Another disappointing beer.

[trq]

Hey guys,

Probably a long story:

You might remember the last meet up I brought with me my second BIAB attempt to try and get some feedback on a pretty distinctive off aroma and flavour. I was calling it "campaign like", but a few of you guys had some other ideas.

Anyway, in the end, I think it was Rob that suggested it could potentially be an issue with the yeast either being overworked or just not as healthy as they should have been. This got me a bit worried because at the time of that meet up, I had not long brewed another batch using yeast that I had harvested from the one in question.

So now, this third batch. A BrewDog Chaos Theory IPA clone. I brewed it the Wednesday before the last meetup. On the Saturday before the meet up I had managed to get myself a freezer that I am now using to control my fermentations. This beer went in that on the day I got it.

One day there, (probably about 7 days into the ferment, not sure now), I went out to the garage in the morning to find the controller reporting the freezer was 8°C, I had it set to maintain around 19°C, so the heat belt that I had hanging in the freezer was on. I opened the door and it was damn warm. How warm? I restarted the controller and it now said 26°C. Damn.

I let it get back down to around 19°C and thought I'd give it a try. I have a fermentasourous, and was set at around 12PSI, so I poured a small glass for a taste, it was cool and carbonated, and the beer was pretty good. No discernible off flavours, and it actually had a lot of really nice hoppy aromas and flavour.

A few days later I took a reading (1.013) and had another taste. Again, pretty darn good.

Maybe the next day or the day after, I took another reading (1.013), has another taste and kegged it.

I was pretty happy with myself, thinking wow, it wasn't the yeast after all.

Anyway, fast forward to a couple of days later. I'd had maybe one beer each night, and they were all pretty good. By about the 3rd day in the Keg I noticed I'd lost most of my natural carbonation, so I hit it with about 30PSI overnight.

Now, I've been a bit crook most this week and haven't really touch it, I think I had one on maybe Tuesday and started to notice that it had lost a lot of its hoppiness (there wasn't a huge amount of hops in the recipe, but they were there in the beer earlier on).

Last night I hit it much harder and am now starting to get a hint of the same flavours I had present in the #2 batch I brought to the meetup. By the end of the night, I was convinced it was the same thing.

I've just tried another while I was writing this, and I'm not sure. It could be, or it might just be the bitterness itself. Not sure now.

I'm a bit concerned it's something in my kegs now. Not sure I used the same Keg or whatever, but I'm pretty sure I have had something similar in the past with some of my kit stuff.

I'd love to get some second opinions. Might have to get you boys to give me another opinion on another somewhat dodgy batch at the next meetup it would seem.

 

[homebrewnewb]

do you mean champagne like?
if you think they are they corneys you can pull all the posts out and soak em put em back together and then starsan till you are happy. might pay to hit the dip tube pretty hard too.

is the corny air tight???

 

[n87]

Hey @trq Im happy to be a guinea pig.

My first thoughts are after you have been crook, your taste and smell are all over the place, and 7 days into the ferment, 26C shouldn't be a major problem.
Using the same, possibly compromised, yeast as last time may definitely be a part of it too.

Swing me a PM if you wanted me to drink your beer

 

[Lionman]

To me, on the second batch at least, it doesn't sound like yeast or fermentation issues. Off flavours from fermentation are usually produced early on in the brew, if it got warm after the yeast had converted most of the sugars it should be ok. If the flavours dull after kegging my money would be on oxidation.

I kegged a batch of red IPA last week that was beautiful out of the fermenter, but after a day in the keg it turned darker/browner and lost a lot of its beutiful hop character and became bland and malty. I believe my mistake was not purging the keg well enough both before and after transferring the beer across under pressure and have forced some air/oxygen into solution. Live and learn. I think I will start filling the keg with water and then pushing the water out with CO2 to ensure there is no air in the keg at all when transferring across. I think the risk here is greater for pressure transfer as there is a risk of actively pushing air into the beer that you don't have to worry about with gravity filling kegs. I never had this issue before starting to pressure ferment.

