Help! Weird maybe off flavour!?

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Nizmoose

Well-Known Member
Joined
20/3/14
Messages
781
Reaction score
203
Location
Brisbane, Queensland
So after at least a year of reading scared and confused off flavour threads of little helpful information I have to cave and create one of my own. I cannot work out whether what I'm tasting is a function of the recipe or if it is an off flavour. This is the second time I've gotten it and I'll give both recipes. The only way I can describe the flavour is perhaps herbal or grassy but I've never tasted a definite grassy beer to compare it to. My problem is I havent really tasted any off beers at all so I'm going in blind.

The first time this flavour came up was in an IPA and it wa pretty strong, the recipe is as follows:
13L batch size
3.25kg Pale
200g Crystal

12g magnum @ 60
20g magnum and 20g crystal @ 5
12g each of magnum crystal and citra dry hopped for three days

The off flavour appeared before dry hopping and didnt seem to subside after dry hopping, perhaps foolishly after getting ready to bottle this batch, for the first time in my brewing career, I took the fermenter to the lawn and heartbrokenly opened the tap. One thing I noticed this time is that the hop character was completely dead, there wasnt anywhere near as much nice hop character as expected and I say this because I brewed the same beer months before and it had a beautiful hop aroma and flavour. This stands out to me as a key point I just dont know why and Im hoping someone does.

Fast forward to today and now in an Amber Ale I have a similar smell and taste but much more muted, the hop character is also next to non-existent but the hopping levels in this batch are much less:

2kg maris otter
200g crystal
100g amber

5g columbus @ 60
4g columbus and 4g cascade @20
3g each of colubus, galaxy and cascade @ 5

and I decided today to dry hop with 5g each of columbus and galaxy to see if I can mask it.

Both of these beers were fermented with US05 but I have brewed a perfectly good beer with the exact same yeast (100B cells taken from starters to remake the next starter) in between both of these beers. One last detail is that the amber ale isnt cloudy, its nice and clear by normal standards.

Any help here would be massively appreciated and I know its hard to nail it down without tasting it but I'd love to know where I'm potentially going wrong!
 
I should add that all my batches are brewed with pre-milled grain and I cant for the life of me think of how long I left the grain bag at room temp before brewing with it but no longer than a week in both cases and I've brewed completely okay batches within the same time-frame, also I siphon after chilling into the fermenter, protein gets in but little to no hops get into the fermenter.
 
At what point in the process did you first notice?

I had a flavour that sounds similar in a few batches some years back.
Pretty sure it was a wild yeast infection.
What kind of chilling process do you use? How do you clean it as well as your kettle and fermenter taps?

Does cracked grain sit uncovered anywhere near fermenting beer?
 
manticle said:
At what point in the process did you first notice?
Problem here is I tend to pitch and just leave the beer for almost two weeks before I test SG/CC/Dry hop etc. So I noticed it when I went to check the gravity after over a week of fermentation. This is true in both cases.

I had a flavour that sounds similar in a few batches some years back.
Pretty sure it was a wild yeast infection.

What kind of chilling process do you use?
I use an immersion chiller, outside, lid off, that would normally ring alarm bells I suppose but I've never had an issue before. Possible lottery there not sure.

How do you clean it as well as your kettle and fermenter taps?
I clean the fermenters with a hot sodium perc rinse after use and then a hose out and starsan before filling. One thing that might be of interest is that I let the grain bag drain into the bucket which is to be the fermenter and then after emptying that I sit the grain bag in the bucket, empty it, hose it off well and then it gets starsan before being filled. having the grain bag sit in something that is to be my fermenter is probably not best practice and I'll stop doing that. Fermenter has no taps at all its just food grade bucket.

Does cracked grain sit uncovered anywhere near fermenting beer?
Cracked grain sits in my room nowhere near the fermenting beer and in its bag from the LHBS unopened and sealed but not under vacuum
 
Sorry: the bit you missed - how do you clean the chiller and how do you clean your fermenter taps?

Yes alarm bells a bit. Any plants, fruit trees, etc outside?
 
Ahh the chiller gets a sod perc soak as well and goes in with 10 mins left on the boil, fermenter has no taps its just a bucket and I siphon out for bottling, no fruit trees outside but there are various other trees and plants, the pot is under a pergola not directly under or near any plants, but wind definitely has access.
 
Were these two batches in a row or were they separated with some good batches? (Sounds like it from your US05 info)
 
I think I might have a similar problem.
Can grassy flavour be a bit like a plastic flavour?
 
Reman said:
Were these two batches in a row or were they separated with some good batches? (Sounds like it from your US05 info)
They had one batch in between which was really clean! Same original yeast culture

panspermian said:
I think I might have a similar problem.
Can grassy flavour be a bit like a plastic flavour?
I wouldn't call mine plasticy not that it can't exist! Mine is a grassy almost woody flavour
 
Probably not grain/hops/yeast related. I'd be looking to see if there is a piece of infected equipment in common. If you get grassy again maybe consider dumping all your plastic stuff and re-buying and "nuke" anything metal with bleach and sanitiser.
 
