On Mon, May 23, 2005 at 10:39:39PM +0200, Hans Kristjan Vinther wrote:
> De smager lidt underligt alle sammen. De har en underlig bitter,
> nærmest brændt smag, med en antydning af noget kemisk i sig. Det
> varierer fra bryg til bryg og enkelte gange er det der nærmest ikke
> og andre gange så må jeg bare hælde det ud. Jeg renser alt af i
> klor først og så med iodofor efter. Jeg synes selv jeg er meget
> grundig med at alt bliver renset.
Hunting such a problem can be quite depressing - I know. Here some
pointers you can start with:
- Get someone with experience to baby-sit your brewing day. I am sure
someone from this list would volunteer to sit and look at you working,
if you offered a few beers as a compensation. It is amazing how easily
one overlooks some small detail...
- Is it an infection, or a chemical off-flavour? If it is infected, it
will usually get worse the longer you save the beer. A chemical thing
does not (always?) do so.
- Are you sure you get all the bleach (klorin) out of the system? Rinse
extra careful next time
- How fast do you cool your wort down? Can you do it any faster? If it
takes much over 30 minutes, it may give too much time for an
infection.
- Do you use a yeast starter? If you do, try without, to minimize the
infection risk in the starter. If you do not, try using one, to
maximize the amount of yeast, so you get a good a quick start for your
fermentation.
- How quickly does your fermentation start? If it takes more than a few
hours to get a solid layer of foam, you should try to get it going
better. Try once with two packs of rehydrated dry yeast - if that
doesn't get it going quikcly, nothing will. (Remember to boil and
cool the water you use for rehydrating!)
- How do you take samples for measuring OG? Take a sample at the end of
the boil, and don't touch the wort afterwards
- Try to ferment directly in the boiling pot, to avoid any infection
when moving to the fermenting bucket (or balloon or what ever you
use), and to eliminate the cleaning questions there. Tape the lid on,
but leave a gap for the gases to escape. Even better if you have a
hole in the lid. probably you can get away without an air lock during
the primary fermentation, if it goes quickly enough. Rake over to a
secondary.
- Do you add cold water in the wort at any point? Boil it first and cool
it down properly. Take it from a different tap, just to be sure.
- Discard all your plastic hoses and siphons, and buy new tubing. It is
easier and safer than trying to clean them all. Clean the new ones
instead.
- Do you notice this funny taste already before bottling? If not, pay
more attention to cleaning your bottles, and all equipment used while
bottling.
- Boil your bottling sugar for 5 minutes.
That is the first pointers from the top of my head. I am sure other
people on this list come with many more ideas.
Be extra careful, suspect everything, and eliminate every possibility in
turn, and you'll find that
it will be beer anyway
-H
--
Heikki Levanto "In Murphy We Turst" heikki (at) lsd (dot) dk
