OVHA Chat

I brewed a Honey Blonde Ale kit put together by Fleur de Evansville and have been bottle conditioning for two weeks now. I decided to give one a try last night. Everything looks right and the beer tastes ok but it has a funky smell to it. I can't really place it. It doesn't smell soured or infected or anything like that. The only thing I can think of is like a garbage smell but it doesn't taste bad. I did top off my wort with about two gallons of Evansville tap water. Is this my culprit? Has anyone else had a bad experience with Evansville tap water?

I brew with Evansville water without problem, I hardly ever modify the water, but I do use a filter.

a trash smell sounds like it could be a sanitation problem.We will need to know more about your brewing process to diagnose.
-Did you take an original and final gravity reading? Did you cool your wort down to around 70 degrees before pitching your yeast? Do you aerate your wort before pitching the yeast? what was the yeast strain you used? what are you using to ferment in and how are you sanitizing it? Did any of the ingredients have that smell when you were brewing with them particularly the hops? Sometimes if the kit has been sitting on the shelf for a while and the hops havent been refridgerated they can get some funky aromas. It could be DMS, are you doing a fulling rolling 60 minute boil with the lid off?

This was my first brew so I am sure I made many mistakes.
-I know for sure that my OG was off because i took a sample before I aerated the wort. I believe it was 1.038. The final gravity seemed very low as it was 1.005.
-The wort was a little above 70 when I pitched the yeast.
-I cannot remember the yeast strain that I used but the clerk at Weber took it out of the fridge when I purchased the kit.
- For fermentation I used a brand new Brewers Best bucket sanitized with PBW that came with the kit.
- All of the ingredients smelled fantastic. The fermentation smelled great. I tasted a sample each time I took a gravity reading and it tasted good although obviously flat.
-I did do a full rolling boil for 60 minutes but I may have made a mistake by putting the lid partially over the kettle with enough room for the thermometer to stick out.
-I sanitized everything probably more than I needed to because I was afraid of infection.

I am curious about one thing though. As I mentioned before, I used a kit from Fleur de Evansville and the instruction said to boil the specialty grains for the full 60. I didn't think any different at the time because I am new to this but the more I read and watch videos the more I have noticed that nobody does this. The specialty grains in an extract kit are always steeped for 20 or 30 minutes at 150 to 165. Could this be a problem? I sent a message to the Fleur de Evansville facebook page but I have not received a reply from them.

Also, the beer tastes fine. It is just an off smell. Is this something that could possibly get better with aging in the bottle? I drank a bottle last night and the beer was generally ok but I was so fixated on the smell that it was nearly undrinkable.

Ok, so the final gravity being 1.005 and pitching the yeast at 70 degrees and aerated means that it did its job, if you didn't chill it they could have been killed when you pitched which could leave that smell. So the yeast is not the culprit unless it is a strand that puts off DMS or sulphur as a byproduct which I doubt.

A new bucket means there shouldnt be any scratches in there that anything yucky could be hiding in.

My next question though is you said you sanitized with PBW. that could be a typo, PBW is a cleaner, you would want to sanitize with Starsan.. If all you used was PBW to clean that could be it.

Or it could be DMS (Dimethyl Sulfides) DMS is continuously produced in the wort while it is hot and is usually removed by vaporization during the boil. If the wort is cooled slowly these compounds will not be removed from the wort and will dissolve back in. Thus it is important to not completely cover the brewpot during the boil or allow condensate to drip back into the pot from the lid. The wort should also be cooled quickly after the boil, either by immersing in an ice bath or using a wort chiller.

here is a link to John Palmers page on off flavors in how to brew:
http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html

for the specialty grains, you are correct, for extract kits the specialty grains are steeped but not boiled. boiling grain could lead to astringency. Astringency is more of a flavor and not an aroma.
Astringency differs from bitterness by having a puckering quality, like sucking on a tea bag. It is dry, kind of powdery and is often the result of steeping grains too long or when the pH of the mash exceeds the range of 5.2 - 5.6. Oversparging the mash or using water that is too hot are common causes for exceeding the mash pH range. It can also be caused by over-hopping during either the bittering or finishing stages. Bacterial infections can also cause astringency, i.e. vinegar tones from aceto bacteria.

It may not have been PBW. I cannot remember the name of the sanitizer. It is the powdered sanitizer that comes with brewers best kits. Before I do another brew though I will be sure to ditch the rest of that sanitizer and use some StarSan instead.

I plan on making an immersion chiller also. I have an APA fermenting right now and It took forever for me to get it down to pitching temp. I hope I didn't screw this one up too.

Thanks for your replies.

the nice thing about really hoppy beers is that the hoppiness can cover up minor off flavors so hopefully the apa comes out fine. I agree about ditching the powdered sanitizer for some liquid star san. That powdered crap has to fully dissolve in order to be truly effective. It sounds like you are on the right track to brewing some great beers, keep it up!

Pitching yeast into wort that is too warm can cause a number of problems. At the very worst, you'll shock the yeast and/or kill it, and you'll have a stuck fermentation.(Which you didn't because your yeast did its's job .038 - .005) -
Another problem with pitching too warm (and maintaining fermentation too warm) is that it can cause the yeast to produce unwanted off-flavors in the beer. High temperatures can cause the production of fusel alcohols, (John Palmer - heavier alcohols that can have harsh solvent-like flavors. Many of these fusels esterify during secondary fermentation, but in large amounts these esters can dominate the beer's flavor. Excessively banana-tasting beers are one example of high esters due to high temperature fermentation ... High temperatures can also lead to excessive levels of diacety-

Letting the wort sit longer to cool isn't desirable either, the wort needs to be chilled quickly for two main reasons:

Allowing the wort to cool on its own gives bacteria a chance to take hold. There are bacteria that thrive at high temperatures, and leaving the wort too hot increases the chance of infection (not to mention anything that might find its way into the wort during the long cooling time).

Chilling the wort quickly causes what is called the "cold break", where proteins in the wort clump together due to the rapid temperature change and flocculate out. Without the cold break, these proteins remain suspended in the wort (and subsequent beer), and lead to chill haze.

Having said that, I usually chill my wort down to about 63-68°F/ and pitch.
Once the yeast get working hard it will go up several degs, thats why fermentation temperature control is important for your beer.
Like you I'm confused why they had you boil your specialty grains for 60 min. The few specialty grains batches I've done were as you said steeped for 20 - 30 min.

I did have an all grain batch I made one once and forgot to turn off the burner under the mash tun and my grains got to 200 degs before I found it. I went ahead and finished the beer and it was ok, had an off flavor but was drinkable, but not something I would share, and it had a hazy color.

Your cleaner /sanantizer was more likely Easy Clean no Rinse it's a no-rinse oxygen-based cleanser / sananitizer.
It's what is given out with most kits. it does work but most of us use Star San it's a acid-based no-rinse sanitizer.
You will then need a cleaner like PBW.

Good luck and keep notes when brewing, times, temperatures, ingredients, and taste.
As a brewer you get to drink all your mistakes.

I've smelled honey in ales before that I thought smelled infected until I remembered what I was smelling. I'm pretty particular about honey for that reason.