By Dwight B. West, Albert F. Lautenbach and Donald D. Brumstead
J. E. Siebel Sons' Co., Inc., Chicago
Published in October 1965

In order to make this article easier for you to read and save, we have made it a downloadble (PDF) document you will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to access. Left click here to read it online or right click here to save it on your computer. Be sure to read Part I.

Synopsis:

Earlier this year we had the privilege of presenting a paper dealing with the general subject of phenolic or medicinal off-tastes in beer It had been assumed that the subject would have a limited appeal to brewers as the majority of them probably had never encountered this problem. Apparently we had misjudged the situation, as a surprising number of persons have approached us in the past four months with descriptions of their own, or their competitors, phenolic off-taste problems. Most of these occurrences described to us were corrected by the brewing staff concerned and were of short duration. However, in isolated instances a mild phenolic off-taste has been more or less accepted as a normal beer characteristic. It is our hope that this present paper will enable other brewers to avoid some of the causes of this off-taste or possibly correct an existing condition.

Our previous paper was primarily intended to present an analytical method for determining total volatile phenols and chlorophenols in beer. It also contained data on the very small amounts of some of these compounds that will produce objectionable off-tastes and odors in water and in beer. The paper also presented evidence that certain Grain negative wort spoilage bacteria produce high levels of phenols and chlorophenols in wort and beer. Helm noted the presence of phenolic off-tastes in a few continental beers and also traced the cause to wort spoilage bacteria. Gorbach, Dedic and Koch have reported an instance of certain molds growing on wood that caused a phenolic taste. These references serve to point out the possibility of several causes for this type of off-character. In the present paper we have principally limited the presentation to the role which brewing water from various sources may play in the development of medicinal or phenolic tastes in beer.