Grass Metallic Taste, need help

I don’t think its in the kettle then, I assume brass or stainless steel valves?.. Is your house a newer one? Perhaps an old one with metal pipes? Your leaching iron from some place… OR your supply has a low pH, and is leaching before it gets to your house, or is heavy in iron from its source… Do try brew with bottled water… All that touches your brew should be bottled water… I’ll say the “grassy” flavor/aroma is from the hops. Keep them in the freezer until they are used… And I have the same thoughts as to, use the one step for “cleaninging…” I wouldn’t cut corners on AFTER the boil… That is strictly star san time… Everything that touches your un-fermented brew… Fermenters, spoons, your hands, I mean everything… Sneezles61

Using the LBKs as fermentation vessels, I wonder how well you are separating the wort from the Trub…

One other method that may help… Boil your water a day or two before brew day… That removes some of the temporary hardness, and if you decant quietly, any of the iron/manganese should stay behind…Boil 10 gallons, decant 7…
I just read an interesting paper on “iron in your drinking water” from a fellow in TX. You can determine which one you have in your water system by looking in the tank of the toilet… Red-Brown… Iron… Brown-Black… Manganese… Water… Very deep subject. Sneezles61

S-04. I leave the pack out several hours to reach room temp.

Cold crashed every batch and trub collects at the bottom. The beers looks very clear.

It looks as though your process is very good, that I wouldn’t change, except star san… Sneezles61

How are you storing your grains and hops?

I’ve been following this and looking for some reliable information on the web. Some of this has already been recommended.

Use distilled water for your next brew. RO water can also be used but some of those store dispensers are not serviced well and the water can contain chlorine/chloramine. Five gallons of RO water can be treated with one-quarter of a Campden tablet if you have them. Use distilled or treated RO for everything touching you brew equipment.

Clean everything post boil with One Step and rinse thoroughly. Especially taking apart valves which can harbor crud growing bacteria. Use Star San with distilled water for sanitizing.

When you open the packages of hops on brew day the aroma should be very bright. Put the hops in the freezer if you are going to delay brew day.

Optimum fermentation range for S-04 is 59° - 68°F according to Fermentis spec sheets. A very knowledgeable brewer has gotten weird off flavors at 64° and up with this yeast. This is from @Yooper.

Hope this will be of some help.

EDIT: Sounds too officious. Hope others will round off the corners.

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Once went to a local grocery store with Carboys with left over Star San.
Bubbles everywhere upon filling them up. Cashier looked at me strange when walking past me.
Later the manager stopped by to find out what prank I was pulling.
I told him, relax, I just Sanitized his RO dispenser…

Then I switched to low foam Sanitizer.

The gains remain in their plastic sealed bag, in the kit, until it is time to brew.

Not officious at all. When I break the seal of the hops they smell great.

As far as fermentation temp should I go with the lowest suggested temp?

Low on the suggested temp range is usually best. But seriously, I think you’re doing fine. People have made good beer on more simple set-ups for a long time. Try distilled water for your next batch, switch to a better sanitizer for the cold-side, and see if that fixes the problem. If you still have off-flavors, let’s troubleshoot some more, but let’s see where that gets you first.

Since you’re filtering your water, adding a campden tab will probably be sufficient to make good brewing water, but just eliminate that variable for your next batch and see how it works with distilled water. :beer:

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Filtering the iron out requires a different medium… Charcoal will not remove that. City water of well water?.. Sneezles61

City water

Are they gathering from a surface or a well? They should be able to supply you with a water report. Sneezles61

Straight from the Yadkin river.

I have to rush off for an appointment. Your problem could be high mineral content in the water from the descriptions of ore deposits in the river valley.

edit: Just had a thought that high mineral content of certain minerals could cause a reaction with the carbonic acid produced during bottle conditioning to create the off flavor Will take some reading to see if there is anything to this.

In the original description “Each sample I have tasted, prior to bottling, has been ok”.

I am guessing that the off flavors are from the yeast in the bottle being stored at higher temperatures.
I too have experienced that when I use to bottle and is why I stopped.

After bottling, what was your fermentation temperature for the bottle?

If fermenting too high (especially with S-04) you may get off flavors.
I am thinking (especially after reading all of these great posts on fermentation temps) that this
was probably my problem forgetting about bottle storage temps.

I am now thinking about how to upgrade my system to include a controlled fermentation system (another thread). But after I started using WLP001 (our house temp always set to 68 deg) I have been fine and I don’t bottle anymore with priming sugar.

Not sure if yeast can create Metallic off flavors however.

Bottle conditioning temperature isn’t really that critical. It’s such a small refermentation that the yeast don’t have much opportunity to create off flavors. I generally try to keep my bottles in the 70s just to speed along the process.

I think a bigger factor in beer tasting different after bottle conditioning is that the carbonation increases your ability to taste off flavors, in that the bubbles release more of the flavor than if it were still. Plus the beer is warm, you’re not necessarily tasting it critically, and the yeast have had more time to drop out of suspension and break down things like diacetyl that can mask the off flavor. I wouldn’t be surprised if the off flavor were there at bottling and was just covered up by a bunch of other flavors.

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Maybe something has changed in the Yadkin River? Looking at the Yadkin River keepers site there seem to be a lot of people trying to protect it from exploitation. Your advised not to swim in the closest waterways to me because of pollution so making beer from them is definitely not encouraged.