Ruining my beer - plaster taste

[itry]

@mrhardware i am going to try this

 

[foxbat]

Did it start soon after you started using a CF chiller? I'm deeply suspicious of things that I can't get inside to clean and wouldn't touch a CFC with a barge pole myself. For example I run hot PBW through the 3-piece ball-valve of my boil kettle during initial cleaning and then when I take the valve apart for proper cleaning it's still sticky to the touch inside even though it's already been run through with hot PBW. And being clean is just half the job, if it's not dried afterwards then mold will grow. Mold grows faster in dark places.

 

[itry]

no this has been a problem for a while now. i literally fill a kettle with boiling water with sodium percarbonate and pass it through and stop it. so that it stays in the cfc and fizzes boils the insides out.

 

[Lynx Brewery]

I agree Mr H and as I said, I certainly don't wish to sow discord and alarm. However, take a look at for example Preventing Corrosion In The Brewery | MoreBeer

Interesting info. Looking at the table, there’s a major difference between Passivated and Unpassivated stainless steel.

Can we assume that all the stainless kit that we use (stock pots, valves, disconnects, nuts & bolts, etc. are made from passivated stainless steel?

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Interesting info. Looking at the table, there’s a major difference between Passivated and Unpassivated stainless steel.

Can we assume that all the stainless kit that we use (stock pots, valves, disconnects, nuts & bolts, etc. are made from passivated stainless steel?

An astute observation ... yes the SS that we use in our brewing vessels should be passivated; and that is precisely why you don't want to damage the passivation (which is just a thin oxide layer on the surface) by cleaning with bleach or rubbing with a metal scourer - even a SS one.

Also if SS has been welded it's important to re-passivate around the weld (see What is Passivation for Stainless Steel Welds? - TIG Brush) which can be done with strong acids or 'pickling paste'. This can be a problem with cheap kegs (e.g. see Funny taste and other posts by @foxy )

 

[Hanglow]

Can we assume that all the stainless kit that we use (stock pots, valves, disconnects, nuts & bolts, etc. are made from passivated stainless steel?

No, I wouldn't assume that at all. Passivation is pretty easy to do though - clean all your stainless things that you want passivated - your pot/ss chiller/cam locks etc - fill pot with 80c water, add enough citric acid to get to about 4% concentration, so 40g/l of powdered citric acid, then leave it for a couple of hours. Drain, rinse and leave it all exposed to air for a day before using it.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

No, I wouldn't assume that at all. Passivation is pretty easy to do though - clean all your stainless things that you want passivated - your pot/ss chiller/cam locks etc - fill pot with 80c water, add enough citric acid to get to about 4% concentration, so 40g/l of powdered citric acid, then leave it for a couple of hours. Drain, rinse and leave it all exposed to air for a day before using it.

Perhaps more than 4% if you are in a hard water area?

This page: Citric Acid Passivation Solution for Stainless Steel | CitriSurf 2250 seems to suggest aiming for a pH of about 1.8 and rinsing with distilled water - but possibly that's a bit OTT for home brewing purposes

 

[Hanglow]

Yeah low alkalinity soft water at least would be a good idea, or RO etc. I see that site recommends between 4-10% solution

A good indicator if it has worked, would be a tint to the citric acid solution at the end of passivation, it will probably have a blue/green tint to it

 

[Paul Bennett]

Sounds to me similar to a fermentation process that has overheated. Happened to me once and it was horrible. Like chemicals or nail polish remover

 

[Philthebrewer]

Ah, the dreaded sticking plaster taste. I had it bad many years ago and tracked it to my "yeast library" where I had unknowingly been culturing the bacteria which causes this as part of my yeast culture. I have also had this off-taste recur when I have been less than 100% scrupulous with my cleaning, especially the fermenting vessels. So I now clean more rigorously and dismantle all possible taps and connections before sanitising...
Good luck with this one.

 

[Sadfield]

The tricky part is correctly identifing the off flavour, and is critical to avoid diving down the wrong rabbit hole.

Sticking plaster aromas are attributed to 4 ethyl phenol rather than chlorophenol, which is more antiseptic. The former is produced mainly by brettanomyces, the later from chlorine.

www.aroxa.com has a lot of useful info on off flavours.

