BeerBorg

Kealia wrote:Hey! Have you brewed this yet? Don't keep us guessing here!!

I was actually going to brew it today... damn work got in the way. Maybe next weekend

Finally brewing this one! I forgot that I was all out of Biscuit Malt, so decided to up the Honey Malt to 1/2#, and subbed some of the 2-row for 1 pound of Munich 10L and 1/2# of Vienna for a maltier finish. Mashing right now!

Overshot my volumes a bit, so ended up with almost 6 gallons of 1.066 wort. Nice dark gold/light amber color - we shall see how this turns out!

Yeah, I always hate it when I end up with more beer. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing..."please feel sorry for me, I have MORE beer than I expected!"

Hope it turns out well for you.

So I cracked a tester bottle... Poured cloudy gold with a nice head and great lacing. Smells awesome - tropical fruit, citrus, grape.

Took a nice sip. Argh... dreaded band-aid aftertaste... Why oh why... I used RO-filtered water, pitched a ton of yeast, fermented at 66F... I just don't get it.

On the other hand - awesome hop aroma and flavor; nice smooth lingering bitterness. This could have used a bit more malt, but it's a tasty combo. I may have to try this again.

I don't have an answer for you except that sometimes, the starts don't align or the beer gods aren't happy and I feel your pain.
But, hopefully, letting it sit another few weeks will remove most of the off flavors.

If you wouldn't have mentioned using RO water, I would have said it could be chloramines but my understanding is that RO removes all that. Maybe too much yeast???????

You still have that sour going right? Have you been pulling samples? Is it possible a bit of your wild beer bretts got into your air? There is a reason that breweries who do sours usually do them in a separate facility from the rest of their beers. I know how easily Brett stays alive in the environment, since I've got my own version in my house that infects 2-3 batches every summer. Luckily mine makes pineapple and hay flavors instead of Orval. If I kept making unintentional Orval I'd be annoyed LOL.

Otherwise... did any bleach touch anything you touched your beer with? Something you sanitized after it touched your sour?

Just stupid wild guesses - I don't see how you could get chloramines from your RO water, unless your RO filter is busted and leaking tap water around the filter. And unless the S-04 got up to the upper 70s, I don't think it would throw off anything like that.

mashani wrote:You still have that sour going right? Have you been pulling samples? Is it possible a bit of your wild beer bretts got into your air? There is a reason that breweries who do sours usually do them in a separate facility from the rest of their beers. I know how easily Brett stays alive in the environment, since I've got my own version in my house that infects 2-3 batches every summer. Luckily mine makes pineapple and hay flavors instead of Orval. If I kept making unintentional Orval I'd be annoyed LOL.

Otherwise... did any bleach touch anything you touched your beer with? Something you sanitized after it touched your sour?

Just stupid wild guesses - I don't see how you could get chloramines from your RO water, unless your RO filter is busted and leaking tap water around the filter. And unless the S-04 got up to the upper 70s, I don't think it would throw off anything like that.

My sour is still going (almost 12 months now and rocking a nice pellicle) - I have not touched it in a couple months, so I don't think that has anything to do with it. I have a whole separate set of equipment for sours, it never touches my regular beers. I don't think it's wild yeast - I get no gushers or other funky flavors, just a slight phenolic aftertaste.

Now that I'm thinking about it - I never had this issue with any of my kegged beers. Hmm... I did use 6 oz of water from my fridge filter (Pure charcoal filter) rather than RO water for my priming sugar. That may have been the culprit.

Oh well - it's still a decent beer, just not as perfect as I had hoped.

Wow, I would not have imagined the amount of chloramine from 6oz of carbon filtered water (which does not remove all of it but it does get some) to prime an entire batch of beer would produce such a noticeable flavor when diluted in your chloramine free batch. Just how much ammonia and chlorine do they put in your water? Is your chloramine level like 4mg/L+ or something stupid?

mashani wrote:Wow, I would not have imagined the amount of chloramine from 6oz of carbon filtered water (which does not remove all of it but it does get some) to prime an entire batch of beer would produce such a noticeable flavor when diluted in your chloramine free batch. Just how much ammonia and chlorine do they put in your water? Is your chloramine level like 4mg/L+ or something stupid?

I mean it's not like the beer tastes like band-aids, but I can pick up a slight phenolic aftertaste that was not there before bottling. Can't think of anything else that could have caused it - I even use RO water to mix my StarSan (and the reason I know my RO filter works is that StarSan stays clear for months). Chlorine levels in tap water here are 0.9-1.2 mg/L, and the water report does not list Chloramine specifically.

I bottled another batch of beer immediately after this one - I'm gonna try a bottle today to see if that one has any phenols... Priming solution would be the common denominator.

Interested to see what you find out.

Out of curiosity, do you know the ammonia levels they add? It's a mixture of the chlorine and ammonia they add to the water that makes the Chloramine.

Oh... I got one for you... IRA... with Nelson, Amirillo and Mosaic!

mashani wrote:Interested to see what you find out.

Out of curiosity, do you know the ammonia levels they add? It's a mixture of the chlorine and ammonia they add to the water that makes the Chloramine.

Ammonia is listed as <0.02 mg/L, seems to be a pretty low level. I did try a bottle of the other beer I bottled - sure enough, a faint phenolic aftertaste. I'm now convinced it's either not using RO water for the priming solution, or possibly something in my bottling bucket. In my experience, this phenolic flavor does not condition out, but the beers are still drinkable.