Off flavor from water after bottling

[Skiffy]

My first few batches I used completely unfiltered city (Philadelphia) tap water. I ended up getting this plasticy/medicinal/metallic (hard to describe, everybody detects something a little different) flavor after bottling. I chalked it up chloramine in the water (and maybe some beginner brewer practices) and started using bottled water. Problem went away. After many successful brews, I decided I was tired of buying bottled water, so I obtained a water report for my area and started treating my tap water with campden tablets. The problem immediately came back. At the bottom is my water report but below is some more information for those that have the knowledge/time to help. Thanks in advance!

-99.9% positive it's not infection
-99.9% positive it's not mash pH
-Not green beer ... the problem persists months after bottling
-Not trace amounts of chloramine ... I had still used tap water for priming and for sanitation with no ill effects on my bottled water brews.
-Off flavor starts after bottling (whether 2 weeks in primary or 8 weeks in primary), seems to get better with age, and get better with longer refrigeration time prior to opening, but is always present. Also tends to get better if I let my beer of off gas. Makes me think its related to carbonation (maybe the off flavor is carbonic bite?); however, I do not think its related to amount of carbonation as everything from 2.0 to 2.8 vols has the off flavor.



pH 7.3
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est, ppm 269
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.45
Cations / Anions, me/L 4.1 / 4.0
ppm
Sodium, Na 38
Potassium, K 2
Calcium, Ca 34
Magnesium, Mg 8
Total Hardness, CaCO3 118
Nitrate, NO3-N 1.0 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 6
Chloride, Cl 97
Carbonate, CO3 < 1
Bicarbonate, HCO3 48
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 39

 

[jnacey]

How much campden are you using? Are you using it for both your mash and sparge water?

 

[Skiffy]

How much campden are you using? Are you using it for both your mash and sparge water?

1/2 tablet for ~5 gallons of water.

Yes (I do 3.25 gal batches)

 

[jnacey]

That should be fine. I usually use a full tablet, but that's likely overkill. Is there any other factor linking the brews that you can think of? Hops from the same bag? Same style of beer? Did you use the same equipment? Do you use whirlfloc/irish moss?

The only other thing I can think of is that maybe your pipes are leeching metal into the water? Did you use hot water or cold water to star when heating up for your mash?

 

[Skiffy]

Definitely not same ingredients and not same style of beer, although I tend to notice it more in pale ales, the dry hop character doesn't seem to be there like I would like or expect from a 1oz/1gal ratio.

The first four styles were american wheat, american wheat again, pale ale and pumpkin ale, with the pale ale being the worst offender. None of those were treated with campden tablets though.

After using bottled water and switching back, the styles were Belgian single, pale ale and porter ... the Belgian single actually isn't too bad (only one with liquid yeast), the pale is pretty rough, and the porter i had tasted today was pretty bad, although that has been in bottles for only 2 weeks so I'm reserving official judgement.

Bottled water produced all types of styles fine, liquid and dry yeast, dry hopped and minimally hopped.

and to answer your next question, ferm temps are controlled.

Could be ... I use hot/warm water when collecting. House pipes are new and not metal, but I'm sure the ones in the street were built 100 years ago.

 

[jnacey]

How old is your hot water heater? Perhaps there's some leeched metal in there, so in the case you use hot tap water to go into your kettle to further heat up for you mash, you are pulling metals out of your hot water heater?

Additionally, have you added any salts to your mash water? Gypsum or anything like that? Any acid?

 

[flars]

Several years ago I thought I could save some time by filling my boil kettle with hot tap water. Our water is from our own well. I did a taste test of the water before I did this.
I let two glasses of water set for 24 hours. One was drawn from the cold water tap and one from the hot water tap. The glass of water from the hot water tap had a harsh mineral taste. The water from the cold water tap had no off flavor. Our water heater, and water lines, were four years old at the time.

 

[Skiffy]

The house is new construction so the water heater is brand new (< 2 years now I guess, wow time flies)

The Belgian single had acid malt in the mash. Pale ale had some gypsum in the boil but no other additions. Forgot to check the mash pH for the pale, but usually it's not far from ideal.

I'll have to taste test my hot versus cold water. I would think if it was purely minerals/metals in the water it would taste bad prior to bottling as well? Anything react with carbonic acid? Unfortunately chemistry is not my thing.

Edit: perhaps I shouldn't be so quick to say I'm 99.9% sure it's not mash pH as its the aspect of brewing I understand the least. I have checked my mash pH before with the bru'n water spreadsheet though and everything seems in check to me.

