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Off flavored 5 days after being on kegerator

BigBBrew

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MadE a IPA 5 weeks ago. I kegged and co2 for 4 days. 1st 3-4 days tasted good on 7th day had a very strong taste of cloves and star anise. I assume beer lines or faucets are infected Has anyone had this happen? I haven't had time to clean lines yet but that's my 1st step. I have two untapped kegs from the same batch to try after cleaning.
 
Agreed, there is nothing worse than putting all your efforts into making amazing beer only to have the dispensing system impart off flavours.
I had that happen a while back. I realized later in my haste I had let the lines sit a few days after emptying a keg. Noticed a dry foam like residue in the lines with a bright light inspection that didn't go away, with regular cleaning. Had to re clean the lines several times.

Now; I make sure to at least run water through the lines and taps as soon as a keg empties, then proper clean and sanitize before connecting the next keg. It keeps the foamy residue  from air drying on the inside of the lines; which is so hard to remove afterwards. Not sure about infection (probably) but it sure makes off flavours

Star san, run through and then let soak for an hour at least, followed by rinsing with warm not hot water helps a lot with that, using the plastic bottle line cleaner kit to back flush. I soak the taps in open position and rinse after each keg and every 2 or 3 kegs disassemble, soak, clean and put back together. I tried pbw and coil cleaner even, and the residue still remained but a Star-San soak and flush cleaned out the residue completely.
 
Star San is a sanitizer, not a cleanser.

I use PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash) cleaning. It's made by the same people who make Star San.

http://www.fivestarchemicals.com/breweries/homebrewing/products/

Some powder, hot water, a cloth, and maybe a soak, and most anything comes clean.

My Star San is in a spray bottle which I use to get all my equipment wet after it's clean, rinsed, and dry. Tubing I just spray into until I've got enough in there to move it around and coat the inner surfaces.  Then I let everything air dry before putting it away.
 
Thanks for the tips. I bought a bottle 5star beer line cleaner. I'll try cleaning the lines and disassemble and clean the faucet and coupler and sanitize and try another keg from the same batch this weekend. Thanks again.
 
I cleaned and rinsed my kegerator beer line and disassembled the faucet and coupler as per instructions. Faucet was pretty nasty. I reassembled put on a new keg and it was better. I think the entire batch is bad. It's not terrible but there are some flavors I don't recognize. I make a yeast starter the night before brewing just to get the yeast going and I'm very careful about cleaning and sanitizing everything but maybe something was missed.
 
I had a string of infected brews that almost discouraged me from the hobby. I believe the culprit was the hoses that I used for siphoning, because when I replaced them the infections stopped. I'd suggest replacing as much of your plastic as you can. The smallest scratch can harbor bacteria that will spoil a batch. Since then I only use glass carboys for fermenting, and I replace my siphoning tubes every year or two. Haven't had an infection since.
 
Perhaps you are picking up a bit of diacetyl, or tannins;or both.  not necessarily infected. Do you do the temperature ramp-up at the end of fermentation for diacetyl rest? also I have found letting the mash runnings go too far creates some bad flavours- tannins.  I now stop all runnings at 1.010, checked using a cooled sample. Theres not much time to do this near the end of runnings but it helps reduce off flavours. Also too high of a sparge temperature extracts tannins. CHEERS!
 
Its been a few weeks since I cleaned my lines and it hasn't developed any off flavors. I'm guessing either the keg wasn't clean enough or it was the beer line. The other kegs from that batch seem to taste OK. Thanks for the tips.
 
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