A few of you might remember I brewed a Saison a while back, where the mash pH was REALLY low due to using too much phosphoric acid in the mash water. Beer tasted fine while fermenting, though pretty acidic. After bottling though I feel like it has a nasty stomach-acid like character. I can’t think of any other descriptor.
They’re all still sitting in my “cellar,” in hopes they’ll improve.
Meanwhile, fast forward to my next bottled batch, my recent hefeweizen. The first few bottles were fine, but now I’m noticing a similar off-flavor. Now this batch did use more phosphoric in the acid than normal, but still nowhere near amount from the saison screwup. I didn’t measure the mash pH, after several beers that mashed really close to the Bru’n water predictions I stopped bothering.
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of off flavor? I thought phosphoric acid was tasteless, but could it be a factor? Have my beers developed some sort of infection while bottling? I’ve brewed a few batches in between these beers, but they’ve all been kegged.
How did the kegged beers come out? Same acidic flavor? When you say nasty stomach-acid flavor it really reminds me of acetic acid (vinegar-like). Do you get that in the aroma or flavor or is it more butyric (vomit like?)
Interesting. I’d wondered if the saison’s flavor was an infection, so I bottled this last batch from the keg. Basically just used a keg like a bottling bucket, added priming solution and beer to the keg and used CO2 pressure and a picnic tap to fill the bottles.
Same transfer hoses were used for all my recent beers, including the kegged ones that weren’t acidic.
Could it be my bottles? They get rinsed out when empty, then soaked in PBW and rinsed again, then star sanned prior to filling.
Usually when I leave beer/wort out it develops a vinegar small as it sours/goes off, only place I’ve noticed butyric aromas/flavors have been these two beers.
I remember someone saying that Star San isn’t the greatest against bacteria, maybe I need to try something stronger.
Maybe a quick scrub with a bottle brush to the insides of each bottle would help as well in your regimen. If you hold up a bottle to the light do you see any white rings where the head space and beer interface?
Phosphoric acid may have a mild flavor but you will still taste the impact of the ph reduction. Did you follow the same water treatment process with the batches that were kegged?
There’s no ring stuck to the bottle, but there is something floating in the beer, right on the edge like. Both beers have this.
Kegged beers had the same path to different water treatments, I targeted a mash pH of 5.4, and did whatever mineral additions/acid additions needed for the style/grist. The saison used a TON of acid, 70 ml in 8.75 gallons of water.
Two beers were brewed in between the saison and the hefewiezen, one didn’t need any acid, the other got 40 ml in 8.75 gallons of water. The hefewiezen got 45 ml in 9 gallons, so doing the math it got less acid per water than the in-between beer.
Pretty sure it’s an infection at this point, now to figure out exactly where it came from. Thankfully kegged beers seem to be fine, but cold cold storing them be preventing this from becoming apparent? The last beer I kegged was on draft for about a month, stored at 50ºF.
Your bottle cleaning process seems fine. I used to do that when I bottled, plus I would visually inspect the bottles by holding them up to the light. The only time I had an infection it was only in two bottles from the same batch and I got lazy and didn’t visually inspect them before bottling. The beers had a lactic sourness and when I looked at the bottles they had some dried crud from the previous batch.
Edit: I does look like an infection though. Do you use bacteria in your brewery?
Definitely looks like some sort of pellicle on the top of the bottle line there. Make sure to really scrub those bottles out well before using them again.
Slightly off topic for a moment- isn’t Star San better than bleach? I thought I heard or read that Star San needs a minute of contact time to sanitize and bleach needed 20 minutes.
The low pH should inhibit bacteria, but won’t necessarily prevent it from taking hold. Also, mold can be an issue - this year is particularly wet in my area (Northern Illinois), so the mold counts are way high. We don’t brew in totally aseptic conditions, especially in the summer when airborne contaminants are rampant. Try your best to limit contact of the wort and beer to air exposure in the transfer processes. Bacteria and many other nasties love oxygen and at the point of packaging, oxygen is not your friend. Kegging works great in this regard, because you can start with a keg that has been CO2 charged for a blanket of CO2 and then rack to the bottom of the keg to protect the transferring beer somewhat. If bottling - try bottling off the keg and purging each bottle with CO2 before filling with beer. Coupled with meticulous sanitation, you will likely avoid significant problems. Last thought - were you re pitching yeast from a prior batch? The same issues are present relative to re-using yeast and limiting exposure to the airborne contaminants when harvesting, storing and re-pitching.
Bleach is more of a diverse sanitizer and can destroy a variety of cells (mold spores, bacteria, yeast) while Star San cannot tackle all the microbial invasion that bleach can. Star san is easier to work with for most of the general public since bleach can lead to off-flavors if not properly rinsed unlike star san. Bleach is a good thing to use occasionally if you are trying to knock off a stubborn contamination issue that Star san isn’t touching.
Star San’s effectiveness has been over-hyped for years. Star San belongs to a class of sanitizers known as acid-anionic sanitizers. Acid-anionic sanitizers are fine when it comes to food preparation; however, they are in the kindergarten class when it comes to brewing because they do not kill yeast or mold. Most home brewers erroneously believe that the phosphoric acid in Star San is what kills bugs, but the actual killing agent is the surfactant dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid. Phosphoric acid lowers the pH of the solution, increasing the effectiveness of the surfactant. Dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid enters the cell wall and wreaks havoc on cellular activity.
Mark, you’ve mentioned another sanitizer before…what was it? It it a no-rinse sanitizer?
So far I haven’t had issues with star san, and I’ve still got a huge bottle of the concentrate. But I like having options, especially if I need to clean something that sat out/got soured.
Several years ago (actually, more like 10) I got a nasty infection in my brewery that I couldn’t seem to get rid of. I finally got rid of it with quaternary ammonium. Since then, I do a quat sanitization once a year, and so far(knock on wood) have been successful in staying infection-free.
