Continuing Education

Her lips twisted to the left in disapproval.

“It’s good, but it has that iodine aftertaste,” she said.

I’m pretty certain that my internal sigh was matched by a slight droop of my shoulders. This has been a common complaint from my girlfriend about beers I’ve made and have been trying to correct for a couple years now. It’s not always there and she seems to detect it more often than I do but I have gotten this flavor off and on. My belief was that the sanitizer I was using, iodophor, was causing this after taste; the flavor was uncommonly similar to the smell of iodine. I checked the amount I was using and according to the directions, I was using the right amount, which is good but this slightly metallic note has continued to occasionally appear, to my dismay.

I just kept forgetting to ask people about it. Thankfully, the OBC has a forum section now and I could just ask the question and come back to reference it later! I got some really good advice, including a link to an article written by a San Francisco homebrewer, which has me tweaking how I use my sanitizer.

Plus, I had enough people saying I should use StarSan instead of Iodophor, so I probably will switch when I’ve used all this up–assuming I can get a handle on the problem. I certainly hope so, because I don’t want to get rid of $32 worth of sanitizer. My money > less of my money, you know?

2 thoughts on “Continuing Education”

  1. Well that’s obnoxious, my comment did not take.

    Good article on iodaphor. Hopefully you can work out some bugs. That being said I see no harm in buying a small amount of the StarSan and seeing how that works out. Nothing to lose as you will use them both up eventually.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.