Beer Forum

I used to be a religious extract brewer and I always had that ball point pen flavor in my beer. I switched to all-grain and that went away. I no longer have the time for all-grain brewing and am going back to extract. I am afraid of getting that ball point pen flavor back. Here is what I am now able to do and hope that one of these will solve that problem. Do you extract brewers have that same problem or have you had that problem and solved it?

I will now:
1. full wort boil rather than high gravity boils.
2. use a plate chiller rather than pouring 3 gallons of cold water into my primary.
3. ferment at a controlled temp in a ferm fridge rather than the t shirt in a tub of water with a fan technique.
4. keg rather than bottle.

Will any of this help my beer? I've had some AMAZING extract beers and mine never were. My all grain beers were all pretty good. No off flavors and I drank them before they oxidized. I'll take any tips!
Socal

Sounds like a good plan.
All of those factors will improve your extract batches, esp the one about chilling instead of topping off (if you topped off with tap water, that was probably the cause of the off flavor you are describing).

I would still add a little gypsum for my hoppy beers, to get the sulfates up, and make starters, etc.

HTH-

I would add one other dimension. My LHBS does not turn over liquid malt extract at a very fast pace and it ends up sitting on the shelves darkening, and oxidizing over time. Therefore, if you are in the potential same boat, I would recommend using only light DME as I feel it does not stale as fast.

If you are able too, try doing an all liquid malt extract smash beer and an all dry malt extract smash beer using the same style base malt (light, extra light etc.) and the same hops and yeast and water and ferment temps. They may not be the most exciting beers (that's what friends are for) but you could tell right away if you get an off flavor from one or the other. I ised to get lme kits when they were on sale, but noticed off flavors in any pale or amber colered beer. Could have been older kits, hence the sale. Just use it as an excuse to run an exBEERiment.

I'll just set this here again. If you like it, then save the image, paste it into Word in landscape, print and laminate. Or don't.

That is a fantastic reference Dave! Thanks for posting. I bet you had that made into cards that fit in your wallet.