Your cleaning, sanitising regime appears thorough and you treat your water with Campden tablets which should be enough to avoid this issue. I'd go back to basics and brew a simple pale ale, doing the following.

1) As @mrhardware suggested, use bottled water.

3) Direct pitch some dry yeast.

2) Buy a cheap plastic FV and split the ferment between this and your kit.

The above should eliminate a water issue, a yeast contamination and kit contamination.

 

[itry]

@Sadfield
@mrhardware
i will brew this weekend using dried yeast pitching it direct and bottled water.

 

[itry]

This will get boaring as im trying to be detailed.

So i addressed this this weekend. I took on board all of what you said.

and followed none of it! before trying with purchased water(because this for me is not acceptable or sustainable) i decided the day before i would fill my pots and boil the water. then add a campden tablet. knowing that the chlorine's would have dissipated.i prepared Wednesday evening and i brewed Friday afternoon. i didn't use the chiller and just pumped hot wort into my very clean stainless fermenter and left over night. Saturday afternoon i went out to clean up. The wort was still to high for pitching yeast so i left it, Still sealed from being added as boiling. now im cleaning up the mash tun and hold on i can smell the dread smell. i start fishing all of the crap from the bottom and its really really strong. Very odd. i clean the pot out . then Sunday the wort is temp of for pitching the yeast. I open the fermenter and boom the smell!its super strong. then we rigged up the pump and pumped 55 liters of unfermented wort down the drain. it stank aswell, really strong.

Im taking the boiled and campden tablet water as 100%.
so its some thing else.

im going to have a guess at the hose pipe that is feeding my brew shed.i have treating it like a normal house tap and running it in to the mash. if the water has been in the hose and in the sun getting hot will the hose leach its wonderful flavor into the water? i leave my brew shed hose on the tap and charged with water. do i need to purge the hose for 60 seconds before each use? or just bin it off altogether? in my mind this works because this issue has only really started acting up in the warmer weather. while it was cold or disconnected or maybe i purged it, their wasnt a problem.

the next experiment for me will be . filling a fermentation vessel from inside the house and pouring it into my pots outside to make beer. see how this works.


to be continued.....

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

Not boring at all :-)
Good sleuthing and certainly sounds like the hose is a plausible suspect.
One other thought - it's not an over-concentration of Camden is it? Normally I use half a tab to 30L water

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I don’t think people were necessarily suggesting you always use bottled water but that you use bottled water once to see if this fixed the problem - and identify the water as the cause or eliminate the water as a suspect.

I don’t know for sure but I do feel the hose could be a source of your problem. I have tasted water from a warm hose before and it did taste very plastic. Taking water from inside the house will eliminate the hose from the equation. If it is the hose I think running water through it first will reduce but maybe not eliminate the issue.

 

[itry]

@The-Engineer-That-Brews
you can over dose by around 5x the required amount and be fine still.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

For what it's worth I use a normal garden hose to fit up my kettle without issues, but I do flush it through first.
I suppose if I'd thought about it I should probably be using one of the blue 'potable' hoses e.g. 4-Layer Blue Garden Hose 1/2" | Water Hose for Potable Water| Hosepipe for Camping Site, Camper, Van, Garden | Drinking Water Equipment (15) : Amazon.co.uk: Garden & Outdoors

 

[Surfingobo]

The American brewing podcasts always talk about not using regular garden hoses due to leaching stuff into the beer. Certainly sounds plausible

 

[Nicks90]

Very much so, garden hoses are not food safe and water stood in the hose is likely to be disgusting
I have a 25m hose for watering the garden and the first water to come out is vile smelling and if its been stood for a week, it even looks a bit milky.
Run your tap for a few minutes to flush the pipe before using any of the water for your brew. I would also suggest you replace it with some white 'H2O flexi plastic pipe' or the blue hose above to connect to your shed
Even then it wouldn't hurt to run the tap a minute or so to flush it.

 

[Sadfield]

What did the wort from the mash smell/taste like before the boil? If fine then it isn't the water from the hose.

Leaving wort and a used mash tun over night, or a couple of nights in the case of the Fv, in a warm shed, is a pretty good way to allow lactobacillus to grow and create off flavours and aromas.

The problem here, is you are adding more uncontrolled variables, rather than eliminating them.

Also, what is the smallest batch size your kit can accommodate? 55L sounds a little extravagant given the issues.