1st keg is losing its flavor and aroma

[Worty]

Hello brewing gods. I brewed me the dunkelweizen from Jamil's book and everything went great. Hit all my numbers. Decided to force carbonate using "set and forget" method. Set the regulator at 15 psi and let it sit at 38 degrees in the kegerator. I guess i just couldn't forget because i started drinking off her after a few days. After about the 4th day it tasted fabulous. I couldn't keep my hands off it.

I have a single regulator and wanted to add another keg to it, so after about 5 days of carbing it, i spliced in a T (a plastic one I bought at a home supply store) and hooked up another line to the other keg.

Now all of a sudden the beer has lost its wonderful aroma and tasted very bland and watery. I just don't get it. The beer pours with about a 2" foam head and the keg is holding pressure. Checked for any leaks but all seems ok.

I haven't been able to find out what can cause a beer to lose it's flavor and body. Could I be in the middle of a change due to contamination?

[brewinhard]

What temperature are you drinking the beer at? If its 38 degrees, then that is pretty cold and can make a beer seem not as malty or yeast oriented due to the cold temps. As the beer warms, malt and yeast flavors (along with hops) should start to surface. Try to let your beer warm up a bit before drinking it and see if that helps.

[ajdelange]

I haven't been able to find out what can cause a beer to lose it's flavor and body.

Time. Especially with a wheat beer. In general you can expect a wheat beer to be drinkable even right out of the fermenter but in general it will improve in flavor for perhaps a month and a half and then start to decline again. You have a window of about a month (three weeks to 7 weeks) when it is at its best. If it's kept cold and protected from light you can drink it for a year and perhaps a bit longer but it's never as good as it is in that window. The amyl acetate (bananna) seems to go particularly fast.

But I gather the time frame you are talking of here is days as opposed to weeks or months and that is hard to explain. Tapping off a CO2 line shouldn't have the effects you describe unless beer is flowing through the gas lines from a blander beer into the Weizen somehow. About the only explanation I can come up with is that your palate has changed. Don't run off to the doctor on this - it happens to everyone and is effected by things like what you have eaten that day, colds or viruses, your mood, fatigue and perhaps the Nile flood stage. I am amazed at how different the experience of the same beer can be at samplings separated by a week. Often in life if we like something we magnify the desirable attributes in our memories. For example, you loved a certain movie you saw years ago and so when you see the DVD in the store you buy it and when you look at it that night it doesn't seem as great as you remembered it to be.

So be patient and try the beer again.

[Worty]

ok, I'll give it some time. You are right, the beer is not that old. That is a bit cold to be serving, I know, but even at that temp it was tasting good. (It probably warmed up).

What i think happened is I accidentally cold crashed it, and all of the yeast settled to the bottom of the keg. Then I drank those little buggers. So now I have no yeast left in my beer.

Does this sound feasible? Can I just pitch more from a starter?

[Weenie Boy]

I speak from experience when I say that if you put a T in your gas line to run several kegs, you are doing your beer an injustice. I did this exact same thing for the first six months of brewing/kegging my beers. I had a double tap on my kegorator and usually had two beers on tap.

YOU NEED A MANIFOLD OR CHECK VALVE INLINE FOR EACH SERVING LEG OF YOUR CO2 DISCONNECTS.

Say you have two beers on tap, one a beautiful IPA that you would have sex with in public, and the other an Oatmeal Stout that you are fond of but only late at night in the darkness of an alley. You love the IPA and drink it 75% of the time. When you open that tap the keg wants to depressurize but you have it hooked up to a CO2 supply (bottle) and it has stored CO2 in the headspace of the Oatmeal Stout. The law of physics shows that the headspace in the Oatmeal Stout is equalized with the pressure from the CO2 bottle. Now, since you don't have an inline check valve in place, the IPA keg is needing it's own equalization and draws from the closest source.

You will have "cross-contamination" of your beers if you have two different "styles" of beer on tap on your system without check valves or a decent gas manifold with the check valves installed.

I, along with many friends, noticed a marked improvement in the quality of my beer after installing the manifold. If you split your CO2 line and ran the same beer for both taps, then disregard this rant and pray for your tastebuds to return.

Shit, now I need a Beer, Thanks.

Weenie Boy

[Worty]

wow I never thought of that. So are you saying the actual beer will mix or just some of the escaping gases?

It does make sense though since I have no check valves in between the two kegs.

Thanks for the advice man!

[Weenie Boy]

Yes, you will have the gas and the aromas/esters/flavors/etc. "migrating" from one keg to the other.
It only took me a few months to figure out why my wheat beers started tasting like IPAs.

Good brewing and even better drinking to you,

Weenie Boy