 

[ajdelange]

Plasticy: chlorphenolics
Medicinal: Phenols
Metallic: Metals

Perhaps you have more than one problem here and solved only the first with the campden tablets.

Phenols are grain derived in particular from the husks and usually sneak into beer because the sparge runoff pH was allowed to climb too high. Changing to bottled water won't help with this.

Metalic flavors come from metals dissolved in the water such as iron either in the supply (usually a problem with wells - not city water) or dissolved from old iron pipes or copper dissolved from copper plumbing.

I suppose another remote possibility is that you have chlrophenolics already in the water. How does it taste and smell? How does it taste and smell when gently warmed? Were this the case running it through a GAC filter prior to use might help. This is a bit of a reach.

 

[d3track]

What are you cleaning/sanitizing with?

I'll also say that getting a good filter would be a wise purchase.

 

[Skiffy]

I am fairly critical of my beers and I am pretty self aware. The beers made with bottled water, although often not fantastic for various reasons, did not exhibit this off flavor in the slightest.

I'll have to examine the tap water more carefully for metallic or other off flavors, as I drink from filtered water out of my fridge (way too cumbersome to collect water from my fridge to brew).

I clean with pbw, rinse well and sanitize with starsan. No issues with my practices in all of the bottled water batches.

 

[jnacey]

The whole house filters are really nice and pretty easy to install. They'll run around $100 or less and you just put it line where the piping to your house comes in. Mine came installed when I bought our place, but the setup is basically the main comes in, through the filter, and then on throughout the house. You'll also need to put in a short bypass piping system around it just in case something goes wrong with the filter. If you are a DIYer you could probably do it for less than $200. My water report off of the QL facility is similar to yours, just a bit softer.

 

[Skiffy]

Hmmm worth considering. It would probably be smart to wait for my warranty to be up before I start tinkering.

Did you ever figure out the impact, if any, of the filter on the reported water numbers from the plant? Do you know if your numbers are reported form the plant or did the numbers come from somebody sending in a sample from their house?

 

[Skiffy]

Update and second question.

I tried a Belgian Single just now and the off flavor is there slightly. I completely off gassed it and the more subtle yeast flavors showed up and it tastes much better. Its highly carbed but I wouldn't say overcarbed.

ajdelange: I was looking through these three threads (1, 2, 3) below just now, which you were also part of ... he's describing what I think is the same flavor and has gone through the same thought processes I had. You seem to really know your stuff.

 

[jnacey]

Hmmm worth considering. It would probably be smart to wait for my warranty to be up before I start tinkering.

Did you ever figure out the impact, if any, of the filter on the reported water numbers from the plant? Do you know if your numbers are reported form the plant or did the numbers come from somebody sending in a sample from their house?

My water numbers were from cold tap water from my house (post-filtration) with a scaled down addition of campden. I can provide it to you later, but it likely won't help you much.

 

[Skiffy]

Yea if it's not that different, then those small differences are not what making the beer off. The numbers I have are also somewhat close to what was reported directly from the plant, so I don't think the filter changes the ions or anything.

To make things stranger, I got home today and threw a bottle of the Pale Ale from my closet in the freezer for half hour and brought it to the home brew shop for them to taste. It was moderately cold by then, poured into 4 plastic cups and it tasted muuuuch better than I had previously. Actually could smell the hops. That being said there was something in the finish, which one identified as bandaid/medicinal, and the rest agreed. They also agreed that whatever it was, it wasn't that bad.

I'm going to stick some bottles in the fridge at the same time and open them up together to see if each bottle is different or if the slightly varying conditions are causing the differences in perception. I imagine its the latter, since I didn't have trouble with consistency with the bottled water.

 

[jnacey]

Maybe use more campden? It's probably overkill, but I use 1 tablet for my mash water and 1 tablet for my sparge water.

Also, what temp are you using to sparge? Maybe you're extracting tannins from sparging to hot?

 

[Skiffy]

I do BIAB where I mash with normal water to grain ratios (1.25 to 1.5 qt/lb) and then "dunk" sparge to reach my total boil volume. I make sure the sparge water is under 170 and it's usually closer to 160.

Just checked my mash pH for the pale ale in bru'n water and it was 5.7. A tad high I guess but not to the point of off flavors is my understanding. Sparge pH probably isn't an issue with dunk sparking and our water?

