Beer Forum

i was wondering what makes the soap flavor? i brewed a belg abby,and
it fermented og 1.060 to 1.025 it may still have some to go i an hopeing
that goes away over time. was it the yeast? i used white lab 530.
ant ideas

According to John Palmer in How to Brew:

Soapy flavors can caused by not washing your glass very well, but they can also be produced by the fermentation conditions. If you leave the beer in the primary fermentor for a relatively long period of time after primary fermentation is over ("long" depends on the style and other fermentation factors), soapy flavors can result from the breakdown of fatty acids in the trub. Soap is, by definition, the salt of a fatty acid; so you are literally tasting soap.

I've heard, probably on a TBN broadcast, that highly hopped beers with too much Ca (or is it too little SO4?) can taste soapy.

I know I've tasted soapy in my all-cascade blonde ale. Now it gets a mix of hops and that seems to have solved the problem.

jroche10 2 weeks should not be too long for a belgen. my thougt is it has to be the yeast, i split the wort with 500 & 530 i did not check the age ie
freshness. should i dump it or pitch more yeast & let it age out.

jroche10 2 weeks should not be too long for a belgen. my thougt is it has to be the yeast, i split the wort with 500 & 530 i did not check the age ie
freshness. should i dump it or pitch more yeast & let it age out.

My first thoughts if it's not soap residue from cleaning, are how much hops are in the beer.

For future reference, (I don't have soapy on there) but I put a page together for a troubleshooting reference for the most common off flavors and their causes. Here is the link.
http://www.geocities.com/barleypopmaker ... oting.html

Interesting about the primary, that may explain when our local club had a contest my beers have had that statement made...

that list is good info it dose give a reason for soap foavor, over sparging
but that can not be it this 5 galons came from a 10 gal full boil the other half is good