Extremely Bad Beer

I've been brewing about 2 years now and have brewed approximately 25 batches (5 gal) and all have at least turned out drinkable, some actually good. The last 3 batches of beer I brewed I used several new and different procedures and had to dump 2 of the 3:
  1) Started to use a Yeast Starter, before I used just dry yeast sprinkled on top of my wort
  2) Ariated my wort using a air pump and a dispensing stone through a filter (20 min) before        I used a drill motor and paddle
  3) used a fast fermenter instead of the bucket and glass
  4) Changed were I bought my supplies
The first batch came out OK, not great but drinkable, The last 2 batches I had to dump. That was a Christmas Ale and a Smokey Porter. Both recipes were repeat and the first time came out good. Everything that touched the wort after boiling was cleaned and sanitized. The beer after sitting 2 weeks in fermenter and 4 weeks in bottles had a strong medicine flavor. I'm writing this and asking if anybody else had similar results with the fastfermenter or is it something else that went wrong. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
My next batch will be done the old way and I'll change only 1 procedure at a time until I can identify where the problem originated.

Are you using bleach as a sanitizer.

From John Palmer How to Brew

"Medicinal
These flavors are often described as mediciney, Band-Aid? like, or can be spicy like cloves. The cause are various phenols which are initially produced by the yeast. Chlorophenols result from the reaction of chlorine-based sanitizers (bleach) with phenol compounds and have very low taste thresholds. Rinsing with boiled water after sanitizing is the best way to prevent these flavors."

I'm using the One-Step sanitizer.

I've always thought of One Step as a cleanser and not as a sanitizer.  I use PBW for cleansing and Star San for sanitizing.

If you're happy with the One Step as a cleanser, then you should continue to use it.  I would also follow the advice of Ihukeit and follow with a boiled water rinse, then use Star San as your sanitizer.

Another question, are you using tap water to brew with?  If yes, when it first comes out of the tap, does it have a chlorine odor of any kind?

If you have too much chlorine in your brewing water, it can lead to the mediciny flavors.  To combat this issue, measure out your brewing water at least 12 hours (24 hours is even better) before you brew and let the water sit in an open container for those 12 hours.  Most of the chlorine in the water will dissipate into the atmosphere and leave you with less chance of the yeast interacting with the chlorine and your medicinal flavors should go away.

Did you monitor the temperature of the fermentation? Using a conical you will have more yeast activity and therefore more heat. I suspect you fermented at too high a temp and produced a bunch of fusel alcohols. Although it does sound like chloropenols but you used the same water as before?

I agree with what Scott says. I had the same problem but didn't recognise the flavour as medicinal. It was feint but quite noticeable. I knew there was somethingbwrong but it took a more knowledgeable person than me to name it. I cured it by dumping my clorine based sanitiser in favour of PBW, boiled water and Starsan. I fill my HLT the night before I brew and leave it to stand overnight. My water company had a problem with dangerous bugs a few years ago and now they're over cautious. I smell the clorine when I run the tap. Now that I've eliminated those two possible causes I no longer have the problem and my beer tastes noticeably better.

I use Tap water through a RV Water filter, never had an issue with it before. Until these last 3 batches, I've used the same procedures. One more thing I didn't mention before, I tried to re-circulate my cooling water going into the wort chiller coil. I used a holding tank and a fountain pump to circulate the water. Up till these last 3 batches, I ran straight hose water through the chiller. I was trying to save a little water. With this process, the wort took 3 times longer to cool down to 75 degrees. Because of my success before these last 3 batches, I think I've closed my mind to other issues I may have just been lucky at. That's why any suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks

Robert D Glowacki said:

My next batch will be done the old way and I'll change only 1 procedure at a time until I can identify where the problem originated.

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I think the best suggestion you've had is your own.

Personally, for my next batch I'd go back to both my old supplier and my old bucket to ferment. I aerate my wort with oxygen from an aerosol can. I use a sintered stone on the end of a sanitized wand and I aerate immediately after pitching, to get everything stirred up.

You say you'd started making a yeast starter, but you also say you're using dry yeast? No need to make a dry yeast starter; you just need to rehydrate it.

Thanks to all that replied, plan next brew day the weekend after Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to all

Robert D Glowacki said:

Thanks to all that replied, plan next brew day the weekend after Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to all

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I feel for ya, and Good luck to you...I have been going backwards myself...

My first batch was 30 years ago and everyone raved about it So I quit while I was ahead.  8)
  My second batch was 2 months ago after that 30 year hiatus and it was barely palatable ...my 3 batch is probably going to be a dumper and I cant exactly nail down a reason but it tastes like cider vinegar.....hopefully it ages out OK in the bottles.  I have a 4th batch in final conditioning right now and it is my first whole grain.  I cant afford to have too many more bad batches or I might as well give up and just buy it.

