B
brewing-in-chandler
This past Friday I kegged my first batch of homebrew. It's a light body, 4 SRM, 4.5% abv blonde ale made with Cascade and Willamette hops. I had a couple issues cooling the wort that made me concerned about the final product (took me a long time to get it cool enough to pitch the yeast), but the wort tasted pretty good and the beer tasted great going into the secondary and into the keg.
My keg came from Midwest Supplies, and the Pepsi smell was overwhelming when I first got it in the mail. It was so bad that my entire kitchen smelled a little but like old, concentrated Pepsi after de-pressurizing and opening the keg. I took it apart then used OxiClean and Star San, following the kegging process posted by Chris Knight on YouTube. It took a good bit of time and a lot of OxiClean and rinsing to get rid of the concentrated Pepsi smell, but I couldn't detect it by the time I sanitized and was pretty sure it was completely gone by the time I racked my beer. Everything looked clean. I ended up having to estimate how much Star San to mix with water because my container didn't have the built-in measure. There were far more bubbles than normal, but I racked the beer into the foam anyway and set it at 12.27psi in a 40-degree kegerator.
I tried some beer last night out of curiosity, and it tasted disgusting. The beer was perfectly clear going into the keg, but it came out cloudy with an almost grayish tinge to it. The smell was very harsh and solvent-like with an off, chemical-like kind of sweetness. There wasn't even the slightest hint of hops in the nose. It tasted extremely acidic and was much more bitter than any of the previous samples I tried. The mouth feel was incredibly watery and the beer generally had a sour, almost citrus-like quality. I thought I could detect something reminiscent of aspartame, and it tasted like it wasn't beer at all. There was no hop or malt flavor whatsoever. My initial impression was that it tasted as if I had taken what came out of the secondary and infused it with a lot of old, concentrated Pepsi then watered it down with soda water until it was unrecognizable. It also had an overpowering soapy aftertaste that just wouldn't go away. I drank three pints of Deschutes Black Butte Porter before the aftertaste finally subsided. Needless to say, I'm pretty sure this batch is going to get scrapped.
Do you think it's definitely the leftover Pepsi that's caused this? I'm worried I may just be assuming that's the problem because it's the most obvious answer. What does too much Star San do to the flavor of beer? Has anyone else had a similar experience? Is there any chance at all that it will end up tasting like beer as it ages? Is it even worth me fulling carbonating it, or should I just give up now and save some CO2? I can't imagine doing a more thorough job of cleaning that keg, so is it just completely unusable? I'd hate to waste another batch of homebrew in a beer-ruining keg, but I'm also not so happy about the idea of having spent money on a keg I can't use.
I hope you can give me some input. Overall, it's a pretty depressing first experience with kegging...
My keg came from Midwest Supplies, and the Pepsi smell was overwhelming when I first got it in the mail. It was so bad that my entire kitchen smelled a little but like old, concentrated Pepsi after de-pressurizing and opening the keg. I took it apart then used OxiClean and Star San, following the kegging process posted by Chris Knight on YouTube. It took a good bit of time and a lot of OxiClean and rinsing to get rid of the concentrated Pepsi smell, but I couldn't detect it by the time I sanitized and was pretty sure it was completely gone by the time I racked my beer. Everything looked clean. I ended up having to estimate how much Star San to mix with water because my container didn't have the built-in measure. There were far more bubbles than normal, but I racked the beer into the foam anyway and set it at 12.27psi in a 40-degree kegerator.
I tried some beer last night out of curiosity, and it tasted disgusting. The beer was perfectly clear going into the keg, but it came out cloudy with an almost grayish tinge to it. The smell was very harsh and solvent-like with an off, chemical-like kind of sweetness. There wasn't even the slightest hint of hops in the nose. It tasted extremely acidic and was much more bitter than any of the previous samples I tried. The mouth feel was incredibly watery and the beer generally had a sour, almost citrus-like quality. I thought I could detect something reminiscent of aspartame, and it tasted like it wasn't beer at all. There was no hop or malt flavor whatsoever. My initial impression was that it tasted as if I had taken what came out of the secondary and infused it with a lot of old, concentrated Pepsi then watered it down with soda water until it was unrecognizable. It also had an overpowering soapy aftertaste that just wouldn't go away. I drank three pints of Deschutes Black Butte Porter before the aftertaste finally subsided. Needless to say, I'm pretty sure this batch is going to get scrapped.
Do you think it's definitely the leftover Pepsi that's caused this? I'm worried I may just be assuming that's the problem because it's the most obvious answer. What does too much Star San do to the flavor of beer? Has anyone else had a similar experience? Is there any chance at all that it will end up tasting like beer as it ages? Is it even worth me fulling carbonating it, or should I just give up now and save some CO2? I can't imagine doing a more thorough job of cleaning that keg, so is it just completely unusable? I'd hate to waste another batch of homebrew in a beer-ruining keg, but I'm also not so happy about the idea of having spent money on a keg I can't use.
I hope you can give me some input. Overall, it's a pretty depressing first experience with kegging...