I was adding campden to an 8oz glass of warm water to see if I could notice the off gassing smell and the lack of chlorine smell afterwards. I was essentially grinding a tablet with a sharp knife, stirring, smelling and adding more. I added nearly a quarter tablet before the off gassing smell stopped. Maybe we have higher concentrations or the tablet isn't dissolving well enough

I decided that on my next slow weekend I'm going to brew 3 identical small, simple pale ale batches. One with tap water treated with plenty of campden, one with filtered water from my fridge and campden, and one from store bottled water. My problem seems to be kinda strange, so short of somebody analyzing my whole brewing process in person, I think I just need some more data before anybody can really help me crack it.

Thanks for the help so far.

 

[jnacey]

I usually shoot for a mash pH of 5.2 - 5.3 for crisper beers. I also acidify my sparge water. My process appear to be identical to you, brewing wise.

Where are you in philly? We have a homebrew club meeting tomorrow at HSH in Rittenhouse. Might be worthwhile to drop by and pick some brains if you're free.

 

[Skiffy]

I'm in Fishtown so I'm usually at Philly Homebrew Outlet but I work in center city. I may bring some beer to work and stop by, I'll have to see how the day goes though.

I'm so bad at chemistry, but i think if I was having mash pH and sparge pH issues with tap water I'd also have them with bottled water. I should try to nail them down more though, it will only make my beer better.

 

[Skiffy]

Just an update:

Btw, wife had to work late the night of the club meeting at HSH so I had to head home.

I think I have more insight into my issues.

I tried a new porter and I didn't get the off flavor. As a porter with oak, if there was any subtle medicinal off flavor, it would probably be masked anyway. Any pH issue probably negated due to darker grains. I also opened 2 pale ales at the same time. Exact same/correct level of carbonation, , very mild off flavor in the back, but not terrible.

I think my issues are this ... 1. I'm getting some mild off flavor that is water related (either pH or chloramine or maybe other) and 2. I can't yet make a decent bottle conditioned very hoppy ale (I have read many threads of people struggling with this style until they keg) 3. The first two issues lead me to panic and test my other beers quickly after very short periods of refrigeration, sometimes just a few hours. This I think leads to beer with uneven carbonation and carbonation that leaves solution quickly, which sometimes has its own biting off flavor.

Anyways, I'm going to keep analyzing the last three beers and then plan a side by side brew day.

 

[jnacey]

Just an update:

Btw, wife had to work late the night of the club meeting at HSH so I had to head home.

I think I have more insight into my issues.

I tried a new porter and I didn't get the off flavor. As a porter with oak, if there was any subtle medicinal off flavor, it would probably be masked anyway. Any pH issue probably negated due to darker grains. I also opened 2 pale ales at the same time. Exact same/correct level of carbonation, , very mild off flavor in the back, but not terrible.

I think my issues are this ... 1. I'm getting some mild off flavor that is water related (either pH or chloramine or maybe other) and 2. I can't yet make a decent bottle conditioned very hoppy ale (I have read many threads of people struggling with this style until they keg) 3. The first two issues lead me to panic and test my other beers quickly after very short periods of refrigeration, sometimes just a few hours. This I think leads to beer with uneven carbonation and carbonation that leaves solution quickly, which sometimes has its own biting off flavor.

Anyways, I'm going to keep analyzing the last three beers and then plan a side by side brew day.

How long are you letting them condition before you try them?

 

[flars]

I don't sample my first bottle until the four week mark. I am conditioning at 67°F. When I conditioned at 70° to 72°F, I would sample my first at three weeks. These are 1.042 to 1.064 OG beers.
I'll refrigerate for at least three days before opening.

 

[Skiffy]

I usually try one at 2 or 3 weeks but withhold judgement until 4 weeks or more depending on the beer. The pales were bottled before thanksgiving I believe so they are over 8 weeks now.

I read your blog post about your pH meter. Interesting to see that your pH was a few tenths higher than predicted. Could have been an issue with this pale since I was supposedly at the upper end of acceptable anyways. I may have to invest in a meter, still recommend the one you got?

 

[jnacey]

I read your blog post about your pH meter. Interesting to see that your pH was a few tenths higher than predicted. Could have been an issue with this pale since I was supposedly at the upper end of acceptable anyways. I may have to invest in a meter, still recommend the one you got?

Not sure which specific post you're talking about, but it was probably a calibration issue. Once you get that squared away its good. I like the meter, but you really have to use all the solutions (calibration, storage, cleaning) or the probe goes quickly.