Urgently require help! Off tasting beer...

[Bad_Idea_Beers]

Hi all,

Really need some help/ideas.

We have been brewing for 4-5 months and made 7 great tasting beers. Always careful with cleaning and sanitisation but then we had a beer that after 2 weeks in the fermenter was undrinkable (cloudy with a horrid taste that's hard to describe. I would say slightly vinegar and medicine) had to spit it out it was so bad.

Anyway, just put that down to something going wrong or using hops that were 2 months old and exposed to oxygen. Next brew we were even cleaner and used a new pack on vacuum packed hops. Wort tasted good but again after 2 weeks in the fermenter came out identical to the first bad batch.

Thinking that is couldn’t be any of the ingredients or the sanitisation thought maybe the hot temperature was having an effect.

3rd batch, different ingredients apart from the LME (we bulk buy the 25Kg muttons stuff) and came out of a different fermenter after a week tasting identical to the other 2. I had kept this one in the coolest place in the house but it was still averaging 23 degrees which I know is high but didn’t think it would make it this undrinkable.

We don’t use a wort chiller (just down to cost) and add cold water straight from the tap (I know some would say use bottled water or boil it to start to kill anything but it was fine for the first 7 batches) and then leave it sealed in the fermenter overnight to cool before adding yeast.

My question is do people think that the stainless steel brew kettle could be infected at all (can this even happen) or do others struggle to brew in the summer when temperatures are mid 20’s.

Any help or ideas much appreciated because throwing over 300 pints of beers down the sink is enough to make 3 grown men cry.

p.s. sorry its so long but wanted to be as detailed as possible.

 

[Covrich]

No expert.. you're boiling in the kettle so I cannot imagine that is responsible how do you transfer it from the kettle to fermenter.. I wonder if anything else like spoon or anything could be affecting it..

Is it always the same taste?

 

[MyQul]

You say the off flavour is vinegar and medicine? And you use cold water straight from the tap?

Sounds to me like chlorophenols. The yeast is matabolising the chlorine/chloramide in the tap water to create chlorophenols which give a medicinal/band aid flavour to your beer. Pretty easy to fix (unfortunaely not on this brew - don't think there's anything you can do about it once the off flavour is there). Use half a Campden tablet in all your brew water. You can buy a years supply from Wilko for a quid.

I also no chill in the FV overnight and if you do it properly there little to no chance of infection

 

[Tony1951]

I had a series of bad brews like that back in teh 1980s and I got so discouraged that I packed in brewing for thirty years. At the time I thought I had an infection around the place, but now I don't believe it was that. I had bought a non-thermostat brewing belt and I think I was brewing at far too high a temperature - naive enough then to think that cool was my enemy.... No way to know now.

Are you sure your brews didn't rise up above 24C? Is the yeast you were using tolerant of temperatures like that? Some are seemingly, others not.

If you are scrupulous about sanitation which you seem to be I can't see how you would suddenly get a run of this problem.

On the cloramine thing that Myqul mentioned, has your water changed? Remember - you had good brews before, so maybe unless the water has changed for some reason like works on the pipe network, that isn't as likely unless some other factor has changed. Campden Tablets are ultra cheap of course so not a problem.

Hope you track it down. That's a lot of wasted beer and time.

 

[Cwrw666]

Do your next brew just using bottled water, that'll show whether the problem is with the water or your equipment. If your water is very chloriney at the moment it might be because of work being carried out somewhere on the pipes - they inject loads of chlorine to try and kill off (not necessarily successfully) any bugs that have got in.

 

[clibit]

Either high temperature or infection in the FV in my opinion. What yeast you using? Is the temp of 24 the ambient temp? Any sign of scratches in the FV?

 

[alarmsparks]

If you use a Camden tablet in the brew water do you need to add it to the water before you mix it with a kit contents?

 

[MyQul]

If you use a Camden tablet in the brew water do you need to add it to the water before you mix it with a kit contents?

Yes. Put it the brew water about 10 mins before you mix up your kit

 

[Bad_Idea_Beers]

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

WE usually use Wyeast 1056 but when the first batch went wrong we started using Muntons Premium dry to save cost in case it went wrong again (which it did). We have 2 60l fermenters and the same off flavour and colour occurred in both. Our 70l boil kettle has a tap so we transfer direct from there into the fermenters (to avoid any other issues of the wort touching potentially contaminated surfaces.

I think based on people opinions on here I am going to do a 100% boil so that no additional water is added. Then split the wort into both fermenters. 20l in each. Allow to fully cool over night and then add yeast. From the sounds of it other people stuggle a little with the temperature and keeping it below optimum (20 degrees ish) but at 24 degrees the beer sounds like it should still be drinkable.

Fingers crossed. If anyone thinks of anything else let me know as I need the next one to be correct to keep the enthusiasm.

 

[LarryF]

You could try a hot weather yeast, Mauribrew or Mangrove Jacks Workhorse yeast. I've used both over the summer with good results, the workhorse is my preferred choice.