Another vote for infection. Next time, bottle (P.E.T.) one and set aside. Allow it to sit for 2 months then check your SG. If it's dropped a few points it's pretty clear it got infected. Not all infections look like spider webs on your wort.
 
Reman said:
Probably not grain/hops/yeast related. I'd be looking to see if there is a piece of infected equipment in common. If you get grassy again maybe consider dumping all your plastic stuff and re-buying and "nuke" anything metal with bleach and sanitiser.
TheWiggman said:
Another vote for infection. Next time, bottle (P.E.T.) one and set aside. Allow it to sit for 2 months then check your SG. If it's dropped a few points it's pretty clear it got infected. Not all infections look like spider webs on your wort.
Thanks for the suggestion, I have been thinking about an infection but haven't noticed a steady decline in SG it seems fairly stable, I might get some into a bottle today without priming sugar and see what happens
 
Cant nail it for you but drawn to these topics because of a still unsolved mystery for a few bad batches made before Christmas. I suspected plastic fermenters that are getting a bit old. I know my best 30lt fermenter is good though I just finished drinking a very clean Pilsner fermented in it. I also went out and got a stainless steel Kegmenter. The first beer I made has just the slightest tiny hint of the same flavour but barely detectable, its just that I know the signature of that flavour now and very sensitive to it. Possibilities left are: Summer brewing, lots of wild yeast blowing around mostly bad offenders. Even though I protect the kettle and wort well its still vulnerable during chilling (submersible chiller) cubing could eliminate that but I don't cube much.
Ingredients: Yeast, malts, hops can all vary from season to season. Every beer that has the flavour was heavy in powerful late hops. Like Galaxy etc. Makes me wonder if its too much hop resin maybe.
Equipment: I'm quite anal about all the hygiene in steps like (HACCAP) Wary of the critical and vulnerable points of food handling etc. I cringe to see people leaving their wort open when chilling, or opening their fermenters etc. I boil hoses etc.

Best of luck finding the culprit its quite disappointing when you know the beer should be good like many previous brews you've made etc.
 
Danscraftbeer said:
Cant nail it for you but drawn to these topics because of a still unsolved mystery for a few bad batches made before Christmas. I suspected plastic fermenters that are getting a bit old. I know my best 30lt fermenter is good though I just finished drinking a very clean Pilsner fermented in it. I also went out and got a stainless steel Kegmenter. The first beer I made has just the slightest tiny hint of the same flavour but barely detectable, its just that I know the signature of that flavour now and very sensitive to it. Possibilities left are: Summer brewing, lots of wild yeast blowing around mostly bad offenders. Even though I protect the kettle and wort well its still vulnerable during chilling (submersible chiller) cubing could eliminate that but I don't cube much.
Ingredients: Yeast, malts, hops can all vary from season to season. Every beer that has the flavour was heavy in powerful late hops. Like Galaxy etc. Makes me wonder if its too much hop resin maybe.
Equipment: I'm quite anal about all the hygiene in steps like (HACCAP) Wary of the critical and vulnerable points of food handling etc. I cringe to see people leaving their wort open when chilling, or opening their fermenters etc. I boil hoses etc.

Best of luck finding the culprit its quite disappointing when you know the beer should be good like many previous brews you've made etc.
The summer brewing is a good point lots of stuff floating around, funnily enough I've been told Im particularly anal about santitation and the one thing I've always left purely because it hasnt ever gone wrong before was the open chilling, looks like the sensible thing to do here is correct everything I can including making an appropriate pot cover (my chiller inlet and outlet are far away from each other so the lid doesnt fit) and seeing if the issue leaves! Is there any mention anywhere of wild yeast causing a completely bland dead beer? Its one big feature I'm noticing, the IPA was really underwhelming and this amber just tastes really sweet and thin and no hop flavour.
 
Okay guys another batch another off beer. This one is an APA and it has the identical off flavour. I'm leaning to wild yeast but I have one crucial question, will a wild yeast infection always lead to gushing or over-attenuation or can it produce an off flavour in an otherwise perfectly carbed and stable beer?

Also I opened a bottle of the Amber previously mentioned, the off flavour is definitely less evident but still there, is this typical of a wild yeast infection? Also when the glass is swirled the aroma is definitely sour, like makes you screw your nose up and almost burns like inhaling co2. Really hoping someone can confirm the cause! The only thing that touches my wort post chilling is my siphon so that copped a blitzing with hot sodium percarbonate today.
 
Wild yeast can be a real pain to get rid of but it's a generic term so the results will not always cause hazy gushers.
 
i have bottled part of a brew that had an infection, i caught it very early - i found that once bottled it didn't continue to get worse, it was sort of time-capsuled. it was a sour taste but only very slight and also had a weird fruityness to it, maybe a bit like bruised fruit
 

Latest posts

Back
Top