I just racked my latest IPA, after 2 weeks primary fermentation, into the secondary for dry-hopping and clarification. Of course, while transferring, I pulled a sample for measuring SG and "quality control".
The best way to describe the smell was that of.....a hospital. :|
It smelled of iodine and band-aids, and the taste was definitely a bit "latexy" and quite astringent.
The previous 2 brews were almost exactly the same recipe and process (and turned out very tasty!), with only one significant difference in this brew...the amount of hops in the boil. The previous 2 brews each had 50g of a single hop (25g@60m,10g@30m,15g@5min), whereas this one had 130g of 4 different hops (30g@60m,25g@15m,75g@5m).
The last time I ended up with a brew with an odd latexy / astringent taste, I just chalked it up to using wild hops (http://www.brewersfriend.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=95), but after having a look back at my wild hop recipe and seeing that I had 140g of hops in the boil for that brew, I now have another suspicion...simply too much hops in the boil. I can only boil 18l. at a time, and after reading a bit in Palmer (http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html)...

...I think I may simply be restricted in how much hops I can add to my boil.

What I am still quite clueless about though, is the iodine smell. I do not use any sort of iodine sanitizer, so it cannot be coming from something like that.
As far as I can tell, fermentation was perfectly normal too, with no sign of infection.

 

I highly doubt I got a wild yeast in my brew. Chlorine might be more likely, but still a long shot. Our water here isn't chlorinated, I even add some calcium chloride to my brew water to bump up the chlorine a bit, but no more so in this brew than usual.

 

I like your optimism! Thanks, I'll try to keep my hopes up.
(the over-hopping thing is still nagging me though...)

 

That definitely gives me hope (I'll try to be patient for 6 weeks), thanks.