Honey smell in HLT water

[Cellarmakerbrew]

Hi,
I've noticed a distinct honey, some employees say tea, like smell in the water sampled from my HLT. We brew on a 10 bbl Premier combi system. I don't smell the honey in our water from the office hot water heater nor in the water before it enters the HLT. I just wanted to reach out to the forum to see if anyone has encountered this, before I start meticulously investigating. Maybe it has something to do with the electric immersion heater in the HLT, or an interaction with the heat X during KO? We also have a small prechiller that chills the wort before entering the HX. Any info is greatly appreciated.
Thanks much,
Tim Sciascia

[theomuller]

First thing that occurs to me is maybe there's a small amount of wort leaking through the HX into the HLT recovery water.

[Todd Hicks]

First thing that occurs to me is maybe there's a small amount of wort leaking through the HX into the HLT recovery water.

or a crack i the MT bottom seeping a little wort into the HLT

[Cellarmakerbrew]

Yeah that came to mind too. Im going to drain the HLT after KO, then refill and see if the aroma arrises the next day eliminating HX and mash leak from the possibilities. THANKS!

[mikeyrb1]

Could also be a bad check valve.

[organicbrewer]

Every now an then I like to empty (usually during the wp) the HLT and foam/scrub it out real quick. A previous brewery I worked at had really hard water and the HLT would periodically smell pretty sulfury and when left untouched for long periods would accumulate stone that was difficult to get off. Maybe next time you're brewing do a quick foam and scrub with caustic, and then acid. Never hurts.

[TGTimm]

Is there anywhere cooling glycol could be leaking into the HL system? Glycol smells a lot like honey or maple syrup, especially when hot. I've added a blue marker dye to ours to help detect any leaks. Saved our bacon when a cooling jacket ruptured into a fermenter--green beer is obvious.

[Cellarmakerbrew]

I did a pretty thorough analysis of the water coming out of the HX and didn't see any obvious signs of leaks. I also made sure there wasn't any seepage during CIP or while there was a mash in the tun above. Mystery unsolved for the moment.

[Cellarmakerbrew]

Thanks for all the tips, everyone. We have eliminated this smell from our beer! It was coming from one of two things, either wort getting back into the HLT during kettle top off or a small amount of caustic solution being pushed back in there from insufficient rinsing of a small section of manifold. We adjusted our SOP for both. No smell for months!

[TGTimm]

Good to hear!