Ever have an unexplained flavor in a beer?

Sometimes when i drink a lot of boddingtons. Or any nitro beer and im on the verge of going from feeling it to full blown drunk, i taste a fruit punch, very fruity estery almost like a blast of air that just hovers on to roof of my mouth. Like a kool aid powder smell but a "taste" form. Every time too. Happens also with most guinness brands too.

Ive gotten a dish soap flavor once and bear with me. I got a clean glass and a new pour it srill tasted like that. And with a third clean glass and a nother pour after checking the beer line, (was in a brewery, testing new beer) it still had the bitterness of dish soap. It was a brown ale btw

 

Maybe it was a rinsing of sanitizer issue or just a mineral content of their water. my tap water sometimes smells of chlorine at home.

 

This raises a question of what filtering - if any - breweries do to avoid their water being a negative contributing taste. I like many of the Samuel Smith beers, but their mineral well water seriously detracts from the flavor. Xingu is even worse. How in the world can brewers imagine that folks want to taste minerals or chlorine in the beer? Brewers go to great lengths to control all of the other flavors by selecting, testing, measuring, and properly handling all of the other ingredients - then throw in whatever water is at hand? I expect some brewers do pay attention to this, and I can see where it could get expensive to filter if their local water sucks.

 

Since you've had multiple beers from the same brewery it sounds like what ever is going on is not a regular thing for them. That suggests two possibilities, the first is that they used an ingredient in the beer you pick up a flavor from it that most folks don't. This happens. With an herb called Cilatro (used in many Tex-Mex dishes) some folks don't like it because they find that it tastes like soap. But it's also widely used because lots of folks enjoy it and it doesn't taste like soap to them.

The second possibility is that it was something you ate earlier in the day (those things can also affect how the beer tastes that night). I've had two bottles of the same beer from the same six pack taste different on two successive nights.

Having a second beer from the same batch should help you figure it out.

 

Most brewers also go to lengths to ensure the water has the flavor they want for the beer they are brewing. The information and supplies needed to treat water and control it's flavor have been easily available for years. Also if the problem was with the water supply itself the OP would have had much the same flavor showing up in other beers from that same brewery.

More likely, as @Urk1127 suggests it was a one time thing, but based on only one bottle of one beer had on one evening and had only once by only one person it's hard to know if it is that person or that batch.

 

Brewers, at least the ones that know what they are doing, go to great lengths to treat and monitor the water. Chlorine will lead to medicinal off flavors, so it is removed with activated charcoal filters. Minerals can be removed with RO, or greatly reduced with nano filtration. Some minerals are beneficial, so different mineral salts are added if the water is deficient in those. Some Brewers even deareate the water to remove disolved O2.

Some styles have higher mineral content, British styles are known for that, so Sam Smiths would be fine for higher mineral content.

 

Certain ingredients can interact to get a weird result.

Highly hopped beer with lots of patent malt in them will give you a taste of carrot. A taste I call carrot stick.

 

I picked up definite notes of tomato juice in Capital Brewing's Grateful Red, a red IPA. I don't consider it an "off" flavor, but I am curious as to where it comes from. Here are the malt and hop bills, according to the brewer:
HOPS - Warrior, Apollo, Simcoe, Hopsteiner, Experimental Hop #07270
MALTS - Brewers, Best Maltz Red X, Extra Special Roasted, Carmel (sic)

Also, swamp water in Bud Light Platinum. I am not joking.

 

Strawberry frosting in a Parkway Get Bent Mountain IPA... very off-putting

 

This happened to me last weekend with a new session IPA in a mixed 12 pack of cans. I like the brewery, but the finish on the session IPA was just off. Maybe tasted metallic?

 

I had a Scurry brewed by Off Color that I swear tasted like iron. It had that specific metal taste, I think maybe because or their water? I also had a Belgian strong dark by Crux that had a strong cherry cough syrup flavor. Both were drain pours.

 

I had a 6 pack of Schlafly Tasmanian IPA and 5 were great but one tasted so bizarre. Like chemicals and garbage and it burned. I kept trying to sip it to see if I was crazy but it was so bad I dumped it.

 

A lot of times I get coconut off of bourbon-barrel-aged stouts. Seems like that's how the midrange of the bourbon comes across to me. Freaked me out the first time but now I'm used to it.

 

Use a glass next time!

 

That's a desirable quality in those beers, and you should expect it from now on .

 

I will say that coconut notes in beer make me drool uncontrollably now, and I can get a cheap(er), poor-man's fix from Death By Coconut if I'm hard-up.

 

Sounds like how nitrous oxide tastes to me at the dentist's. I say "at the dentist's" because that's the only place I've ever had nitrous. I don't even know what a whip-it is.

 

Bullfrog Crime of Passion tasted like I was drinking a liquid chemical fire, does that count?

It burned my throat going down. That beer is an abomination.