2 batches ruined

I don’t know what I am doing wrong. I clean and sanitize my equipment very well. The only thing I can say that my beer tastes like “band-aids” or old plastic. I do admit I use water out of the tap. I have not have had problems until recently. I use a 6 gal bucket for my primary and a glass carboy for secondary. I can provide all other equipment on request. I have another batch ready to go but I am worried about repeat issue. Please help.

-Andy

Tap water is could be the problem. medicinal or band-aid plastic flavour, if I remember correctly, can be caused by chlorinated water. Do you run it through a carbon filter, pre boil or use campden tablets?

Is it possible that your water supply recently changed significantly?

Yep, I vote for chlorine/chloramine infused tap water and second the recommendation for campden.

Just so the OP knows, there are no more replies because they are right that chlorine is most likely your problem.  Treat with campden tablets, 1 crushed per 20 gallons for 5 minutes should do it.

Umm…

Could it be chlorine? ;D

Maybe you’re cleaning too well. Beware of the usual household cleaning products. A friend had a batch go band-aid after cleaning some bits with 409.

I had a hefe go that way. At first I thought it was too high a temp but then remembered the bleach used to sanitize the fermenter. That was the last time I used bleach.

I poured mango juice in the keg and drank it anyway. ;D

Meaning… If the OP is cleaning or sanitizing with bleach, that’s chlorine, too, and will produce those flavors. Order some PBW and Star San.

Yep, chlorophenol comes from either chlorine in the brewing water or chlorine in your sanitizer.  And less common but certainly possible is from any garden hose that is used in your process.  Have you ever tasted water out of a garden hose?  Blecch!

Get rid of any and all of those sources, and the band-aid flavor will never be present in your beer again.  Campden is the easiest way to get rid of it in your water.  I use 1/8 Campden tablet to treat 5 gallons.  As long as you crush up the tablet, the chemical reaction is instantaneous.  Never had a problem since then.

You can also run your brewing water into buckets the nigyou’re good to goht before and let them sit open over night.  The Chlorine gases out and you’re good to go.  The only gotcha I’ve had is during the summer I need tocover the buckets with a light towel or I find “critters”, insects and such, floating in the buckets.

I do this all the time and have no issues.

Paul

Do you control fermentation temps?  I had this problem when my carboys where getting too hot.

FYI, this process only works if your municipality uses chlorine in the water.  If they use chloramines (as more and more are switching to), letting it sit won’t work.

Along these lines, I have also heard that often municipalities will change their process seasonally.  They may switch from chloramines to chlorine or vice versa.

I know for a fact that at certain times of the year the water here just smells differently.  Like a strong chlorine smell.  Just nasty.

I used to carbon filter, for years.  I just started a new process.  Take 1 liter of warm tap water in a flask, add stirbar and 1 campden tablet, stick it on the stirplate until you are ready to fill your water jugs or HLT, then just dose the water with the solution at 50ml/gal as the tablet is now dissolved.  Enough for 20 gallons.

I throw a campden tablet in the HLT at the beginning of each brew day, after the water has passed through a carbon filter.  It’s peace of mind for cents.

Thanks to all for the replies! Garden hose seems to be the culprit (and I am getting the supply from my Santa Rosa water.) Just where do I get those tablets from anyway?

-Andy

They are available from homebrew or wine making supply places.  Cheap.

Swap out the garden hose for a food grade hose too, campden isn’t going to help with that.

I don’t know what Santa Rosa uses for water treatment but another thing to consider is just switching to useing all RO water from the store, it only adds ~5 bucks to the batch cost and is a real piece of mind. If you are doing all grain you would have to get into water chem a little but with extract RO works just fine.

Good points.  I’ll need to look into that.

Paul

I switched over to using only bottled water because I had two batches in a row taste like plastic. I never had a problem before, I’m guessing our town switched how they treated the water.  I dont even use tap water for cleaning.  Unfortunately one of my batches was for my daughters Bday.  My BMC friends seemed to like it.  Any Ill effects for using Campden?