The Homebrew Twang experiment.

[itry]

I did alot of kegging this weekend and i believe that ( with the concent of my fellow testers) i have isolated what i call home brew twang in my beer. It has a slight , not over whelming but present , Medicinal taste maby a TCP sort of hint? It also has a fresh pine sort of flavor? Now i also had an idea , with my fellow testing colleague are we picking out a flavor which isnt that nice to our pallets and were making a big deal out of it? after we described it as pine it was a lot easier to drink. Are we being to critical?

In the new year i have an experiment im going to test. brew the same twice , once under pressure and one in a white bin. Whats the diffrence? as the last brew i did in one of my one of my white bins didnt seem to bubble im wondering if its an air leak and the flavor is oxidization.

 

[terrym]

@itry
On the assumption you are using mains water for brewing, the homebrew twang you describe (TCP) comes from your water, probably chloramines used to treat the water at source. You can eliminate that by pretreating your water using campden tablets (I use half a tab in 23 litres plus of water and leave overnight). But if your mains water tastes or smells rubbish for other reasons that will of course transfer to the finished product, so you might consider using bottled water instead.
Homebrew twang is a sort of caramelly taste which is usually associated with kits, which I believe comes from using some types of old or cheap LME. I found that Muntons produced kits were especially prone to it whereas Coopers weren't. However if you are careless whilst transferring your beer from FV to final container and get a lot of oxygen into your beer it could also be oxidation.

 

[An Ankoù]

I'm at a loss to understand how something as rich and dense as wort can be reduced to about a twentieth of its volume without something in it changing and thus changing the flavour slightly.

 

[itry]

Water treatment and a pressure sealed unit then to repeat the same brew over again. One observation that ive noticed is that it is cascade hops that really give off the taste.

 

[An Ankoù]

I've noticed this. I keep a glass of water by my bedside, on occasions I've forgotten to refresh it and it tastes heavily of chlorine. So it's not necessarily the fridge part causing it.

and JCA

This is weird. If there was chlorine in the water, it would tend to dissipate overnight, not get stronger. The water would take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but not chlorine because there isn't any (it's to be hoped). So. Time to leave some water out for 24 hours and then do a side by side taste with tap water.
I wou't make an entry on the "what are you drinking tonight?" thread, though.

 

[itry]

the water where i live is chlorine if i leave it over night.

 

[Richie_asg1]

Just another idea I had after watching various youtube brewers, is that the kit cans are pre-hopped? So tipping one into a FV full of chlorinated water would be just asking the hop phenols to combine with the chlorine?

All grain wouldn't suffer from this as all the water is boiled before the addition of hops and thus hopefully drive off all the chlorine in the water long before the hops go in.

 

[terrym]

Just another idea I had after watching various youtube brewers, is that the kit cans are pre-hopped? So tipping one into a FV full of chlorinated water would be just asking the hop phenols to combine with the chlorine?

All grain wouldn't suffer from this as all the water is boiled before the addition of hops and thus hopefully drive off all the chlorine in the water long before the hops go in.

My understanding (rightly or wrongly) is that in the UK water is usually treated at source with either chlorine or from chemicals that leave chloramine in solution. And whereas chlorine can be boiled out of solution or will slowly come out of solution if left to rest, chloramine is stable in hot water and so requires chemically pre treating to eliminate it by using campden tabs to break it down into ammonium and chloride ions which don't affect the beer.
So if you are all grain brewing you may still have to pretreat your water if you are in a chloramine area.
In recent months I have occasionally noticed a slight TCP taste to my tap water (chloramine) and assume that the way the water company treats the water has changed since it wasn't there before. So I have had to start pretreating my brewing water, whereas previously I didnt bother, although then I was mostly doing kits which I don't do any more.

 

[GerritT]

Prehopped LME, mark my words.

 

[Winterbournebrewery]

I always treat my water. Let’s face it it is the basic building block of beer. I also have Harris pure brew if I want to do a quick spur of the moment kit tweak & don’t have time to treat tap water.

 

[strange-steve]

I always treat my water. Let’s face it it is the basic building block of beer. I also have Harris pure brew if I want to do a quick spur of the moment kit tweak & don’t have time to treat tap water.

I'd never heard of this before now, but on googling it seems to be a dechlorinator/yeast nutrient combo, interesting.

Just another idea I had after watching various youtube brewers, is that the kit cans are pre-hopped? So tipping one into a FV full of chlorinated water would be just asking the hop phenols to combine with the chlorine?

All grain wouldn't suffer from this as all the water is boiled before the addition of hops and thus hopefully drive off all the chlorine in the water long before the hops go in.

Not really because a lot of phenols come from the malt during mashing.

 

[Mavroz]

I have used Harris's pure brew since day one and I think it does exactly what it is supposed to.

 

[GhostShip]

I've not come across Harris Pure Brew before. I always use Tesco Ashbeck Spring Water for my beer, but I've still had a couple of instances of the 'twang'.

Is it worth trying Pure Brew with spring water, or is that simply a waste of time and money?

 

[Mavroz]

For a few quid, what's the harm in giving it a go?

 

[nige]

What do breweries do, they use the same water although do they brew in plastic fermenters

 

[terrym]

I've not come across Harris Pure Brew before. I always use Tesco Ashbeck Spring Water for my beer, but I've still had a couple of instances of the 'twang'.

Is it worth trying Pure Brew with spring water, or is that simply a waste of time and money?

I think you may have answered your own question in a roundabout way. If you get the twang with Tesco Ashbeck Water which, as I understand it is about as neutral as it goes for homebrewing - someone please correct me if I'm wrong- then you should be looking elsewhere, which in your case is not water related.

 

[aamcle]

I can't easily comment on Twang as I brew AG but my water has a flavour so I run it through a taste and odour filter and have no problems with it.

Aamcle

 

[Bobtheblob]

I tried an experiment with my last batch. I squeezed some of the bottles until the beer reached the brim before capping and marked them as such to see if oxidization made a difference. Just opened one and it gushed everywhere. All the others that weren't squeezed haven't gushed so far. All were batch primed. In fact I've never had a gusher before - maybe because it wasn't chilled enough? I managed to save about half a pint and to be honest, although it was extremely cloudy after all that it tasted better then the other non squeezed bottles. Oxidization maybe?

edit - just had another of the squeezed bottles and it definitely! tastes better compared to the non squeezed bottles. There's definitely something going on there.

 

[dan125]

This Cwtch is the first LME kit I've made, and although its not as twangy as some I've tasted there is an odd metallic character that isn't very nice.
Made this with ashbeck and bottle filled force carbonated from the FV with a beergun for minimal O2 exposure.
+1 for the LME being responsible for the twang

 

[terrym]

+1 for the LME being responsible for the twang