My beer when finished has a metallic taste?

Does anyone know what causes this or how I can get rid of this flavor in my beers? I have been focusing primarily on stouts and porters, some o which have came out great but they all seem to have this odd metallic taste to them. I use a stainless steel pot and glass carboys for fermentation. Can this flavor come from the bottling process?

You could fully describe you process but I have a suspicion that it is oxidation. What did you use to rack your beer from your primary? Did you allow the beer to splash a lot as you were transferring?

A quick google search:

Metallic Flavors in Beer

Metallic flavors in your beers are perceived as the taste of a rusty nail, or coin-like, tinny and blood-like. One source of these off-flavors is from aluminum pots or other un-plated steel surfaces. High iron concentrations in the brewing water can account for some of these flavors as well.

When stainless steel is cleaned without passivating the surface (oxidizing to produce a layer of protective oxide on the surface) the unprotected steel can also cause off flavors.

Check the quality of your bottle caps, filter your water if necessary or use bottled water if you must, and keep all of your grain stored under proper conditions to prevent or reduce the coin-like off-flavors in your beer.

Mdking2 said:

You could fully describe you process but I have a suspicion that it is oxidation. What did you use to rack your beer from your primary? Did you allow the beer to splash a lot as you were transferring?

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Oxidized tastes like wet cardboard or stale bread, not metallic.

I use spring water from the grocery store for each beer I make. My pot is a 7.5 gallon stainless steel turkey fryer pot. Some one said that it may not be plated? I'm not sure, but my last 5 beers have all had a similar after taste

I had this with a number of my early extract batches. All were also brewed in a stainless pot with store-bought spring water, so that wasn't the issue. These were fermented in glass and put into secondary, then bottled. Only no-rinse sanitizers were used. I don't know that the causes listed in "metallic" quite fit, but to me it tasted metallic. So perhaps we're talking about the same thing.

Possible things:

1) Stale/old extract. (Is this the "extract twang" everyone talks about?)
2) Oxidation. (I could see the "sherry" description being similar here)
3) High pitching/ferment temps, underpitching yeast (I think some of the higher fusels might give this flavor and/or yeast reproduction byproducts)

I wish I could tell you exactly what made it go away. Batch #3 didn't have it. I switched to all-grain by about batch #7 and it was mostly going away by then. The early batches used an autosiphon that kept losing prime, so oxidation could have been an issue on those batches (especially since I went from primary to secondary to bottling bucket, so there were two racking steps that could introduce O2). Around that time was when I was making rudimentary starters (i.e. boiling wort & pitching yeast the morning before brewday started or at best the night before). It was around then that I learned that you don't want to pitch your yeast into 80 degree wort too. So a LOT of brew steps were changing all at once.

The only thing I'd say is from an ingredients perspective, make sure you're buying ingredients from a source that will be sure to have fresh extract. And potentially a no-rinse sanitizer like star-san that is acid-based might be better than something oxygen-based like one step.

Other than that, look at process. Practice proper racking technique several times with water to ensure that you're not introducing bubbles of oxygen during the process. Try starters (or dry yeast) to ensure you have proper cell count and watch pitching and ferment temperatures.

Hope this helps... I think I had the same off flavor, and these were the improvements I made over those first six months that mostly made those flavors go away. I just don't know which one was the critical step.

What do you use to sanitize? I use iodophor and if you use too much I could see that giving off a flavor similar to metallic.

I get this taste sometimes when there is still yeast in the beer. You will find this mentioned occasionally, though most seem to focus on a metallic flavor coming from other sources. Since I prime my kegs with sugar, I tend to dump the first pint and then have yeast settling out for a short period afterwards. Usually within four or five pints, the metallic note is gone. Also, I notice this tends to be way worse with beers like stouts and porters. It must be some combination of the dark grains and possibly suspended yeast. Are you stirring up a lot of yeast when you pour your bottles or getting a lot of yeast into your bottles in the first place? Just another thing to look at, along with other possible contamination points.

Normally after the boil and cooling of the worth I auto siphon into my glass carboy. After pitching I was told to shake the carboy for a couple minutes to oxygenate the beer. Does this sound like a good practice?

mrrshotshot said:

Oxidized tastes like wet cardboard or stale bread, not metallic.

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Actually, with dark grains you can get a metallic flavor from oxidation. I had that in an ESB one time.

Mostly, though, metallic flavors come from brewing water. I'd consider trying a different brand of water, preferably reverse osmosis water from those big "water machines" in the grocery store.

I've done 10 all grain so far and I got 2 batches with slight metal taste (still drinkable, nobody but me noticed this off flavor). I was first thinking it was a roast flavor but it is really metallic. Those 2 batches are a bit similar :

I only used dark grains on those batches;
I racked to secondary only for those batches as well. I have a 6 gallon carboy, and the batches were ~4.5-5 gallon. All the other batches were bottled after primary.

So, I think it may be related to dark grains and/or oxidation from racking processes...!