 

[Pablosaurus]

Best advice is to try a few bottles now; if the brew smelled fine when bottling they might not all be off.

I also recommend to get another brew on, pronto. Moving on quickly from a bad batch is the best way to consign it to the history books.

Hard luck, Spit!

 

[Spit]

Thanks for that got a stout in conditioning cabinet and a porter in fv all smells sweet think the woodfordes is destiny is the drain.
I'm wondering if it's some new double strength cleaner I used that's the culprit I bought it because my pet bottles seem to be getting a film on the inside which is difficult to shift. Must be more thorough with my rinsing.
Thanks again for your support and encouragement at this sad time

 

[Pablosaurus]

I'm a bit dubious about those bottle rinser things. Not only do they give the bottle just a quick splash inside but they also collect the rinsed water again. After a few rinses, that means the small amount of water doing the rinsing will have sanitiser building up in it, to a point where it's no longer doing its job properly.

Enjoy the stout and porter! I have a cream stout that I'm desperately trying to ignore at the moment so it will condition properly... Good luck!