Beer Forum

I just tasted a pale ale that I dry hopped. I think I'm tasting what I've heard described as phenols. It doesn't taste bad, it just tastes like I used Belgium yeast. Why did dry hopping give me this flavor?

It likely wasn't the dry hopping, it was most likely a wild yeast that was introduced post boil.
Was there a lot of dust in the air when you were brewing?
Wife vacuuming or something? There are many ways this could happen, including letting your star-san get too high a pH which renders it ineffective.

I just tasted something I dry hopped too and it tasted weird, I don't know if it was my hop choice, I used a lot of Calypso which I have never used before, I used Nottingham and kept it at 64 degrees the whole time up until I cold crashed it to make the hops drop out.

It's a hard to describe taste, almost plasticy and medicinal, it tasted great before fermentation, I think it might have been the yeast nutrient I used, it's different than what I usually use. I added it when I pitched the yeast.

+1 BDawg - not your dry hopping that caused the 'phenol' taste - yeast derived - may have been a stressed fermentation - too hot? too little yeast? too much AAT? Bad temp swings? too low O2?

Scotty - medicinal is also phenols from the yeast. Same issues above.

I have never had any issues from dry hopping.

Scotty - plasticy could be chlorophenols, a byproduct of yeast working in an environment that contains chlorine or chloramine. Are you using filtered tap water? If so, time for a new filter!

Chloramine(s) can not be filtered out from what I remember, has to be boiled off.........

Chlorine and chloramines can both be removed by pre-treating your brewing water with campden tablets. One tablet should treat about 20 gallons of water.

Pre-boiling only works for chlorine, if I recall correctly. Chloramines require either campden tablets or charcoal filtering/reverse osmosis. The tablets are so easy to use that I've never really found a reason to use anything else.

jonboris wrote:Scotty - plasticy could be chlorophenols, a byproduct of yeast working in an environment that contains chlorine or chloramine. Are you using filtered tap water? If so, time for a new filter!

I didn't even make this wort, it came from Heretic, I let it sit for a couple days before I bottled it today and that weird taste seems to be gone, when it had that taste it was straight out of the carboy then I racked it to a bottling bucket for 2 days. I think it was the yeast nutrient I used, it's meant for mead, maybe a little too strong for beer, when I dissolved it in warm water it had the same medicinal smell.

I think it's gonna be fine. When I brew I use RO water with a little bit of stuff added, I know it wasn't the wort, it was something I did, the nutrient is my guess but it's ok now.