1st all grain brew has watered down results

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zenyl

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Fairly new to brewing, been lurking quite a while - I was hoping to get some expert advice on how to improve my all-grain homebrew. I brewed a small batch of pale ale. It has a nice aroma, good initial taste, but the finish is very bland and watered down. So much so it's a bit disappointing. I was hoping for some backbone behind the hop flavor but there's just a watery tasteless void! I mashed all the ingredients at 152F (1.25qt/lb) for 75 minutes and did a 'teabag' sparge in 168F water. I stirred the mash inside the bag gently while it was submerged in sparge too - figured this would help efficiency. 60 minute boil adding 6 grams of hops at 20, 15, 10, 8, 1 minute (3 grams each of Mt Hood and Columbus). Immersion chiller cooled the wort in 15 minutes. I used US-05 rehydrated - both yeast and wort 68F when i pitched the yeast. I fermented at 62F in a homemade swamp cooler for 18 days (krausen dropped after 6) - then removed it from the swamp to room temps (~68F) for another 5 days as it dry hopped. Racked on top of corn sugar shooting for 2.8 volumes CO2, 4 weeks in the bottle at 72F. Refrigerated 37F for 2 weeks. Good head, carbonation, aroma. The hop flavor is good. There's just no real beer flavor here, it's tough to explain. It just tastes watered down after the initial taste on the tongue.

tl;dr beer has a bland watered-down finish...help!

2 2/3 gallon boil
carbon-filtered tap water
OG 1.066 (efficiency was higher than expected)
FG 1.014
11 SRM
35 IBU

recipe:
3.75 lb 2-Row
4.0 oz Caramunich I
4.0 oz Melanoiden Malt
4.0 oz Victory Malt
2.0 oz Carafoam
2.0 oz Caramel 80L

any advice? recipe need improved? mashed for too long/too low temp? fermented too cool? is this a common result of the hopbursting method?
 
Wow that's a tough one man, everything looks pretty good to me. I wonder if it could be a combination of a bunch of little things:
1. Old/bad grains
2. A not perfect recipe
3. A little low of a mash temp
4. A little high carbonation
5. A little too cold of a serving temp

I know, I'm grasping at straws here, but besides not knowing off the top of my head what a good pale ale recipe should look like I'm afraid this is all I can think of.

I'll have to keep checking back. I'd be curious if you find the problem what it is.

Good luck!
 
I'm not sure how much of a difference this makes (maybe someone else can comment) but did you have the grains milled? They may not have done it if you didn't ask...
 
Check your thermometer, with low mash temps ya get a light body almost watered down mouth feel...At 152 ya should have had a medium body beer with pleanty of mouth feel....Thats at least what i was told, wouldnt hurt to at least check your thermometer though...
 
The thought of not milling grains, or badly milled grains, occurred to me as well. But then I noticed his OG of 1.066. No way he would have got that with non-milled grains.

That's a good point on the thermometer. Check it with boiling water and ice water and see if it is off. A medium bodied/malty beer is more like 153 to 156. So if you aimed for 152 but your thermometer is off and you got more like 149 then that will play a big part.

Another thought, do you check the mash temp at least a few times throughout your mash and when you do are you stirring it well? Which will also help keep the temp uniform throughout the mash. I've had it happen where I will first add the grains and hit my temp only to find that 10 minutes later it dropped 5 degrees.
 
The OP said it is a small batch, which makes sense looking at the recipe. So I'm assuming there was no water added after the boil. If so, that's probably your problem! LOL
 
Thanks for the replies. I'll check my thermometer and make sure it's accurate. I checked the mash temperature 3 times and gave a little stir and the temp was 152 the entire time. I didn't top off any water because it was a small batch. The sparge water got me up to full volume prior to the boil. On a prior partial mash i took a reading before adding any extract and my efficiency was in the mid 60s but this time I got about 80. I figured it was due to stirring the mash up while it was in the sparge water (didn't do that on prior batches). I crush my own grains, all but the 80L needed to be crushed.

For starters I think I'll try for a higher mash temp next time and use a different thermometer
 
I doubt it's the mash temp unless the thermometer is off. 152 is a fine mash temp for a pale ale any higher should cause a cloying pale ale IMO.
 
I thought 152 would be okay too. Can water chemistry cause this type of problem?

being new to brewing and your own brewing process can cause this. i consider myself to be a new brewer, 1yr old, and my early beers had off flavors, fusel alcohols, watery, cloudy, no hop flavor, sour and what not to very good beer that i'm proud of today. we don't buy very much beer at the store anymore because we prefer our own beer.
in that yrs time i've gotten fermentation temperature control, an pure O2 delivery system, a much better quality brew sculpture, brewing software, a better understanding of my system and of brewing in general. my education continues and so will yours if you keep brewing.
 
