LovesIPA
Well-Known Member
I am absolutely stumped at why my beer continues to taste bad. It tastes great right up until I keg it. I taste the FG sample and it's always fine.
After a couple of days on gas, the beer completely changes. Hop flavor and aroma all but disappear. The beer takes on a bad flavor. My girlfriend describes it as metallic and I can see that but it's not the word I would use. I'm really bad at describing flavors unfortunately so I'm struggling to find a word that describes what I taste in this beer.
I brewed Biermuncher's Oktoberfast Ale a few weeks ago. I kegged it the other day. It finished at 1.014 and the sample was great. I was really surprised how much like a real Oktoberfest beer it tasted like. I was looking forward to drinking it cold and carbonated, but instead I have 5 gallons of beer that tastes quite bad and nothing like it tasted when I kegged it. Ditto with almost every recipe I've brewed in the last year. Centennial blonde is the only recipe I've brewed that this hasn't happened to.
I also put a couple of gallons of RO water in a keg and carbonated it to see if it would pick up any weird flavors. After a week, it just tasted like carbonated water. No off-flavors at all.
Things I know it's not:
- water (RO built up with salts according to Bru'N Water)
- fermentation temperature (temp-controlled ferm chamber)
- sanitation (I sanitize everything the beer comes in contact with)
- recipes (happens to every recipe)
- yeast health/viability (starters grown from slants, various strains)
- tubing (replaced every piece of tubing in my entire system)
- CO2 supply (happened on multiple cylinders)
- the kegs (all new rubber parts; cleaned and sanitized thoroughly)
I have a wheat beer, OktoberFAST, and two IPAs that all have exhibited this behavior. I have dozens more over the past year as well.
I will either figure this problem out or quit the hobby altogether. There is no sense is wasting time and money brewing beer that will taste like crap once it's kegged.
After a couple of days on gas, the beer completely changes. Hop flavor and aroma all but disappear. The beer takes on a bad flavor. My girlfriend describes it as metallic and I can see that but it's not the word I would use. I'm really bad at describing flavors unfortunately so I'm struggling to find a word that describes what I taste in this beer.
I brewed Biermuncher's Oktoberfast Ale a few weeks ago. I kegged it the other day. It finished at 1.014 and the sample was great. I was really surprised how much like a real Oktoberfest beer it tasted like. I was looking forward to drinking it cold and carbonated, but instead I have 5 gallons of beer that tastes quite bad and nothing like it tasted when I kegged it. Ditto with almost every recipe I've brewed in the last year. Centennial blonde is the only recipe I've brewed that this hasn't happened to.
I also put a couple of gallons of RO water in a keg and carbonated it to see if it would pick up any weird flavors. After a week, it just tasted like carbonated water. No off-flavors at all.
Things I know it's not:
- water (RO built up with salts according to Bru'N Water)
- fermentation temperature (temp-controlled ferm chamber)
- sanitation (I sanitize everything the beer comes in contact with)
- recipes (happens to every recipe)
- yeast health/viability (starters grown from slants, various strains)
- tubing (replaced every piece of tubing in my entire system)
- CO2 supply (happened on multiple cylinders)
- the kegs (all new rubber parts; cleaned and sanitized thoroughly)
I have a wheat beer, OktoberFAST, and two IPAs that all have exhibited this behavior. I have dozens more over the past year as well.
I will either figure this problem out or quit the hobby altogether. There is no sense is wasting time and money brewing beer that will taste like crap once it's kegged.