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My Blonde Ale Tastes Like Chemicals

  • Thread starter brewing-in-chandler
  • Start date
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...
 
Hi,
  I'm not sure - it is possible something was still in the keg from the pepsi - did you disassemble the diptubes and keg entirely?  Sometimes you have to do this.  Also you should probably check to make sure you did not use the wrong cleaner.  Anything bleach based will pit the stainless steel (I'm not sure about oxiclean, but some can have problems with stainless).

  However, you might also want to take a look at this page:

  http://brewwiki.com/index.php/Troubleshooting

  It has a very good list of potential causes for Medicine-like flavors, most of which have nothing to do with the keg.

Cheers,
Brad
 
It's possible you didn't get the keg clean up under the inside. The best process I have heard is:

1) remove everything that can come off the keg
2) Take the rubber gaskets off the dip tube, put the long dip tube back in (not through the dip-tube out hole)
3) fill the keg 50% full of your cleaner of choice (oxyclean or PBW) and leave overnight.
4) The next day, very quickly flip it over into a plastic bucket so that the majority of the cleaner stays inside the keg and let it soak the top half.
5) Repeat a second time.
6) You can also use BLC in the keg but be careful not to get it on the rubber - it will eat some older kegs rubber (I know I have done it). Also - do that after the oxyclean and not in the same batch.
7) Rinse, Rinse Again, and Again.
 
(Edited)
Your First batch:
brewing-in-chandler said:
This past Friday I kegged my first batch of homebrew.
Is this your first beer or just the first time you kegged? If this is your first batch don't be discouraged. There are lots of things that can go wrong and you usually will not know it until fermentation and clearing has completed. Cleanliness is Godliness. Search the internet for tips on the HB process. Or post here and we will try to help. Also post the recipe if possible.

Cooling the wort should not be a problem as long as you did not splash it to much while it was hot. You can oxidize the beer if you splash it or aerate it while it is hot.

Kegging:
I also use Oxyclean, Yellow top, not the green top! OxyClean has a high surfactant quality and if you don't get it all out you may get some off flavors from that. I rinse 5 times in hot watter just to be safe, and I rinse without putting the keg back together (Rinse everything including rubber). I also use StarSan with great success which is an acid based sanitizer like the big brewery's use. You will not get any off flavors using this product. While I have Starsan in the keg I put the keg back together and add pressure and run fluid out my cobra taps to make sure they are sanitized also. Then I drain everything and rack on foam and I usually have foam extruding out the top when I rack into the keg.

Clarity:
brewing-in-chandler said:
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.
The first few pints will be cloudy and should clear up after that. If you move the keg (Disturbs the sediment)this may happen again. To prevent this you can use a fining agent like gelatin or Clearfine. I use gelatin in the secondary mostly because it is cheep and easy to use. You could also make sure you boil the wort for at least 60-90 min. The longer times will help with the proteins to coagulate and you get a better cold break (Leave it in the Kettle). You should look into a do-it-yourself immersion chiller that will help tremendously with proteins and cold break.

I would give it a few weeks (or longer) and see how it turns out. Sometimes it will turn around and be a great beer.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Preston

 
To answer your questions, I did disassemble the keg, but because it was "refurbished" I did not replace all the gaskets.  Do you think I should have?  I just cleaned and sanitized everything.  It is my first time kegging, but definitely not my first batch of homebrew.  I sure do feel inexperienced after tasting my nasty beer though.

I decided to try a Diet Pepsi today then taste a little bit of the beer.  At this point I'm almost certain that the taste to the beer is mostly if not entirely from old Diet Pepsi left in the keg.  The similarity was striking.  Also, I was happy that the off flavor to the beer wasn't as strong after just a day or two.  I'm hoping it was just stuff in the dip tube that is slowly being flushed out (the dip tube had such a tiny diameter I had no way of cleaning the inside).

Either way, I think I'll wait it out.  Last night I was pretty sure I just wanted to dump it, but I've changed my mind.

As far as cooling goes, I use a copper immersion cooler, but the problem is that the faucets inside my house won't hook up to it, so I have to use water from outside.  The outside water was really hot, and running the hose through an ice bath with salt added didn't make any difference after twenty minutes.  I'm considering buying another immersion cooler to put in an ice bath.

Thanks a lot, all the comments have been extremely helpful...
 
brewing-in-chandler said:
To answer your questions, I did disassemble the keg, but because it was "refurbished" I did not replace all the gaskets.  Do you think I should have?  I just cleaned and sanitized everything.  It is my first time kegging, but definitely not my first batch of homebrew.  I sure do feel inexperienced after tasting my nasty beer though.
It has been my experience that when I purchase a referbed keg, it comes with new seals. If you did not get them I would ask for them. FYI I use a string with knots tied in it to clean the inside of my dip tubes about once every 3-4 batches.
brewing-in-chandler said:
I decided to try a Diet Pepsi today then taste a little bit of the beer.  At this point I'm almost certain that the taste to the beer is mostly if not entirely from old Diet Pepsi left in the keg.  The similarity was striking.  Also, I was happy that the off flavor to the beer wasn't as strong after just a day or two.  I'm hoping it was just stuff in the dip tube that is slowly being flushed out (the dip tube had such a tiny diameter I had no way of cleaning the inside).
Either way, I think I'll wait it out.  Last night I was pretty sure I just wanted to dump it, but I've changed my mind.
That being said I would warm it up and shake it a couple times over a few weeks to stir up the yeast in an attempt to get the yeast to try and clean up the off flavors. You might even add a little priming sugar (2oz) to wake the yeast up and help things out a little... Granted it may take a month to clean up the taste or it may never go away. You will never know unless you try. Or kick it and chalk it up to a learning experience.
brewing-in-chandler said:
As far as cooling goes, I use a copper immersion cooler, but the problem is that the faucets inside my house won't hook up to it, so I have to use water from outside.  The outside water was really hot, and running the hose through an ice bath with salt added didn't make any difference after twenty minutes.  I'm considering buying another immersion cooler to put in an ice bath
Thanks a lot, all the comments have been extremely helpful...
A second IC will help, but you need one of these " http://www.defalcos.com/products/Bottling-Kegging-Equipment/2967671.html " to hook up the faucet to your IC. I like to take the wort inside out of the wind during this process to keep the nasties out.
Glad to hear that its getting better with age.
Cheers
Preston
 
A little late on this reply, but...
You said your keg was refurbished. A refurbished keg should not have the overpowering smell of the previous product in it.
I really don't have an answer to your question about the beer. I have found that "soured" beers don't generally get better as they get older, they just get, um, more sour.

Brew on,
jeff
 
I've been reading through these post for a while, but i joined really just to reply to this post.  I am sorta new to brewing, under 20 batches total, with 5 being all grain, but after my third batch, i switched to kegs.  I really love kegs, and it made all this madness much better.  But when I got my first keg, can't remember where from maybe austinhomebrew, the first thing that I did, was release the pressure and open it up.  I will never forget the smell, It was the smell of soda.  And I thought, these people lied to me, they told me these had been cleaned and sanitized.  So then i got online, and come to find out, alot of people who refurbish these kegs, use a caustic cleaner, that smells like soda.  And since then, I have ordered kegs from other places, and low and behold, the same smell.  What I do to get rid of the smell, is take everything apart, soak and scrub all parts, in a household dish detergent, and then soak them in pbw all night.  After rinsing them the next day, I soak them in star san, drain it, and then let it dry on it's own.  And the smell is gone.  Hope this helps someone...

--matt--
 
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