Another newbie question: I made a simple IPA with light dry extract, melanoiden malt, and S-04 to try out Falconer’s Flight (no other hops). Now the finished beer appears to have a soapy flavor. Not bad, but still: soapy. Did I mess something up, or is this what FF tastes like?
sorry, there was a very long and involved post about this a couple years back and I don’t think we ever figured out what was going on.
seems like some folks have had success clearing up soapy off flavors in hoppy beers by upping the sulfate level. you could try dosing a sample with some gypsum in a glass and see if that clears it up.
one of the possible causes I saw referenced was oxidized lipids. hops have lipids and they do oxidize. given that falconers is grown, processes and distributed from the pacific northwest and homoeccentricus is on the other side of the atlantic could mean there was some mishandling along the way.
I’ve had this happen in a couple of my beers, once in a ordinary bitter with Kent Goldings and another time in a SMASH pale ale with Cascade. I always suspected the hops, but now Denny got me thinking, so I looked in BeerSmith to see what kind of yeast I used. In the SMASH I used 04, but in the better I used WY1318.
But my water is low in sulphates, and at the time of those batches I wasn’t paying attention to water. So…two unrelated hops…two unrelated yeasts…could be low sulphates???
I’m not a big S04 fan, but who knows what condition or age the hops were by the time they got to his LHBS (or wherever) in Belgium. I remember using hops that were sold @ room temp back when I started and getting all kinds of off flavors and aromas.
Did a triangular test. Two glasses without and one with gypsum. An innocent mouth was able to detect the difference, and described the beer with gypsum as more hoppy. But not fundamentally different in taste.
But then afterwards, she did not agree with my description of the beer as being soapy
I had some soapiness in an ipa with a blend of New Zealand hops. I think I settled on it being an interaction between the hops. Mine might have been the one Mort was talking about.
The hops come from a web shop in the UK, packaged in the usual aluminum wrap. Harvest year 2013. I assume that typically these web shops package the hops? And don’t freeze them?
was it in an actual ‘hop union’ foil bag? or an unbranded one? 2013 harvest is getting along at this point if it wasn’t treated well. I could be totally off target here and it might well be moot anyway as the beer is brewed. You mentioned that your innocent taster thought the sulfate dosed glass was ‘hoppier’ did you notice any increase or decrease of the soapy impression? perhaps have someone else set up another triangle test for you this time.
The fact that you taste soapiness and another doesn’t rings a bell. Some people perceive fresh cilantro as soapy to the point of it being inedible and others don’t detect soapiness in the same cilantro. This can even flip-flop in a person’s lifetime. I wonder if its a similar phenomenon. Do you know if you perceive cilantro as “soapy”