I have done some extract brews recently that all have a common flavor that doesn't seem to jive with other people's descriptions of the "twang". At first I thought of it as slightly sour, but after drinking one of the brown ales last night, it struck me that it tasted almost exactly, and very strongly, like raisins.
I've heard/read of raisin-like flavors contributed by dark crystal, but I haven't heard of an extreme raisin problem before. There was dark crystal in one of the recipes. Another was a John Bull brown ale can and another extra light extract. Another was a kitchen sink winter spice beer with 2 cans of light extract and a bunch of various steeping grains.
This taste has encouraged me to swear off of cans and move to partial mash, my first batch of which is conditioning now. I still would like to understand where this flavor came from. Is it possibly a byproduct of old or poorly stored extract. I still have a case of this beer to drink, and I am likely to go insane if I don't figure out how that flavor got there.