Iv now switched up and  I'm trying to cut down on "anything" and "everything" that touches my beer.

I have moved to single bucket fermentation and conditioning so no longer rack to secondary.
I aerate just by vigorous agitation of my already purified by boil wort chiller for the 10 min it take s to get me down to 80 degrees. ( we have very cold well water)

So far the all grain tastes clean...we will see here in another week or so....fingers crossed.

I'm a bit discouraged finding out that after 25 batches this sort of stuff still creeps up as I would consider you a veteran brewer. This doesn't bode well for me as I'm not what you would call a supper meticulous guy.

Stillraining said:

Robert D Glowacki said:

Thanks to all that replied, plan next brew day the weekend after Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving to all

Click to expand...

I feel for ya, and Good luck to you...I have been going backwards myself...

My first batch was 30 years ago and everyone raved about it So I quit while I was ahead.  8)
  My second batch was 2 months ago after that 30 year hiatus and it was barely palatable ...my 3 batch is probably going to be a dumper and I cant exactly nail down a reason but it tastes like cider vinegar.....hopefully it ages out OK in the bottles.  I have a 4th batch in final conditioning right now and it is my first whole grain.  I cant afford to have too many more bad batches or I might as well give up and just buy it.

Iv now switched up and  I'm trying to cut down on "anything" and "everything" that touches my beer.

I have moved to single bucket fermentation and conditioning so no longer rack to secondary.
I aerate just by vigorous agitation of my already purified by boil wort chiller for the 10 min it take s to get me down to 80 degrees. ( we have very cold well water)

So far the all grain tastes clean...we will see here in another week or so....fingers crossed.

I'm a bit discouraged finding out that after 25 batches this sort of stuff still creeps up as I would consider you a veteran brewer. This doesn't bode well for me as I'm not what you would call a supper meticulous guy.

Click to expand...

Keep you head up!  We all make a bummer batch from time to time.  They become much less frequent the more we brew.

I had my first accidently contaminated batch recently.  I made my yearly "Christmas Ale" for our club Holiday Party Christmas beer exchange.  When I racked it to the secondary, I had 5 gallons in the secondary and it had only 1" of headspace in the carboy.  I had another half gallon, that I put into a 1 gallon fermenter.  That half gallon formed a pellicle.  I'm attaching a photo of it and of the clean batch that didn't get a pellicle.  I think I mixed my "sours" siphoning hose up with my "clean" siphoning hose and got some Lactobacillus Brevis into the beer.  The large head space on the half gallon fermenter gave the Lacto a lot of oxygen to work with and caused it to go sour. 

The beer in the 5 gallon carboy never got a pellicle, but the Lacto had to be present, but without oxygen, it didn't get a foothold. 

I bottled the 5 gallons, but I took some usually un-needed steps to guarantee that the Lacto wouldn't create bottle bombs.  I racked the beer into my boil pot and heated it to 160F then chilled it to 75F as quickly as possible to kill off the Lacto.  I put my bottling sugar in during the boil.  I re-yeasted the beer after it had chilled back down to 80F.  I then racked it into my bottling bucket and bottled it.  It has carbed up just fine and doesn't seem to have any off flavors from the pasteurization process.  It's actually my best Holiday Beer ever.

The half gallon accidently soured batch actually tastes pretty good too.  I'm going to let it go for about a year and then use it to sour other clean beers in the future.

I've never poured out a batch yet, and hope that I don't ever have to do that.

  In search of errors for bad beer, don't forget about Yeast Autolysis. I agree that  Beer can sit on a healthy yeast bed for a long time without bad things happening. But if your beer is sitting on a oversized bed of unhealthy, compromised yeast, bad flavours will come around. I recently had to dump 12 gallons of ale down the drain. The only thing that went wrong was the fermentation temperature went below the threshold for us-05 for about 3 days. I typically reuse  yeast. I usually make a starter with my saved yeast but this time I did not. This brew showed final SG at 3 weeks but did not clear and was still bubbling. It would not stop slowly bubbling. I kegged it, carbonated and waited. Cloudy as heck. Filtering it didn't work. Tasted like rubber bands. Some bottled samples did not clear after 14 days. Tried to drink it, could not get past a half pint.

  B.Y.O had a good article about this a few months back and it was there that I realized what happened to my brew. Autolysis means the  weakened, unhealthy yeast break down and decompose. The Brew isn't contaminated; no harmful compounds or spoilage organisms are present but if it tastes like rubber, there's no other choice but to pour it down the drain. Lesson learned about temp control...made worse by overpitching.  And if you reclaim yeast, do not re-use any from high gravity, highly hopped (dry hopped) I.P.A.'s. as it compromises yeast stability.
It seems like everyone has had to make a sacrifice to the Great Beer Gods at one point. Here's to good beer for all homebrewers in future!