Ruining my beer - plaster taste

[itry]

Good day to you.

can i have some forum help please.

I keep killing my beer . I seem to be getting a Plaster ( that you stick on a cut) medicinal smell and taste. ive manage to ruin a dark brown ale. Kolsch ( this one alot more than the rest) and a creamsoda ale experiment. its really beginning to drive me insane. ive literally had to ditch 100s of liters ( yes hundreds!) of beer because it has taken on this medicinal taste. Even my brother , who would drink the spirit out of a spirit level , wont drink it. i get the same taste if im using my grainfather or if im using my 60l kit.

in how to brew by john Palmer it states " chlorophenols are a result from a reaction involving chlorine- based sanitisers( bleach) and phenol compounds" and not rinsing them off properly after usage. so it indicates that im clean but not rinsing. i use Sodium per carbonate and boiling water then chemsan and rinse with boiling water. so they arnt exactly as above.

this is my routine. please question each of these.

i have brew builder stainless fermenters. all have two ball valves. i fill with with sodium percarbonate and boiling water then connect to a pump and cip ball. so it recirculates the cleaner. after this i strip down and disassemble the ball valves. clean out any lumps i might find. i then clean off any items that may still be in the fermemter. i then re build it and reapply the pump and the cip kit. i then add 20l of boiling water and the relevant amount of chemsan. i then leave to circulate again. next i drain this out . i connect a boiling water feed to my cip. i remove the pump and open the valves. then blast it through with boiling water so bioling water is passed seperatly through both valves. i also make a point of opening and closing the valves so that they clean all of the faces with in it. on the top of the fermentor i have a 1.5" tc with a corney post. this is stripped and boiled. then i use corny post blow off pipe in to a conical flast with water and chemsan in it. these are also sanitised after and before every usage.

next i removed the tilts i have and replaced all of the rubber gaskets. they get a good soak in chemsan and wiping over.

grainfather / 60l pot. before i use these i fill with boiling water then pump around the system. opening and closing valves again to make sure the boiling water touches all faces.
after i have used these. i use a hose to flush out all the chunks. i scrape any burnt on items off the bottom. i fill with water and sodium percarbonate boil it and cip . ( i had a lid for this made for the grainfather) once boiled i pump out the boiled water and flow clean water through it. to blast out any final undesirables that may be in it.

i pour boiling water into and all over a conical flask. this i then add some cooled boiled water and start my yeast.

I dont beleive this is temp control as im with in the specified boundarys.

all of my pumps get stripped down and cleaned. then i pump boiled water around the system to clean all of the pipes.

i have done some brews however that made it through and were absolutely fine. yet i did every thing as above!

Help me obi wan your my only hope

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Given the kit you’re using I imagine you do treat your water but as you haven’t said anything about this…do you treat your water? You may be rinsing all your equipment well but if you’re using tap water and you don’t treat it, those same chlorine based compounds will be in your brewing water.

I think you might need to look beyond the sanitisation of your kit and look at your process and ingredients. Just before you do though, do you use a copper immersion chiller or CFC. Do you scrub the copper until it’s gleaming - this could well increase the amount of copper in your beer and make it taste metallic. It might also stress the yeast.

Some yeasts produce higher levels of phenols and if these are stressed some of the phenols can taste a bit medicinal.

 

[itry]

Hi!

i treat my water with a campden tablet before the brew.
so you think the water from the tap i rinse every thing with could be causing this?

i have a copper lined cfc( if you look back through my posts you will see what i made) i dont scrub it at all as its all internal. i blast it with boiling water.