Do you mean champagne like flavours? Not sure what this would be, can you describe it in a different way? Possible infection? What yeast do you use? Maybe acetaldehyde? This is normal is young/green beers, and is usually cleaned up by the yeast after fermentation. If your getting this after kegging, maybe your kegs aren't as sanitary as you would like?

I recommend reviewing your entire process from start to finish to eliminate any problems that could impact the final product.

As an example

Water - Is it dechlorinated? Filtering? Is the filter OK? Try 1/4 campden tablet? Is the profile ok?
Mash process - are temps accurate, are timings right etc?
Boil - is it hard enough/long enough?
Sanitation - is the cube/chiller/fermenter/kegs and all other cold side equipment clean and sanitised?
Fermentation - Pitching rate ok? Aeration ok? Temp ok? Timing ok, are you leaving the yeast enough time to clean up? What pressure are you using , is it ok?
Packaging - Avoiding oxidation, cold conditioning, are you leaving it long enough to condition?

 

[n87]

For those playing at home, the last beer was tasted at our last club meet and there was a slight hint of something (cant exactly remember what we decided it was, there was alot of beer sampled) that suggested yeast health as a first, with a possibility of infection.

 

[peteru]

Oxidisation would be my first guess. Although an infection in the keg sounds plausible, you would expect that anything that consumes more sugars would release additional CO2 and thus the beer would end up overcarbonated, rather than going flat.

 

[mtb]

How are you cleaning and preparing your kegs @trq ?

 

[gone brewing]

For sure we can try your beer at the next meeting and it wouldn't be a bad thing to make it among the first few we sample, while the taste buds are fresh.

 

[MJF]

G'day, don't worry too much, get back on the bike. Just keep trying and keep learning. Think it's never ending. Considering it's one of your first AG, you'll only get better. There's plenty of experienced brewers who still get off flavours in batches. If you believe it could be keg related, could be cleaning regime, do you clean, rinse then sanitise. What products do you use? Ideally you should remove all seals and clean but not many people would. Clean your lines by throwing some cleaner into a keg and run it through. Sanitise afterwards. If you're losing CO2 through seals, replace seals. Do you gas it after you keg it and discharge any o2 before carbonation? Watch your splashing too when transferring between vessels. Best to drink kegs fresh in the first couple months. Have a good w/e.

 

[droid]

Does C02 age? I bought an old C02 bottle from someone and had a weird flavour in the first beer I carbonated it with? Could well have been something else..
Sounds like you're onto it, put it down to bad luck.

 

[MJF]

Unsure if it can age, one for Google perhaps. I understand there is food grade CO2 so you need to ensure it's that. Maybe worth gassing with another bottle from a brew club member as part of process of elimination.

 

[Mardoo]

G'day, don't worry too much, get back on the bike. Just keep trying and keep learning. Think it's never ending. Considering it's one of your first AG, you'll only get better. There's plenty of experienced brewers who still get off flavours in batches. If you believe it could be keg related, could be cleaning regime, do you clean, rinse then sanitise. What products do you use? Ideally you should remove all seals and clean but not many people would. Clean your lines by throwing some cleaner into a keg and run it through. Sanitise afterwards. If you're losing CO2 through seals, replace seals. Do you gas it after you keg it and discharge any o2 before carbonation? Watch your splashing too when transferring between vessels. Best to drink kegs fresh in the first couple months. Have a good w/e.

THIS..Workin' **** out is part of the fun of brewing! It's biochemistry at it's best, and confusing as hell when you get down in the guts of the info. Letting it ride and learning from it is good fun. So is studying brewing, AFAIC, but that's me.

My guess is wild yeast. I've had the same infections. My schwarzbier, my third effort, which was like a child to me, had the same symptoms you described. I know there was at least one possible entry for wild yeast infection before the end of the fermentation, so I really can't say which one it was. It's not impossible it could be a fusarium infection, which is a fungus that can grow on barley, and somehow can make it into the bottle. Whichever, there is a clear decline in flavour, both malt and hops, and a massive increase in carbonation. I dumped the last third of the bottles. And just drak the **** out of another batch. Granted, I had the in laws around helping, which is always great. It means I can brew more.

