Help Diagnose My Soapy Flavor

It's actually the breakdown of fatty acids from the trub, rather than from any kind of protein synthesis.

I can't imagine why 5.2 stabilizer would cause soapy flavors, but I do know that 5.2 is worthless. So I'd stop using it and see what happens.

What do you use to clean and to sanitize? (Wondering about residues.)
How much kettle trub makes it into your fermenter?

 

"On the yeast for less than a month..." is still a bit long in my book. Could be just too much trub for too long.. but I would also suspect the plate chiller as its a great place to hide many of the foul critters that lurk.
They're REALLY hard to clean and sanitize... there are tiny pockets and corners of trapped goodies in a plate cooler that can survive a whole lot. ( gotta purge all the air and boil it for like an hour) I suppose a surgical steam autoclave would cover it as well.
I'm still a small potatoes guy and use a boil pot in a sink of cold transfer water... it takes a bit longer, but there are 1000x's fewer chances for contamination.

 

This may be true. But what kind of bugs would cause a soapy flavor?

 

Do you clean with pbw?

I once had a soapy batch that I associated with some of the residue left behind by pbw in my keg and and racking setup.

I failed to follow the reccomendations of rinsing pbw with hotter water than it soaked at.

 

A month in Summer > a month on trub at other times of the year.

 

Did 5.2 do anything for your water? Did you confirm with a pH meter?

 

Can you describe the soapy flavor? Is it plain like white ivory soap? or prefumy and floral like those stinky restroom hand soaps? or something else?

 

Are you sure your basement temperature has not been higher during the elapsed time?. The lighter beer could fit with the breakdown of fatty acid creating soap because their are more prone to develop this issue but a double IPA doesn´t fit in this problem. I wouldn´t look at infection, IMHO there is no bug to produce such a flavor.

 

When I read your description "soapy/film" I am thinking you have a soap problem. Soapy could be a few things, all of them mentioned previously but one sure thing that will taste like soap is in fact soap. And the film residue follows as well.

So spend an hour or two and soak everything you have, and I mean everything, in PBW or similar, then rinse everything more than you think is necessary. Even if it does turn out to be a trub problem for instance good sanitation never hurts.

Eliminate the obvious and the easiest. Work back from there.
Cheers.

 

Hopefully by eliminating the use of 5.2 stabilizer the soapy flavor will become a non-issue.

On a separate but related topic (soapy flavors), below is something from the book Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels (pg. 188) where he is talking specifically about MUNICH water:

... It is the carbonate content that has led Munich brewers to make dark, malt-balanced beers for most of their history. The acidity of the dark grains helps to counteract the alkalinity of the high carbonate content in the mash so that saccharification can take place at a normal rate. When it comes to hopping, however, carbonates can impart a soapy, harsh flavor to bitterness and that prevents the use of high hop rates in the Munich beers."

Cheers!

 

Here's another possibility, I just read an article about this. Many people are genetically inclined to taste soapy flavors in a variety of foods, especially cilantro. This weekend a friend of mine who hates cilantro got a soapy taste from my Amarillo IPA, everybody else tasted grapefruit/citrus.

 

What a curse! ...to get soap from cilantro AND beer

 

To me Ruination IPA from Stone tastes like dish soap in water. My daughter gave me some declaring it here favorite beer ever(she was 21). To me it tasted like soap, to her nectar of the gods. Ive gotten the same flavor every time I've tried itso there must be some chemical in it(probably in the particular hops) that sets off "soap" in my taste system.

 

Unlike some sanitizers ... such as StarSan ... 1-Step needs to be rinsed.

 

For sure. this is a genetic thing. My wife smells/tastes cilantro as B.O. and soap mixed.
So the question is .... " Do other people taste what you are tasting or is this just a personal taste anomaly"?
Perhaps there is a hop usage that is related to the Cilantro family or, at least a variety that is carrying some of the genes or identical amino acids you you associate "Soapy" with. Not that far fetched really.

 

I'm wondering if some folks have the same aversion to coriander which is just the seed from cilantro (as ya'll probably already know).

 

Centennial tastes soapy to me. I may be the only one though. Did either or both of these beers use a hop you haven't brewed with before?