Grass taste from 0 hop addition?

I've recently moved and my current setup makes it a little more complicated to dry hop. To compensate, on my house pale ale I did a flame out addition of 2 oz of cascade. I let the wort cool for 30 minutes to about 65, then whirlpooled and let set for another 30, then syphoned into the fermenter. Fast forward to kegging after 3.5 weeks in the fermenter and I got grass beer. I'm trying to understand if either this happened from too much late hopping or improper syphoning and pulling too many hops/hop matter into the fermenter. Normally I dry hop this recipe with 1 oz of cascade and it comes out money.

Were they wet hops? or homegrown hops?

I had a very similar situation this summer. Brewed a 10 gallon batch of a Pale Ale which I brewed twice before, and wanted to load up the finishing hops instead of dry-hoping. I let it stand for 15 minutes after flame-out, before cooling & whirlpooling.

1 oz Columbus (60 min)
1.5 oz Amarillo (20 min)
2 oz Cascade (8 min)
2 oz Casacde (2 min)
2 oz Cascade (0 min)
2 oz Nugget (0 min)

All the cascade & nugget where homegrown hops from 2011, and vacuum packed.

The 1st time I used this recipe, it had dry-hops as well. All hops 2011 batch. It was a really nice beer. No defects.

The 2nd time, I used a 2010 bag for the dry-hops, and had a badly grassy beer. Barely drinkable. I also had some other brewday issues, which contributed to a bad beer. So I suspected that older bag of homegrown hops might have been bad...

This last time, I used all 2011 hops and got rid of the dry-hop. I also let the 0-min addition steep for 15 mins, before whirlpool & cooling. This batch was more drinkable, but again with the grassy flavors.

I know that improperly dried or young homegrown hops can cause grassy flavors, but that 1st batch came out so well! However, I also read somewhere that there is such a thing as 'too many' late-boil hops... ?..

I'm not sure what caused it, but thouht I'd share and let you know, you're not alone.

Would also like to hear others thoughts on it...
--LexusChris

Buna_Bere said:

Were they wet hops? or homegrown hops?

Click to expand...

No, purchased pellets

I do massive flameout additions and sometimes even add a whirlpool addition and have never had these results. I'd say I've done this on nearly 20 batches if that helps

Yeah. I'm wondering if I either got some weird hops or syphoned incorrectly. Oh well, I have an official lawnmower cream ale at my house just in time for fall.