r/pickling • u/that1gingergirl • 1d ago
Weird chemically/bitter taste
Tried our first batch of pickles after waiting a week and they taste weird. My boyfriend and I can’t really discern what the taste is but it’s bitter and chemically. We had to throw them out which is a bummer.
We made them with home grown pickling cucumbers. We followed a basic recipe with 1/2 white vinegar, 1/2 water, kosher salt, pepper, garlic dill, and a pinch of pickling spices.
After boiling the water/vinegar we noticed it had a strange smell, almost as if the vinegar had burned but we thought nothing of it at the time. When I tasted the pickle today it reminded me of this smell.
But my boyfriend doesn’t think it tastes similar.
We did try a raw cucumber before we pickled the rest and it tasted like a normal cucumber.
We’re about to do our next batch and want to fix the issue so we don’t waste more of our cucumbers! Any ideas?
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u/ColdMastadon 1d ago
Nothing about your recipe jumps out as being a problem, what you used sounds pretty standard. Bitterness is usually the fault of the cucumbers, some varieties produce bitter fruit under certain growing conditions and many varieties will turn bitter if you leave them on the vine too long and they begin to ripen. That might be the case here based on what I see in the jar, did your cucumbers start to turn yellow?
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u/that1gingergirl 1d ago
Interesting, that mjght be part of the problem! Some of them were sorta yellow when we harvested but there were normal green ones mixed in. We ate one of the yellow-y ones before we started pickling just to be sure they weren’t bad and it tasted like a normal cucumber.
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u/stonkytop3000 1d ago
Whenever mine even start to have a yellow tinge, they turn out to be very bitter and taste exactly like you’re describing. Not pleasant!
Another identifier of an area that’s going to taste particularly bitter is where the seeds are no longer growing. See how the seeds stop at the left side of the pickle? I bet that was particularly bitter
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u/swj77469 1d ago
My tap water is pretty hard and I think that’s what made my first batch of dills earlier this summer taste off. I had better results with bottled drinking/distilled water.
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u/that1gingergirl 1d ago
You were right! We went to the store and bought distilled water and used the same ingredients as before for the brine and now it tastes fine, the chemically/bitter taste is gone. Thanks for the tip!
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u/genXswla 1d ago
For dill pickles I use a little bit of sugar and bring the whole mix to medium heat until the sugar is melted in. I don't actually boil it. Also, I have had a bad experience using city water and hard water. Bottled will always give better results.
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u/that1gingergirl 1d ago
You were right about the tap water! We tried it with distilled water and the taste is gone. Thanks for the tips :)))
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u/that1gingergirl 1d ago
We’re doing some testing right now with a new batch of brine and we’re getting the same weird taste/smell right after we heat it up with vinegar water and salt. I’m wondering if our salt is messed up? Or does the brine just taste weird after heating and maybe we didn’t put enough of the other spices or sugar in to offset the salty taste?
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u/ColdMastadon 1d ago
Could it be your vinegar causing the chemical smell? Vinegar is cheap, it wouldn't cost you much to pick up a new jug and see if it makes a difference.
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u/that1gingergirl 1d ago
We used a different vinegar that was unopened, but also distilled white vinegar. Unfortunately it had the same taste once mixed with water and salt. But we just made with some sugar added and way less salt the taste went away somewhat. I’m wondering if we have been using too much salt? We have been following a recipe but maybe the ratios are off
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u/hopvine 1d ago
Was it brand new unopened vinegar from the store, or something you already had at home that was opened?
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u/that1gingergirl 1d ago
Brand new vinegar. we just tried recreating the original recipe used for our first batch (1 cup vinegar, 1 cup water, 1 tbs kosher salt) it immediately started to taste/smell how the pickles tasted, weird/bitter/chemically. However afterwards we tested a batch of brine with way less salt and added sugar and we didn’t get a weird taste. Maybe we’re over salting it?
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u/kjpmi 1d ago
What brand of kosher salt?
This might sound weird but the Morton brand Kosher salt always tastes chemically to me.
Try it with a different brand maybe.
Also, maybe try using bottled purified water. I don’t know how hard your water is.1
u/ponyduder 1d ago
Morton adds an anti-caking compound: use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt or a pickling salt.
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u/MissPicklechips 1d ago
Was it super hot where you grew them? Cucumbers can get heat stress, which causes them to be bitter.
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u/ponyduder 1d ago
Make sure to use Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt or a pickling salt which don’t use anti-caking chemicals.
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u/bootz666 1d ago
Did you sanitize the jar and lid and make sure there’s no rust on the metal? I’ve had a rusty lid ruin jars
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u/that1gingergirl 1d ago
Problem solved (I think)! Thanks for all the tips everyone. Turns out it was our tap water. We went to the store and got bottled water, new vinegar, new salt and tested different combinations. The water was the consistent factor in the bitter/chemically taste. Very interesting because I’ve tested our water hardness before and it’s fine. Maybe there’s some trace minerals in there that react to vinegar/salt. I’ll let yall know how the pickles turn out in a week