Strange Flavour... Botteling technique?

[daveyk]

Hi,

Of late a few of my brews have all had a strange flavour / aftertaste when drinking. As you can imagine, I was a little concerned!!

i thought that perhaps it was due to the fermenting temps being a little too high. Or perhaps a twange from the kits but last night I made what I feel to be a significant discoverey.

I recently got some minikegs and with a batch of stonewall beer, I keged half and bottled the other half. (I'd always bottled till then). This strange flavour is present in the bottled beer BUT NOT the kegged.

Like I said this was all the same batch, I used a bottling bucket, primed as a complete batch then ran it into either the bottles or the kegs.... to any difference is down to either the keg or bottle.

The only thing I can think of making a differnce is not properly rinsing the sanitiser from the bottles.... I use richies, soak the bottle in a solution for 10-15 mins, then fill and empty (shaking a little) 3 times. For the kegs, I put "some" steriliser in the bottom (approx 1/3 full), and gave it a GOOD shake every now and then for 10-15 mins. Again to rinse, I filled approx 1/3 full with water gave a good shake, empty, repeat 3 times.

Could this be the cause of my strange taste..... I'm really struggling to find the words to describe the taste..... must try again tonight.... perhaps soapy..... perhaps just really bitter..... taste is in back of mouth though.

I had put the taste down to technique or conditions but the beer from the keg was FANTASTIC! I'd have paid good money for a pint like that in my local. It must be something to do with the bottles.

Any thoughts or advice very much appreciated..... oh, might it be light strike? what does that taste like? all the bottles are brown, though. Does beer taste that different due to conditioning in the bottle / keg.... which is faster, bottle I thought due to smaller volume.

Dave

[lancsSteve]

I've had the same with one particular beer: amazing from cornie, very different (though not bad) in bottle. I'd uised a Burton Ale yeast and the supphury edge was VERY pronounced, even a little harsh in the bottle but not there at all in the cornie.

Why?

From reading and this experience I can see that in the bottle there's little or no space for the by-products to be vented off - a few CCs of air. In a large vessel, especially if vented a few times, then these off-flavours can be released. Graham Wheeler (and others) advocate a decent amount of conditioning in a large container pre-bottling e.g. in a secondary fermenter with airlock or pressure barrel for a few weeks. That's certainly worked - using a bottling yeast also helps to mop-up some of these off flavours too from experience with my stinks-like-a-sewer bavarian weissen yeast which was far better when primed for bottling with a small starter. Fresh yeast also helps mop-up any aeration from bottling and speed carbonation.

Suggest longer period in secondary or a period in a keg pre-bottling... Or just more patience - have had a friends beer which was terrible for a while to the extent of nearly pouring them all away buit then after 3 months came up roses