MashBasher
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 26/6/10
- Messages
- 107
- Reaction score
- 103
Hi.
A while since I've been here. Recent years have not been kind.
I genuinely want some serious help. My little home brewery has not made a decent beer since 2020.
In part, that's because I just gave up for a couple of years. I'm seriously struggling here everyone, please try to feel my pain.
This will be a long post, I have a story to tell and I am very, very distressed that I have not yet solved the issues I am facing. Please pour yourself a cold one and listen with an open mind.
I'm not a dirkhead (well, I am, but a good kind of dirkhhead - the kind that just wants to make good beer). I've been brewing since the early 90's. I have made every possible mistake that a brewer can make. I know what can go wrong. I have learned lessons. I am, if anything, barely competent.
I have successfully made litre upon litre of excellent, foamy, tasty stuff since then. I have embraced all styles, from the lightest Pils to the darkest Stouts. ripper beers, many of them, but...
Towards the end of 2019 my Dad, (who is in his eighties) said, "Mate, your beer is giving me a crook guts". I paid a bit more attention, and he was right. There was a lingering off-taste. A kind of burning sensation, bit like ingesting some sodium percarbonate.
A gaviscon or some sodium bicarbonate would make it go away. But - just not right.
It got worse, and worse, and worse. By 2021 my beer was undrinkable. Burning throat, upset digestion, tingling dried out lips and tongue,- just horrible. Yet the beer smelled lovely, looked lovely, and tasted lovely (at first). Two pints and you'd want to chuck it though.
The taste sensation was for me: a dryness on each side of the tongue; a dryness on the roof of the mouth (a lot like tannin) followed by a burning throat and later, an upset digestive system.
Now, I know you want to know what diagnostics I have done. Trust me, I have step-by-step bypassed and eliminated every component in my brewery. My system is a double batch, fully 304 stainless 3V HERMS that (if you will), please accept, is impeccably, impeccably clean.
I am fastidious, but not an over user of chemicals - I measure concentrations carefully, I use standard approaches and concentrations (PBW/Sodium Perc/Starsan) and have a ready source of hot water to fully and completely rinse everything. And the hot water service I draw from has been recently replaced with a heat pump system - (best thing since sliced bread, if you have solar, which we do).
I have run a 2% Caustic Soda at 60' through the entire system (twice), and fully neutralized with citric acid to Ph 7.0.
In each case, the next beer was still bollocks.
I resorted to going back to my early 90's Zapap system to make some test beers which were each universally as bad as the beers on the full 3V. Note that none of the Zapap system components (with the exception of hoses and the pump) were common to both systems. I used a discrete HLT and boil kettle to ensure independence. The pump is a March with a Blichman riptide head (oh, yes, I'm serious) and I can SEE that bastard is clean. I have refreshed my silicon hoses twice since this problem began.
The resulting brew was just as frigged.
So, after walking away for a while (maybe two years) and thinking about things, my only diagnosis was - it can't be my gear, or me (the weakest link) -it's the frigging water.
So, I'll happily pause here - if you have any better insights, I'm all ears. Please let me know.
Also, about this time, I got my still back from my brother-in-law (who had it in safe custody for about 10 years or so) and I made up a batch of birdwatchers TPW and distilled it. Double distilled it actually.
Guess what? Post distillation - a dryness on each side of the tongue; a dryness on the roof of the mouth (a lot like tannin) followed by a burning throat and later, an upset digestive system. Exactly the same as in the bad beers.
No components used (not even the fermenter) are shared with the beer system.
So - next step. I installed an RO filter on the water source.
Made two beers. The problem is vastly reduced, but I still wouldn't give my beer to anybody. Even using RO water, the lips tingle, the throat is hot, it's not good.
I am convinced it's the water source.
I need advice. What contaminant can survive double distillation? What contaminant can an RO filter not catch?
I'm about to give up on the whole caper. If you can offer some serious help, I'd appreciate it.
And what is it with the wowser exclusion of swear words on this site? Are we in the US mid-west now? Sheesh.
