Hey all, I noticed that when I pour my first pint out of the keg it has a rubbery/plastic taste. The subsequent pours are all fantastic with no issues at all, I use a ball lock tap directly to the keg so there’s no beer line. My friend suggested it could be I need to clean the old beer out of the tap which could be true but it even happened when I tapped it for the first time and all my equipment was new and it was scrubbed and sanitized thoroughly, so it’s got me scratching my head.
Carbonic bite?
Any insight would help
Is it simply pulling up yeast and sediment from the bottom of the keg? If so, it should clear after a few pints, if the keg is not disturbed.
No, no sediment at all, just a strange rubbery taste. Usually when I don’t have a pour for a few days, but even then that doesn’t explain why it happened when I poured it for the very first time. Otherwise all subsequent pours taste perfect
Is it the first pint of the keg or the first pint of the session? With there being no beer line, that erases a lot of variables but I wonder about the beer sitting in and around your dispenser/faucet. It’s an unusual thing for sure.
Unless your faucet is forward sealing, you have beer exposed to ambient air between pours. Even a day or 2 can cause an off flavor. Try dumping 2 or 3 ounces before pulling the next pint and see if the pint tastes normal. If that produces a clean pint, you need to disassemble the faucet and thoroughly clean it. There are nooks and crannies where nasties can hide, and circulating cleaner isn’t always completely effective.
My thought was to toss the first half pint pulled off the keg. That first pull is everything sitting on the bottom of the keg and is usually pretty interesting, but not very good.
Paul
This was just discussed in another thread. The beer sitting in the line (for those who HAVE lines) can taste different than the beer in the keg. A number of people have mentioned running 3-4 ounces into a glass and tossing it out. I will occasionally notice that my first beer of the session is “not quite right” but subsequent pours are good. Might be the same thing… if it’s the first pint of every session. If it’s only the first beer of every keg… that would be unusual.
Thanks guys and yes it is the first pint of the session, and the tap I use is this one
Not sure if this is considered forward sealing, sorry about the ignorance since kegging is fairly new to me.
No, that’s not a forward sealing faucet. You’ll typically hear forward sealing faucets called Perlick, Intertap, or Nukatap faucets (all just popular brands that make forward sealing faucets). These are the ones I have: https://www.morebeer.com/products/intertap-beer-faucet-stainless-steel.html. The problem with the faucet you have is the beer in the faucet between pours can be exposed to oxygen. Normally that’s not an issue if you’re only letting it sit between pours throughout your night of drinking, but can become an issue between drinking sessions. That could explain the flavors you’re experiencing, though I will say having used that style of faucet for around a year and half before switching to forward sealing faucets, I never had any flavors like your describing. As previously suggested, one idea may be to run off a couple ounces of beer if you haven’t pulled a pint in a while, and see if that improves the taste of your first drink.
The other benefit of forward sealing faucets is they tend to stick less after sitting closed for a while, which you may have noticed if you leave your faucet closed for a length of time it can be a bit hard to open when you come back to it.
Definitely try to run a couple ounces out on your next “first pint” and see what that does for you. I might also take that faucet off and take it apart, clean and sanitize it and then put it back together. If you have a brush that can get up into the faucet, you might see some gunk in there if it has not been cleaned properly lately. I would almost guarantee that running a small amount of beer first and THEN tapping your pint will have a benefit.
I agree with the other posters. It’s likely just the leftovers sitting in the outer part of the faucet getting funky.
Clean early, clean often, and run a little through before taking the first pint.
Thanks all for the insight,I’m sure it’s the tap as well. I’m comin back home Saturday so it will have been a few days since my last pour, so I’ll clean the hell out of the tap and run a pour off and I’ll update.
You definitely need to toss the first several ounces even if it’s only been sitting a few hours. Every good bar tender worth his or her meddle will toss the first bit, sometimes up to half a pint - much to the chagrin of the bar owner.
I bet if you took those taps apart you would be horrified at what you see growing in there and will decide to put yourself on a regular cleaning cycle. I clean my lines just about every time I change out a keg. In commercial settings it is recommended to clean lines and taps every 2 weeks at least - and often this is dictated by local or state law.
The Perlick type forward seal are amazing - they don’t ever seem to be dirty when I take them apart. The standard line cleaning gets them clean every time.
Agreed! I changed out my faucets to the Perlick ones several years ago and I clean my lines with caustic and rinse with hot water. When I take the faucets apart after about every third cleaning, they are clean as a whistle.
I recently mentioned in another thread that I was experiencing something similar to the OP here (but I have draft lines). I regularly clean my lines but the funk is not always on your timetable. A quick cleaning and sanitizing off all four lines made a HUGE difference. If you taste something unusual, it’s not necessarily a contaminated beer, mutated yeast, etc. although it could be. The lines can be the culprit. This past summer I took all 10 of my kegs and filled them with LD Carlson EasyClean and boiling water and I let that sit overnight. The next morning the insides of the kegs were gleaming & sparkling like they were brand new. Maintenance… the suckiest part of the hobby. 
If you like to clean, you too can be a brewer.
Update fellas, cleaned the hell out of my tap. Beer tasted perfect, so I guess problem solved. I’m assuming the first time it happened even tho it was brand new was because I didn’t take it apart completely to clean, I only cleaned the part that attaches to the ball lock disconnect and ran a sanitizer through it. Apparently that wasn’t enough :o. Thanks all for the help.
There are times when new equipment needs some cleaning prior to use. I have heard numerous stories of brewers buying a piece of equipment and doing an ordinary clean and sanitize but not getting some of the manufacturing products off the item. I bought an SS immersion chiller and did my normal clean and sanitize. But the chiller had ‘machining oils’ on it and my batch of beer was ruined. Others have mentioned similar stories depending on the item being used. Glad you found your issue. Cheers.
New SS parts that are going to contact your beer are usually worth a quick boil to clean any of possible residual oils from manufacturing off.