 

[An Ankoù]

I know this flavour well, although I haven't had it for a number of years. Thank the gods.
There are two causes:
The first is due to chlorine and or chloramine in the tap water reacting with the phenols in the hops during the boil. You must get rid of the chlorine / chloramine by (as said above) treating your mash and sparge water with sodium metabisulphite. This comes conveniently packaged as Campden tablets and half a tablet is enough to treat 30 litres. If you overdose by a factor of 2 or 3, no harm done. There's no need to use any chlorine-based cleaning product on any part of your equipment that gets hot during the boil, but if you do, then wash it very well- even with dilute metabisuphite.
The second is due to an infection during fermentation. Whatever it is, a wild yeast or a bacterium propagates with the yeast while the beer is fermenting. You start off by getting a faint whiff in the FV and it gets stronger and stronger until the beer is ruined. If you suspect the later, you'll need to thoroughly clean everything that comes into contact with the fermenting beer: FVs, taps, syphon tubes. I use a solution of bleach for 24 hours, rinse and then allow a solution of metabisuphite to stand in the FV to remove every last vestige of chlorine. In fact this has become my standard cleaning routine after every FV use.
Bear in mind, too, that if it's an airborne infection, it may still be hanging around somewhere. When you consider that a brewery only brews beer and then compare that with the kitchen: food leftovers, spores from oranges and other fruit beginning to turn, waste bins, mould on cheese, ghastly cloths that are used to wipe down surfaces until you can feel that they're slimy with bacteria, things that hide under the fridge, things that pets contaminate their bowls with etc, etc. I sometimes wonder how we manage to make decent beer in a kitchen.

Both conditions are irreversible. The beer's only fit for slinging out. But be careful, I thought I'd picked something up a few batches ago and it turned out to be just the yeast throwing up some phenolics of its own and the beer turned out to be fine.
As far as cleaning and sanitation are concerned, everything before the boil needs only to be clean, everything after the boil needs to be thoroughly sanitised.
Hope that helps.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

Hi!

i treat my water with a campden tablet before the brew.
so you think the water from the tap i rinse every thing with could be causing this?

i have a copper lined cfc( if you look back through my posts you will see what i made) i dont scrub it at all as its all internal. i blast it with boiling water.

No sorry, I worded that clumsily. Rinsing with tap water should be fine. I was trying to say you do a good job of rinsing away any chlorine products in your cleaning regime but if you then used untreated tap water as your mash water you’d have a new source.

I think your CFC will not be the cause in that case.

Is your fermenter cleaning regime as rigorous? I’m thinking about a possible infection here.

Is there any item you will have used in the beers that developed this taste and didn’t use in others? A paddle, a hop sock, a particular grain (that could have a mould).

 

[An Ankoù]

Just to reiterate what @Hazelwood Brewery is saying: the water company put chlorine in the tap water to keep it drinkable. You need to get it out again before you brew with it.

 

[Surfingobo]

Pin hole leak in your CFC allowing a small amount of tap water into your finished beer? Has your efficiency dropped at all?

Try a no chill batch and see if you get the flavour?

 

[An Ankoù]

Pin hole leak in your CFC allowing a small amount of tap water into your finished beer? Has your efficiency dropped at all?

Try a no chill batch and see if you get the flavour?

I don't think chlorinated tap water leaking into the beer would cause any problem at all. It's got to boil with the hops to produce chlorophenols.

 

[Surfingobo]

I don't think chlorinated tap water leaking into the beer would cause any problem at all. It's got to boil with the hops to produce chlorophenols.

My understanding was that chlorinated water could produce chlorphenols at any stage, and this is the reason that extract kit brewers are recommended to treat their water. Happy to be wrong though!

 

[itry]

This all makes sence. our water supply is very chlorineish . i will do another brew using the campden tablets.
and re clean every thing. im sure that this has been done. ill have another go. may mix the campden tabs in the night before and let them settle over night.

 

[MmmBeer]

I have only experienced this off flavour in a commercial beer and it was pretty nasty.

I have had a similar repeating off flavour in my homebrews, which I later found was caused by too much metabisulphite. I mistakenly thought that I should use half a campden in the mash and another half in the sparge of a 5 gallon batch, instead of a quarter in each. Since them I have stopped using them altogether and my beer has improved immeasurably.

My water supplier's report indicates 0.2 ppm of free chlorine and 28 ppm of chlorides. Yours may be higher, but I wouldn't recommend adding more than one campden tablet per 70 litres of makeup water.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

My understanding was that chlorinated water could produce chlorphenols at any stage, and this is the reason that extract kit brewers are recommended to treat their water. Happy to be wrong though!

