Extremely tart blonde ale, causes?

I tried BierMuncher's "Centennial Blonde" recipe with a few tweaks of my own. The tweaks are mainly due to a desire to use ingredients I had on hand. Here's what I did

7.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
0.75 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (10.0 SRM)
0.50 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM)
0.15 oz Simcoe (55 min)
0.15 oz Simcoe (35 min)
0.15 oz Amarillo (20 min)
0.15 oz Amarillo (5 min)
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-) (Hydrated)


The original recipe called for Centennial and Cascade hops, but I substituted Simcoe and Amarillo, in lesser amounts.

I did 2 weeks in the primary, 3 or 4 weeks in the secondary, and it's now 2 weeks bottled.

The first impression of it is smooth, but then a tartness punches me in the mouth. It finishes clean, but it's hard to pick anything out while I recover from the tart. This is my first use of nottingham, o I'm not really familiar with it's flavour. Could this be an off taste that will go away with conditioning? Or could it be something else (too acidic of hops for a light ale maybe?) Do I just need to wait a little longer? What would cause the tartness?

Notty tastes somewhat tart to me, but I wouldn't describe it as a "punch in the mouth". What fermentation temps did you experience and what was the fermentation like: fast, sluggish, etc. ?

Tartness can be acetaldehyde (green apple), but your long conditionning times would indicate that healthy yeast would've cleaned that up by now.

Maybe it's a water issue ? Have you brewed a lot of light beers with your water ?

Fermentation was around 72, on hot days maybe upwards of 74. I don't have a way right now to control it very well, but it shouldn't have gotten any hotter than that.

There was noticeable activity for 3 or 4 days.

I used 100% RO water for this brew.

I guess it could be described as a green apple flavor, I'd have to have another one to see.

I figured the same, that conditioning it for a long time would clean anything up. I didn't pick up any of these flavors on my taste test when I bottled. Could the priming sugar reactions have caused more acetaldehyde that needs to be cleaned up again?

Thanks for the reply!!!

Thats too high for nottingham,youd have a differnet beer in the 60's.Try a swamp cooler for the first few weeks.
I made the mistake of too high a ferm temp my first brews all i remember was fruity and appely.
They may mellow some but not fully go away but brew some more with that learned and store it away to see how it changes over time.
Give them more time conditioning 2 weeks is barely enough, you may think differnet in about 3 more wks.
It could be cause of you using ro water and your ph. Get some ph strips your ph should be around 5.2 @ mash temp.
Why are you using all r o water doing all grain?

Ah, we don't have AC at our house, I figured our basement was too cold, the package said not to go below 68 so I put it upstairs. Guess I should have looked that up elsewhere! Lesson learned.

I usually don't touch my beers for 4 weeks after bottling, and wait to really dig in until 6 (if I can wait), but I read that blonde ales usually condition faster. I think I'm going to wait at least a month regardless of what kind of beer it is now.

We have really hard water in my city (Calgary, Canada), so when I do lighter beers, I use RO, any midrange beers (IPA's and the like) I use a 50/50 mix of RO and tap water, and 100% tap water with dark beers. This was recommended to me by a guy here that's been brewing for years (and makes some championship beers), so until I start messing with PH, I've stuck to that. It's worked well in the past, but maybe it's time I start learning to play with the PH.

I've got 12 AG brews or so under my belt (and hours lurking on the forums learning), so I'm not super experienced, but it seems I learn 10 new things every time! I always think "Hmm, next time I'll get a beer without a mistake", but it has yet to happen. Oh well, it'll happen eventually.

Thanks for the info!

72F is way too high for Notty. For most non-belgian/french ale yeasts, between 60-68F is usually the sweetspot and lower is always better than higher.

US-05 is more forgiving of higher temperatures, but not by much. You might try that for your next beer. Or ferment at a lower temperature.

RO water without any salt addition doesn't seem like it is optimal for brewing, but my guess is that fermentation is the culprit.

Sounds good, thanks for the info! I'll see if I can find a colder spot. Now that it's getting cooler at night I should be able to keep the temps down. I'm hoping to get a fridge in my garage soon, then I can control the temps better year round.

Would using straight RO water without any additions have a higher chance of affecting the final product than using hard water? I haven't done much research into the water control aspect of brewing. Is it worth it to be messing with that variable as well?

rhoop said:

Sounds good, thanks for the info! I'll see if I can find a colder spot. Now that it's getting cooler at night I should be able to keep the temps down. I'm hoping to get a fridge in my garage soon, then I can control the temps better year round.

Would using straight RO water without any additions have a higher chance of affecting the final product than using hard water? I haven't done much research into the water control aspect of brewing. Is it worth it to be messing with that variable as well?

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I haven't messed with my water at all at this point so I can't answer your question, except to guide you toward the science section of this forum. There's a water primer there that is both easy to understand and implement.

I brew with well water and 90% of my beer are between 8 and 13SRM. I haven't noticed any serious flaw that would point that my water would be unsuitable for these type of beers. On the other hand, every porter or stout (28SRM and up) I have brewed ended up being astringent/harsh after 2-3 months in the bottle, no matter how high the FG was, so I have put them on the backburner for now. It's very hard to get a suitable water report where I live, so I just keep to the beers I know I can have turn out good and don't worry about water. My very uninformed opinion is that you can have so-so brewing water (barring obvious flaws such as chloramines), but if you have great yeast handling/fermentation techniques to counter-balance it, you can still produce very enjoyable beers.