First-time brew: Soapy taste

[iancraig]

Hi All,

I tried a beer-kit for the first time last month and, to be honest, the results are a little bit disappointing so far. I just read the "How not to screw up your first brew" FAQ, and that gives me some reassurance that all is not lost. However, there are some specific problems I'd appreciate feedback on ..

One of the problems is a distinct soapy taste. It was there when I bottled, and is still there now (4 four weeks after bottling). I read this could be due to leaving the beer in the FV for too long before bottling. Here's where my questions start ..

The instructions that came with the kit said leave it one week in the FV before bottling. Several sources online, including the FAQ mentioned above, say more like two weeks. So I went for two weeks. Could this really be the cause of the soapiness?

Having just starting out, I have only a basic setup with one FV. But I've seen plenty of people on here using a secondary. Would a schedule like one week primary FV, one week secondary FV help eliminate the soapiness? Is this standard practice anyway?

Or should I have more patience and wait another month to see if the soap goes away by itself?

Any thoughts appreciated!


Ian

 

[abeyptfc]

how and what did you use to sanitise? how many times did you rinse afterwards before starting the kit?

 

[calumscott]

Hi Ian,

It's questions in answer to your questions I'm afraid...

What did you brew?
How did you go about it? What was your sanitising routine?
How did you bottle?
What ingredients?

Basically, tell us as much as you can about what you did and how you did it and we might be able to spot something... :thumb:

 

[iancraig]

Thanks for the replies,

Can't seem to post a meaningful reply without getting the message "Your post looks too spamy for a new user, please remove bad words or non-english text"

When I figure it out, I will send more details of what I did.

Ian.

 

[iancraig]

Hi again,

To go to sanitation first. I used something called Chemipro that came with the basic starter-set I got. I tried to follow the instructions, which were soak for 5 mins to 60 mins and then rinse once with cold water. I sanitized pretty much everything that came in the set. I think I ended up soaking for about 20 minutes, if I remember correctly. I rinsed once.

Regarding fermentation, the kit was Muntons P-r-e-m-i-u-m Ale. It gets a bit more complicated here because I followed the german instructions of the website I got the kit from from (I live in Germany). I added the liquid malt extract and hot water to the FV, added cold water up to 10l volume, stirred it, and added the dried yeast. Germans have this thing called "Reinheitsgebot", which means producing beer using only water, malt, hops, and yeast. So no added sugar. This means brewing 10l from a kit that should make 20l according to the manufacturer. (Another problem with my beer is that it is really bitter, and my novice guess is that this comes from making half-volume from a pre-hopped malt extract .. But this is maybe another story.)

I left it 12 days in the FV. The airlock bubbled for 2-3 days. Temperature always around 20C.

As for bottling, my FV has a tap and I got one of the bottling tubes with a valve at the bottom. It sounds like something called little-bottler on other threads here. So I bottled straight out of the FV, and according to the instructions, and did the priming straight into the bottle with a syringe. I primed with dried malt extract I got with my starter-set -- this is one of the few things allowed by the Reinheitsgebot

Many thanks for the input,

Ian
ps. the "P-r-e-m-u-i-u-m" nonsense is needed to get the message through the forum spam filter. Is this a forum in-joke? :grin:

 

[calumscott]

Sounds to me like you're already understanding your brewing. The two things you've highlighted would be where I would look first.

Rinse more for a start. Does that sanitiser smell? I use the one that most on here hate, VWP. It's a chlorine based thing and it stinks. The upside is that you know when you've rinsed we'll enough...

...when the smell is gone you're good to go!

The other thing is the serious short brew. The flavour profile of the kit is designed to be "watered down", while brewing a bit short can give excellent results, brewing a one can kit to 10 litres will be a long way from where the flavours should be.

