Water problem solved

[Dave Nagy]

So I've been brewing kits for over a year and experiencing bad tasting beer.
I'll try to explain the issue.

Darker colour
Off white head
Fizzing up as in like it was over carbonated .
The taste for me was a bitter favour that got worse with time. Friends have said it a plastic flavour??
Sometimes I could taste it from the FV, sometimes it would be ok out of the keg for a bit then get worse until its undrinkable.
Not to mention what it was doing to my guts.

This would be the same for kegging and bottles

I searched long and hard to find the problem changing everything.
This included washing with different cleansers, using different sterilization, new FV mixing spoon and so on. Basically everything was changed and the way I did them.
I live in the Sutherland Shire and water is very drinkable with no chlorine taste.
Ive brewed when I was younger with success and new it wasn't that hard.
It really does hurt tipping out full kegs one after another.


Now in the instructions on the tins it does state to use warm/hot water to rinse out and get the rest out of the tins.
Doesn't say anything about tap hot water.
Our hot water heater is gas and was replaced about 5 years ago. So I didn't think it would be a issue.

Well it was the issue not sure why maybe its the anodes in the heater or whatever but
TAP HOT WATER WAS CAUSED MY BAD BEER ISSUE.
Stopped using tap hot water and bingo beer it A Ok

So glad its sorted after all this time now I can move on and start experiencing with grains.

 

[MHB]

Taking an educated guess, its Chlorine/Chloramines.
When you heat water in a pot/jug the Cl tends to get driven off, in an instantons HWS there is nowhere for the Cl to go so it's forced into solution, being both what is referred to as "Free" and Hot, it will react very quickly and aggressively.

Posted this plenty of times but every time a bunch of people download it.
Run a search (Ctrl f) for anything you taste (i.e. Plastic - lots of hits) but make sure you read the entry for Chlorophenol.
Mark

 

[FarsideOfCrazy]

If you were to use the water from an instantaneous hot water system to get some heat in the water to then get it ready for mash in at whatever your mash temp would be, would that rise in temp from 50c to 70c be enough to drive off chloromine/chlorine?

 

[MHB]

I would think some, but if it spent more time open (jug/urn/pot) and was heated from cold tap to 70oC (ish) you would eject more. Even just leaving water in a bucket overnight will loose most of its Chlorine (not Chloramine).
Problem with Chlorophenols is that some people can detect then at really low concentrations (low ppb), so what isn't drinkable to one might be just fine to another, not a right/wrong just personal perception.
For the piddling cost just throw in a touch of Met and get rid of all the Cl either way.
Mark

 

[FarsideOfCrazy]

My water profile. Has a Monochloramine listing of 0.44 – 1.50 mg/l. So if I were to add some sodium metabisulphite, how much would be needed?

 

[Jack of all biers]

Checkout bru'n water website. In on my phone, so can't directly tell you, but bru'n will

 

[golfandbrew]

If you're brewing kit and kilo boil all your water and let it cool to pitching temps. Also if you're using any dry fermentables (dextrose, malt extract, boosters etc) then these should be boiled as well. Liquid extracts are presumably sterile due to the process in which they are made and packaged. Dry fermentables haven't gone through any similar heating process at the time of packaging and should always be treated as unpasteurized.

Cheers

 

[fungrel]

My water profile. Has a Monochloramine listing of 0.44 – 1.50 mg/l. So if I were to add some sodium metabisulphite, how much would be needed?

Dosage is 1 tablet per 100L

 

[mabrungard]

Another possibility: If your water source is Hard, your home may have an ion-exchange (salt recharged) water softener plumbed to the water heater. Water heaters are particularly impacted by hard water and using softened water helps extend their life. So, its possible that your hot water was actually softened water and that can easily affect beer as mentioned.

 

[MHB]

Martin
Australia is one of the oldest land masses in the world, its called a regolithic continent. Means our soil is pretty thoroughly rinsed.
Water so hard it requires household water softeners is vanishingly rare. I've never seen or heard of anyone fitting one, even local de-ionisers in front of appliances like espresso machines are very much the exception, standard in front of boilers and steam generators naturally.
One down side is that most of the barley grown locally is very low in Zn (borderline deficient). The OP says he lives in Greater Sydney, so really hard water isn't going to be the issue. Interesting cause/effect tho, certainly not one that would have come to mind.
Not something I have studied but get the impression that really hard water is much more common in north America than it is here.
Mark