A while since I've been here. Recent years have not been kind.
I genuinely want some serious help. My little home brewery has not made a decent beer since 2020.
In part, that's because I just gave up for a couple of years. I'm seriously struggling here everyone, please try to feel my pain.
This will be a long post, I have a story to tell and I am very, very distressed that I have not yet solved the issues I am facing. Please pour yourself a cold one and listen with an open mind.
I'm not a dirkhead (well, I am, but a good kind of dirkhhead - the kind that just wants to make good beer). I've been brewing since the early 90's. I have made every possible mistake that a brewer can make. I know what can go wrong. I have learned lessons. I am, if anything, barely competent.
I have successfully made litre upon litre of excellent, foamy, tasty stuff since then. I have embraced all styles, from the lightest Pils to the darkest Stouts. ripper beers, many of them, but...
Towards the end of 2019 my Dad, (who is in his eighties) said, "Mate, your beer is giving me a crook guts". I paid a bit more attention, and he was right. There was a lingering off-taste. A kind of burning sensation, bit like ingesting some sodium percarbonate.
A gaviscon or some sodium bicarbonate would make it go away. But - just not right.
It got worse, and worse, and worse. By 2021 my beer was undrinkable. Burning throat, upset digestion, tingling dried out lips and tongue,- just horrible. Yet the beer smelled lovely, looked lovely, and tasted lovely (at first). Two pints and you'd want to chuck it though.
The taste sensation was for me: a dryness on each side of the tongue; a dryness on the roof of the mouth (a lot like tannin) followed by a burning throat and later, an upset digestive system.
Now, I know you want to know what diagnostics I have done. Trust me, I have step-by-step bypassed and eliminated every component in my brewery. My system is a double batch, fully 304 stainless 3V HERMS that (if you will), please accept, is impeccably, impeccably clean.
I am fastidious, but not an over user of chemicals - I measure concentrations carefully, I use standard approaches and concentrations (PBW/Sodium Perc/Starsan) and have a ready source of hot water to fully and completely rinse everything. And the hot water service I draw from has been recently replaced with a heat pump system - (best thing since sliced bread, if you have solar, which we do).
I have run a 2% Caustic Soda at 60' through the entire system (twice), and fully neutralized with citric acid to Ph 7.0.
In each case, the next beer was still bollocks.
I resorted to going back to my early 90's Zapap system to make some test beers which were each universally as bad as the beers on the full 3V. Note that none of the Zapap system components (with the exception of hoses and the pump) were common to both systems. I used a discrete HLT and boil kettle to ensure independence. The pump is a March with a Blichman riptide head (oh, yes, I'm serious) and I can SEE that bastard is clean. I have refreshed my silicon hoses twice since this problem began.
The resulting brew was just as frigged.
So, after walking away for a while (maybe two years) and thinking about things, my only diagnosis was - it can't be my gear, or me (the weakest link) -it's the frigging water.
So, I'll happily pause here - if you have any better insights, I'm all ears. Please let me know.
Also, about this time, I got my still back from my brother-in-law (who had it in safe custody for about 10 years or so) and I made up a batch of birdwatchers TPW and distilled it. Double distilled it actually.
Guess what? Post distillation - a dryness on each side of the tongue; a dryness on the roof of the mouth (a lot like tannin) followed by a burning throat and later, an upset digestive system. Exactly the same as in the bad beers.
No components used (not even the fermenter) are shared with the beer system.
So - next step. I installed an RO filter on the water source.
Made two beers. The problem is vastly reduced, but I still wouldn't give my beer to anybody. Even using RO water, the lips tingle, the throat is hot, it's not good.
I am convinced it's the water source.
I need advice. What contaminant can survive double distillation? What contaminant can an RO filter not catch?
I'm about to give up on the whole caper. If you can offer some serious help, I'd appreciate it.
And what is it with the wowser exclusion of swear words on this site? Are we in the US mid-west now? Sheesh.
Last edited:
, hopelessly contaminated with fungal infections. It took spraying the whole space with Iodphos to get it under control.