I'm not totally sure of the recipe. You didn't start adding hops till 20 out. O wonder if what you are calling watery malt base isn't more a lack of bitterness in the base taste. 30 ibu only added in the last 20 minutes would give you a thinner taste, I think.
 
tektonjp said:
I'm not totally sure of the recipe. You didn't start adding hops till 20 out. O wonder if what you are calling watery malt base isn't more a lack of bitterness in the base taste. 30 ibu only added in the last 20 minutes would give you a thinner taste, I think.

I questioned this as well however with alway hoping at 60 min myself I wasn't sure wait to expect omitting the buttering addition so I didn't say anything. But this should be considered maybe someone that has omitted the bittering addition can chime in.

Also because malt generally takes longer to develop fully maybe age will help the malt come forward more. This is an pale ale that should allow the hops to shine with a nice malt backbone but without a 60min hop addition maybe the lack of malt character is accentuated if that makes sense.

Also to the OP yes I think water could play a factor it has in my malt forward beers before.
 
I questioned this as well however with alway hoping at 60 min myself I wasn't sure wait to expect omitting the buttering addition so I didn't say anything. But this should be considered maybe someone that has omitted the bittering addition can chime in.

Also because malt generally takes longer to develop fully maybe age will help the malt come forward more. This is an pale ale that should allow the hops to shine with a nice malt backbone but without a 60min hop addition maybe the lack of malt character is accentuated if that makes sense.

Also to the OP yes I think water could play a factor it has in my malt forward beers before.

My past brews have included a 60 minute addition and don't suffer the same problem so I considered this as well. My intention was to brew a hoppy beer that wasn't overly bitter - apparently hopbursting can achieve this result. Someone else I spoke to suggested I should've had a 30 or 25 minute addition in there.

I have 4 bottles left at room temps, I'll see how they taste in a month or so - maybe they'll improve with age.
 
Are you sure of your gravity readings? 1.066 down to 1.014 is almost 7% alcohol with pretty normal attenuation. This along with your malt bill should be anything but watery. Did you add water at some point? At exactly what point did you take your OG reading and what did you use? Without accurate numbers no one can diagnose anything, and like I said, those numbers look fine and shouldn't be watery at all...
 
I would postulate that with such a small grain bill and a 75 min mash with a relatively low temp. You might have converted more fermentible sugars then you intended, ending with a beer dryer / less body then you intended. Temp accuracy can be difficult with out a very good themometer. You might want to bump you mash tmep up to 156* to see if that imporves the "watery taste."
 
Are you sure of your gravity readings? 1.066 down to 1.014 is almost 7% alcohol with pretty normal attenuation. This along with your malt bill should be anything but watery. Did you add water at some point? At exactly what point did you take your OG reading and what did you use? Without accurate numbers no one can diagnose anything, and like I said, those numbers look fine and shouldn't be watery at all...

I get my OG sample between cooling the wort and transferring it to the fermenter. I use a standard glass test tube and hydrometer. I took FG from a sample siphoned from the fermenter prior to racking to the bottling bucket. The only time I added anything was the corn sugar solution before bottling. According to my notes my bottling volume was ~1.8 gallons and I used 2 cups water and 55 grams of corn sugar. Is 2 cups too much for this volume?
 
I've never brewed such a small batch; my comments were just based on the gravity reading seeming pretty normal. 2 cups of water does seem a bit much to me given the small batch size, but I don't think it would be enough to make it taste watery. Go with just enough water to dissolve your sugar next time. Maybe a 2 to 1 ratio should do. As for your original problem, I still suspect inaccurate gravity readings. Did you adjust for temerature? How long was your boil and with what hop schedule?
 
Did the grain sit for a while after you crushed it

I always have my grain sit for about a 5 days to a week crushed before I use it and have not run into any watery problems...

As for the hops at the 20/30 minute marker, that means they were utilized less and more so for a hop flavor then bitterness...
The malt would create a sweet taste and the fact that there were no bittering hops (at the 60 minute marker) you should count yourself lucky that the wort was watery and not overly sweet ;)
 
You have no bittering addition at all so right off the bat you don't have any bitterness in the beer. This accounts for depth in the beer.

You also mashed at 152 which produces a pretty high fermentable wort. So now you have a beer with no bitterness, and low levels of residual maltiness. This is what is accounting for your watered down taste.

To make a beer with body you would've needed to mash higher(closer to 160) and tried to halt the Fermentation around 1.020. Also just because you don't want a bitter beer doesn't mean you shouldn't add a bittering addition. There are tons of hop strains you can add that would only increase the depth and complexity of the beer without causing it to be bitter.

Try a recipe kit from a local shop or online dealer and follow the instructions. I think you'll have much better results.
 
With no bittering, a sacch.rest @152 should produce a very malty sweet beer. 152 is commonly considered about the midway point in the sacch range, balancing between body and fermentability. I doubt that this is the problem, would look elsewhere.
 
With no bittering, a sacch.rest @152 should produce a very malty sweet beer. 152 is commonly considered about the midway point in the sacch range, balancing between body and fermentability. I doubt that this is the problem, would look elsewhere.

that is if his thermometer is actually correctly reading 152*
 
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