Help Bad Beer :(

[Deller12]

It’s back again!!!!!HELP

After a very successful winters brewing my friend and I have the dreaded taste to our beer  It has only been in the last 8 weeks but we keep getting random brews that have the vinegar/TCP taste. We have both been all grain brew for a number of years so are quite experienced but we must be missing something. The funny thing is this happened around the same time last year. Is it only us that are suffering or any of you having the same issues? All comments would be gratefully received as were getting really fed up pouring beer down the drain.


Lee

[RobWalker]

How old is your bucket? I assume you are both cleaning AND sanitizing, my last brew may have picked it up despite VWP to clean, 5-7 hot water rinses and then sodium metabi afterwards. Maybe you need to replace your FV - after a few years they can get scratched and bacteria live in there.

Either that, or I guess there's more wild yeast and bacteria around - maybe you could try the no chill method to stop it from any possible exposure after boiling?

[Deller12]

Hi,


The bins are quite new and we ensure we only use soft sponges to clean scrubbing pads have been banned. We both use Viodine to sanitize our equipment. I use a plate chiller to cool my wort my friend uses a emersion chiller.

Lee

[Jez]

Do you control your fermentation temperature? It has been a bit warmer recently (and it probably warmed up about the same time last year) and that used to knock my beers for six. TCP tastes were quite common for me - the joy of pouring beer down the sink

I knocked up a fermentation fridge and now keep my fermentation at a steady 20 degrees and (touch wood) I have noticed an improvement in taste and have not had any TCP taste since....

[orlando]

The two main candidates are sanitation issues or wild yeast contamination (possibly related of course). If your sanitation is as good as you say then wild yeasts are the main possibility. What tips it for me is your comment about the same thing happening at around this time last year. If it is only TCP/Band Aid smells then we are looking at phenolics, if it is yeast strain based, but you also mention vinegar (acetobacter?) which is a bacteria often introduced via vinegar fly. A lot of people are sceptical about the benefits of a lid and airlock and most of the time I'm sure they are right but at this time of year I think you are running enough risks to rule this out as being unnecessary. I try to cover everything as much as possible when brewing, even when transferring I will have a fermentor lid or even keg lid covering as much as the aperture as I can.
Some people have mentioned temperatures might be a factor but I don't, unless it's in the context of "promoting" bacteria and wild yeast strains.

[Deller12]

Hi Chaps,

Thanks for your comments so far

My friend is using a temperature controlled fridge to ferment and I have a cupboard with a controller to turn a bulb on and off but has no cooling circuit. He uses an air lock and I just put the lid on and then crack it slightly and then cover with a clean tea towel over the top. I would say that the taste is more like vinegar that would sugest acetobacter infection. I always cover my fermenter while pumping the cooled wort from the plate chillier but my friend drops the beer straight into an open bin so he could have a problem there. He had to dump a batch yesterday as it was so bad. Need to get this sorted as its driving us mad.

Lee