 

[Danscraftbeer]

Analyze. Do best to eliminate negative vulnerabilities of process. No matter how small your process is.
Cleaning, sanitizing, good yeast count. Don't stress it either. Simplicity can be your friend. KISS theory is good especially on recipe's.
If process is good its hard to make a bad beer.
$0.02.

 

[malt junkie]

I remember years back following the blog of this bloke in the UK. He'd bought a brew shop and had a decent amount of experience under his belt Just a few months down the track and every brew he made turned it's toes up with infection. He went nuts with caustic: FAIL He got new gear: Fail
Kits with store bought water: Fail
Finally he rigged a fully enclosed co2 purged brew system: SUCCESS! And whilst he was sipping on a glass of that very success, a customer came through the door, ringing the little bell above it, his eyes lifted to the door and the bell above it; and above that an old window style AC unit, the penny dropped instantly.
The AC unit had been on every time he'd brewed, with in a few days he had the unit replaced, when they pulled the old one out they found it was riddled with mold!

Moral Cleanliness isn't just about the gear you brew with but also the environs in which you brew.

 

[trq]

Thanks heaps for the feedback and advice everyone. There are a lot of tips I can look into.

One comment has really resonated with me though, from Lionman. "I believe my mistake was not purging the keg well enough both before and after transferring the beer across under pressure and have forced some air/oxygen into solution."

This could well be something that I have done.

 

[Mardoo]

For what it's worth, not purging kegs well enough gave a couple of my beers a honey-like flavour of oxidation. Lesson learned!

 

[Bribie G]

Since purging my kegs my beers on tap have been spectacular and would equal anything to style that you'd get at a good craft beer bar or brewery bar.

I don't go the full pressure transfer thing, using a Brewbucket the transfer hose is quite skinny, so after purging (by serving a keg of dilute Starsan solution through a bar tap) I just open the lid of the cornie enough to poke the hose through right to the bottom, add Biofine, then transfer quickly. Any O2 that got in will be pushed back out by the CO2 flow as the beer level rises. Then seal immediately and flush headspace immediately.

I used to do all sorts of things to get late hop flavour like hop tea, dry keg hopping using my big tea ball etc but as posted by others the hops would fade out after a few days.

The problem I think is not so much the interface between the rising beer and the oxygen, it's the splashing and slurping that goes on for the first part of the transfer. This splashing now happens in a pure CO2 atmosphere.
With fully flushing the keg the extra cost of the gas is pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things. So what if you have to shell out the cost of a couple of six packs every year.

What I've done lately is to flush two kegs in one session, then always have a keg of CO2 to go.

 

[Adr_0]

Could the champagne-like bite be chlorophenol? Do you dechlorinate your water?

Although the amount in a beer doesn't necessarily increase over time it can be perceived as worse as a beer ages - and some of the other flavours/aromas mellow out.

As Lionman suggested, 1/2 a crushed Campden tablet, sodium metabisulphite or ascorbic acid will quickly neutralise the chlorine/chloramine.

If your beer is getting oxidised and staling quickly this would not help either so good advice above.

 

[fungrel]

I remember tasting that beer and both Rob and I agreeing it was from either an infection or yeast issue.

I remembered commenting that the pH was particularly low in the beer, meaning the infection or flavour must have taken hold some time ago or that the beer had been stored warm for a period of time accelerating the rate of change and intensity.

We both looked through lists to try and identify the exact cause, after re-reading the descriptions I believe this fits best:

Does this seem like it fit what you are tasting? The threshold of this compound is quite low.

 

[mr_wibble]

My first thoughts are after you have been crook, your taste and smell are all over the place

Yeah, these were my thoughts too.
From what I've read, most yeast-generated flavours are created early in the fermentation, so if the temperature rises up later in the timeline, it's not so big of an problem.