Yes this is my understanding too: I have read that if the chlorination chemicals come into contact with any type of organic molecules then they produce chlorophenols that can be tasted in minute quantities.

@itry you have my sympathy. Would it be worth doing a brew using bottled water to see if chlorination is the source of your problem?

Another thing to check is that no part of your brewing process mixes copper and stainless in electrical contact with each other in the presence of wort - for example a SS immersion chiller in a copper tun, or copper tubing connected to a SS kettle?

 

[Buffers brewery]

Another thing to check is that no part of your brewing process mixes copper and stainless in electrical contact with each other in the presence of wort - for example a SS immersion chiller in a copper tun, or copper tubing connected to a SS kettle?

My kettle/boiler is a stainless steel stock pot and I've fitted it with a copper cooling coil and a copper whirlpool pipe.

What off flavours am I supposed to be experiencing?

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

My kettle/boiler is a stainless steel stock pot and I've fitted it with a copper cooling coil and a copper whirlpool pipe.

What off flavours am I supposed to be experiencing?

I would expect a 'metallic' taste...

The issue is electrochemical corrosion - see Galvanic_corrosion

The driver here is that copper and stainless steel have different electron potentials - so if they are both in contact with an electrolyte (e.g. hot, mildly acidic wort) then they form a battery. This is just like the old trick of sticking a copper and a zinc (or steel) nail in a lemon (or potato) and using it to light a bulb. That's the reason you get pinholes in aluminium foil if it is touching salty or acidic food that's being cooked in a stainless steel tray (see 'lasagne cell': Galvanic corrosion - Wikipedia )

The voltage difference isn't an problem unless the two metals are also in electrical contact. But if they are, then a high current will flow and molecules of the lower-potential metal will be dissolved into the electrolyte; which in this case is your wort. There will also be rapid corrosion of the lower-potential metal in the same way that a 'sacrificial anode' is used to prevent corrosion of steel ship hulls or buried structures.

Whether or not it's a problem is a moot point and will depend how long the two metals are in contact with each other in the presence of the the electrolyte; however in the case of a long boil with hot wort, I've personally taken steps to avoid it by using insulating washers and a thick wrapping of PTFE tape.

Sorry if I caused any alarm :hat:


EDIT: here's an example: stainless steel bolts have been used to fasten galvanised steel plates. Either metal is highly resistant to corrosion, but in the presence of an electrolyte (in this case, mildly acid rain) corrosion occurs. The bit you can't see of course, is that the zinc molecules have dissolved into the rainwater.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

What off flavours am I supposed to be experiencing?

I’d hope none directly because that would need quite a lot of copper in your wort. If it was that high it would taste similar to putting a penny in your mouth.

The potential issue is earlier oxidation of your beer because iron and copper ions are pro-oxidative.

Edit: You can probably take some comfort in the knowledge that thousands of people do the same as you without it having become a “no-no” among the brewing community.

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

I’d hope none directly because that would need quite a lot of copper in your wort. If it was that high it would taste similar to putting a penny in your mouth.

The potential issue is earlier oxidation of your beer because iron and copper ions are pro-oxidative.

Edit: You can probably take some comfort in the knowledge that thousands of people do the same as you without it having become a “no-no” among the brewing community.

I agree Mr H and as I said, I certainly don't wish to sow discord and alarm. However, take a look at for example Preventing Corrosion In The Brewery | MoreBeer

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I agree Mr H and as I said, I certainly don't wish to sow discord and alarm. However, take a look at for example Preventing Corrosion In The Brewery | MoreBeer

Nice - though crevice corrosion sounds painful

 

[The-Engineer-That-Brews]

similar to putting a penny in your mouth.

ummm maybe more like chewing a ball of aluminium foil and getting it in contact with your fillings…

 

[Buffers brewery]

Nice - though crevice corrosion sounds painful

Now that I know Ive got!

 

[mrhardware]

If you suspect it could be your water. Why not try a brew using the old faithful Tesco's Ashbeck mineral water as a base and treat this to suit the style you are brewing. This would rule out a water problem.