digdan

Recipes 

Some of my beer will taste harsh, and through reading I found this could be due to tannins. I can do an extract version of the recipe with not harshness in the flavor profile, but once I try the AG version I get some unwanted harsh flavors.

I looked at other aspects of tannins, such as oversparging, but I'm very sure I do not oversparge, since I only sparge a couple gallons after the mash @ 168 degrees.

I have my gap set to 0.050" and its a two-roller crankenstien. Cracking the grain does cause some flour, and it is unavoidable. Should I make a sieve to seperate the flour from the solid grist? Or am I missing something major here(did I buy 50lbs of bad grain?)

Mudd

Recipes 

Don't the tannins come from crushed/torn husks??
My mill is set at 0.040; so I don't think that that is your problem .

PH problems would be my second concern.

Baron von BeeGee

Recipes 

What Mudd said...tannins come from the husks and are a function of time, temperature, and pH.

What are the chances that you're getting some husks into your wort during lautering and perhaps boiling them? Also, are you sure you're tasting a tannin astringency?

digdan

Recipes 

I'm not sure. It could be the taste of yeast autolysis

Mudd

Recipes 

Oh oh,
Big words, I haven't tasted yeasty whatever, so I'll drop out!!

But; if you have yeast autowhatever in AG, wouldn't you get it w/extract also??

Baron von BeeGee

Recipes 

I have a hard time describing flavors myself, even when I'm looking at the online guides.

However, if it is autolysis I would think that wouldn't be dependent on AG vs extract. If the off-flavor is consistently in your AG brews and not your extract brews then it does sound like a process or ingredient problem.

- Are you recirculating a few quarts of mash before running off, and is your runoff clear, particularly of solid particles?
- How does your grain taste if you crunch a kernel or two?

david_42

Recipes 

Tannins come from the husks. Leaching is caused by a combination of temperature and high pH. You might consider using something like pH5.2 in the sparge water. It worked for me.

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