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  • Chlorophenol Issues?

    Hello,

    We are new to the professional game, and we have brewed just a couple batches on our new 3BBL systems (6 years homebrew experience with a Sabco). All of the equipment (3BBL Stout Tanks & Brewmation setup) was cleaned a few times with both caustic cleaners, and TSP. All of the equipment was rinsed with unfiltered water. We brewed a test batch, and dumped it. We then brewed a second "test" half batch, and followed it all of the way through the process. The water used for our beer always runs through an activated charcoal filter (should strip chloramines). We fermented, and carbed the beer in our serving/brite tanks. We drank the beer for a few weeks, filling glasses out of our sample ports (we aren't open yet), and everything tasted fine.

    THE PROBLEM: We recently hooked up the serving tank to our taps using Bevlex® Series 200 beer line, and after a few days the beer tastes placticy. We first thought maybe the beer line gave it the flavor (ordered from Foxx), but that doesn't make sense. Before filling the serving tanks we rinsed, and sanitized everything with Star San. We then purged the tanks with CO2, and pushed the beer from the fermentor to the serving tank with CO2.

    Could anyone add any insight as to how we could have gotten this plastic/vinyl taste into our beer?

    Thanks in advance,

    Travis Prueter
    Big Lake Brewing LLC
    Holland, Mi

  • #2
    If you take samples direct from the tank again, does that still have the same taint or is it fine?

    That will give you a better steer on whether it is an issue with the beer itself or something else, ie. in your new dispense system.

    If it is coming from the latter, then do you have any washers/seals in the system? I've known seal material give some really bad 'off' taints, even ones that are supposedly food/beer grade.

    For another trial, get a sample of beer that tastes fine, preferably a bottle (any beer will do) and put a short length of the beer hose into it, then cap it and leave it for a few days before re-tasting. See if the taint appears.

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    • #3
      Thanks for the reply. I should have been more specific.

      Yes, when I pull a sample using the sample port, the beer still tastes tainted.

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      • #4
        are you able to test your filtered water for total chlorine. water with chloramine needs extended contact with activated carbon to fully remove the chlorine.
        Mark Thomas
        Vault Brewing

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        • #5
          I just had a new 20 tap system professionally installed, and the beer tastes like ass. It has a very harsh plastic/chemical taste and smell. I completely flushed one of the lines and the beer from that tap tasted ok for a few hours, but after awhile the taste returned. Any ideas or suggestions? The installer is

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          • #6
            Thanks for the replies. For this next batch campden tablets may be an option until we get this figured out.

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            • #7
              If you're tasting it in the tank it's not coming from the dispensing lines. Yes it could be coming from the water. Have you brewed other beers using this water? Have you brewed other beers using this water and a different yeast? I mention yeast because one of the primary causes of a medicinal/plastic/band-aid flavor in beer is a wild yeast infection. If you don't think it's the water then I would suggest starting with a fresh pitch. Also that particular flavor can be produced by excessive concentration of a iodine based sanitizer (I've never used Star San. I don't think it's iodine based. Not sure.)

              Good luck.

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              • #8
                One thing about star-san is that it foams like crazy. Are you pumping it through a spray ball? If so, I doubt you'll be able to get it all out of the tank without extensive rinsing.
                Hutch Kugeman
                Head Brewer
                Brooklyn Brewery at the Culinary Institute of America
                Hyde Park, NY

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by froptus View Post
                  If you're tasting it in the tank it's not coming from the dispensing lines. Yes it could be coming from the water. Have you brewed other beers using this water? Have you brewed other beers using this water and a different yeast? I mention yeast because one of the primary causes of a medicinal/plastic/band-aid flavor in beer is a wild yeast infection. If you don't think it's the water then I would suggest starting with a fresh pitch. Also that particular flavor can be produced by excessive concentration of a iodine based sanitizer (I've never used Star San. I don't think it's iodine based. Not sure.)

                  Good luck.
                  StarSan is phosphoric acid and dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid. Never had it produce any sort of off-flavor.

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                  • #10
                    Thanks for all the feedback. For our last batch we just used some Potassium metabisulfite to control our chloramines. As we are just starting our professional brewing careers, we are finding a number of issues that we need to control more stringently then when we were homebrewing. Thanks for all the help so far, and I plan on using this resource for help on a number of our issues.

                    -Travis

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                    • #11
                      We've recently detected slight amounts of phenols in one of our beers...due to the water being ruled since many other beers are clean using the same water treatment we are currently examining either 1) wild yeast- which I find very unlikely....sparge pH too high (more likely), other causes apparently are oversparging and sparging too hot, although we measure these and sparge at 170 and never below 5 plato. I originally did measure sparge pH before getting a little lazy, never again. Incidentally it was a dark beer with no buffering salts so I'm wondering if salts buffer the sparge liquor through the mash more efficiently than dark grains do, coupled with coming into summer and higher RA in the water.
                      Eric O'Connor

                      Co-founder/Brewmaster
                      Thorn Street Brewery
                      North Park, San Diego, CA

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                      • #12
                        Yes oversparging, sparging too hot and sparging PH can produce phenols. Also certain types of malt as well. Its unlikely to be the result of sparging, though, if you use the same procedure for all your beers but only taste phenols in one. Oversparging, sparging too hot usually produces astringency.

                        Anyway we brewed this beer 2 weeks ago that used a yeast blend of Saccharomyces, Pedio, Lacto and Brettanomyces. After a few days of fermentation it had a very strong phenolic smell. I'm 99% sure that it was from the wild yeast strain (Brett) in the mix even though I've worked with different types of Brettanomyces before and haven't smelled phenols. You couldn't taste the phenols at all, though, and the smell has dissipated quite a bit over the last week.

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                        • #13
                          Followed through with interest I hope you solved the problem.

                          One point of interest though. If you don't have enough calcium you could end up with a whole host of issues. Many are also unaware that nearly 50% of any up front calcium never makes it to the final beer (the mash bed itself is a terrifically good ion exchanger!). Poor mineral levels affect many steps including extraction of components that might not be wanted, affect many biochemical reactions and yeast fermentation and flocculation and can lead to oxalate build up in tanks and finished product with concomitant gushing and microbial contamination issues. In addition to your taste test suggestions I suggest every brewer obtain a small inexpensive centrifuge, Eosin Y, methylene blue stains and a simple though powerful microscope with at least 400x magnification and spin down 10-15 mL of beer, decant it off and re-suspend the pellet (it may be invisible but is present) and look at a drop under the scope. You can tell a lot that might indicate a problem free beer or one or several problems with the beer (oxalates, nature of the filtration system- protein will appear normally as defined skins, strings and flakes - very gritty if tight filtration used, bacteria present, even - crudely - the viability of yeast - failing filtration - honeycomb structures from DE and much more.). Id be happy to point out additional stains and quick methods to do simple problem solving in your own lab/brewery. If you can swing into a 9+ MPix camera with the scope you can get some great pictures of the health of your beer. Also you will be able to assess the health of your yeast upfront too. Many brewers get really good at looking at the yeast and then forget about quality control testing after that until - as you did- taste it or see it at the other end.

                          Gary (gspedding@alcbevtesting.com)

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