The reinheitsgebot was repealed yonks ago, go ahead and brew one by the real instructions, we won't tell anyone!! Or do a two can kit next time, gets round the problem neatly and they simply make better beer. :thumb:

 

[jonnymorris]

A soapy taste can result from leaving your beer on the trub for too long as the fatty acids in it break down. However, I doubt 2-weeks is too long... I usually leave mine for 3-weeks. I suspect, therefore, its more likely due to your cleaning process. Maybe an additional rinse would help. Did it smell 'chemically' after you had cleaned it?

No idea why you can't include 'premium' in your post. If it's a joke, I'm not in on it.

 

[iancraig]

Thanks Calum and Jonny,

I'll do a double rinse next time, and throw the Reinheitsgebot out the window for now ..

The supplier I used last time doesn't have any un-hopped beer-kits. Do such things exist?

As suggested in many posts here, I could then add hops as desired and have more control over the bitterness.

Thanks again for your help,

Ian

 

[jonnymorris]

The supplier I used last time doesn't have any un-hopped beer-kits. Do such things exist?

You might consider extract brewing.- a step up from kits that'll give you more control by allowing to choose your own hops and give you the opportunity to use some speciality grains.

Essentially, rather than buying cans of hopped wort, you use Dried Malt Extract (DME) to create unhopped wort which you'll need to boil up with hops to create what you would have otherwise bought in a can or two.

Probably worth getting a couple of kits under your belt first.

 

[pittsy]

hope you sort out the problem and i would rinse more like 5 times with warm water , and the Reinheitsgebot was more to do with preventing the commoners brewing beer made from wheat (hefeweizen) so wheat would be used for bread .

 

[fbsf]

My money is on an over-bittered brew due to the concentration of the wort which contains enough hop bitterness for 23L. Hop bitterness can be a bit like that when the brew is young too.

I would try a two-can kit, maybe of the likes of a Woodfords Wherry, or if you are feeling a bit adventurous and have a 10L pan then try an extract brew as mentioned above - if you can make soup, you can do an extract brew and for 10L you are only going to need a kilo or so of dry malt (£8), and 30/40g of hops (£4 for 100g), so it isn't going to break the bank.

My first non-kit brew was an extract brew, 500g light dry malt, 500g dark dry malt, 400g cheap honey and 40g of goldings hops, and it came out as 12L of really nice beer.

Also, rinse, and rinse again. When I used Young's steriliser, I had to rinse at least three times to get rid of the chloriney smell...

 

[calumscott]

+1 to those progressive comments...

Extract brewing is a step up from kits, you get to build your own hop flavour and can steep some speciality malts for colour and flavour to build your own beers or make versions of commercial beer you like. Graham Wheeler's book has extract recipes as does Marc Olloson's which you can buy as a PDF for pennies from his website.

:thumb:

 

[just_steve]

Furthermore to the comments about extra rinsing after sanitising, if the sanitiser is chlorine based I'll rinse it all out then add a Campden tablet (sodium metabisulphite) for every 25L of warm water and leave it for 20-30 minutes before draining and rinsing again. Campden tablets take out all chlorine-based compounds (chlorine itself and chloramines).

 

[rpt]

Use a no-rinse steriliser - it saves a lot of hassle!

To avoid adding sugar get a two can kit. In these, all the sugar is in the form of malt.

 

[joe1002]

I don't think using "premium" is an in-joke. I dont know how it works but i believe it is just a way of combatting spammers, which I must say is done very well here. The same as you will not be able to post links or add pictures at first.

I think once you have a certain number of posts (I believe it may be 6) then you will be able to do all of the above. There may be a time element to it also (i.e. 6 posts and been a member for x days).

 

[jonewer]

I had a very soapy brew recently. The soapiness went away after an extra month in the keg and it transformed itself into a lovely hoppy flavour.

Give it time and it will be fine! :thumb:

 

[iancraig]

Many thanks for all the replies, what a great forum!

Cheers,

Ian

 

[fbsf]

No worries. Blimey, yet another Ian. There seems to be loads on this forum (me included). Is Ian latin for He-that-makes-ale or something :lol: