homebrewandbeer.com

About 3 months ago, I did three brews. Two different types of brew kits (soverign gold from ballarat, and a coopers kit)
They were brewed for 2 weeks, in two different places (one inside, 2 outside)
All three turned to shit, having a VERY strong mettalic odour and flavour. They are undrinkable...

I took one of them to Brewcraft, and one of the guys there tasted it, and couldn't quite figure out why it had gone off.
Eventually, he decided it was the detergent I was using (morning fresh) So i bought some BrewClean, and used that.
A month ago, I made another brew, and tasted it yesterday. Whilst not as strong, there was still a flavour and smell about it reminding me of the old beers.

Right now, I have one brewing. While taking its SG reading, I could smell the flavour, and taste it when I drank some.

This is after 2 strong washes with brewclean, and 2 steralisations for each brew. (One with coopers granules, one with brewshield for each brew)

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this is happening...

Help!!!

Can you give us step by step of what you do?

Cleaning
- Clean fermenter (used to squeeze detergent into fermenter, wash it around with the kitchen sponge. Now I spray BrewClean into fermenter, wash it around with a fresh sponge)
- Steralise equipment (Put it all in fermenter, use Coopers steraliser)
- Rinse equipment, spray with Brew Shield

Making
- Boil water in a stainless steel pot
- when boiled, pour in malts/sugars
- once dissolved, pour in the extract
- pour in fermenter, fill fermenter with water
- vodka in airlock
- leave it, wait for bottling

Aside from working out the mineral content of your water, I'd consider moving away from the Coopers cleaner.

Think about idophor or even plain bleach. If using bleach, do several hot water rinses.

How does your water taste at the tap from which you are filling your fermenter?

Sometimes old pipes can impart metallic flavours into water. If this is the case you could fix the water with a Britta active charcoal filter.

copper piping can give that taste under some conditions....does ur porcelain basin have a blue stain around the plug-hole??

There does seem to be a lot of chemicals involved. After I brew I use the hose and blast everything out of there, then drain and dry. The tap gets disassembled and soaked overnight in bleach solution along with the airlock, rinsed with copious water and dried for future use. When I sanitise in preparation for brewing everything goes in the fermenter with 1/2 cup bleach, fill with water and soak for 1/2 hour. I then drain some of the solution into the sink to sanitise the lid. Everything gets thoroughly rinsed several times with water. This seems to work as the only infection I had involved a tap leaking because it was not screwed in properly which attracted vinegar flies.