High Alcoholic taste,smell in AG stout

SORRY for writing a book. this is my actual first post on any beer blog.


Made jump to all grain about 8 months ago. in my 4 batch of all grain did a stout and turned out good, did it again and it has a high Alcoholic smell and tast almost like rubbing alcohol. At the time we bottled it the flavor tasted great and I was very pleased.
I put my notes i recoreded from the beer smith. This was the 2nd time i used a yeast starter and in which i used 1000 ml flask on a home made stir plate, the primary was 6 gallon plastic carboy with a hose to bowl with water. in my notes i mentioned that alot of stuff came out the tube and I ended up with a yeast cake in the botton cleaned 2 time one time it had a bit of mold growing.
My brew room is temp controlled and in the carboy i have a sensor to a control and the temp was held below 73 to the core of the carboy.

my og was estimatd on bs as 1.066 and end up 1.065 fg was 1.013 and actual was 1.013 abv shows 6.9%

things I think went wrong and maybe could affect it but maybe some one can help
1. My water temp going into the mash wasn't hot enought started out at 148 and it dropped to 142. mashing called for 90 minutes
2. I used city water with a carbon fitler, I tested the ph after at the end of the mash and it was 5.8 not sure I am testing at the right time.
3. did a iodine test and it seemed ok
4. It took nearly 2 hours to sparge the gallons details below. maybe too long on the grains but it tasted so good with lostsa malt flavors at bottleing
5. the yeast starter hit the wyeast smach pack and then added it to I think 2 cups of wort( bad note taking here) So maybe I over yeast it ,
6. I used a new plate wort chiller and you will see that i ran it too fast and it stat in the carboy from about 110 deg to 70 for a bout 1hour. so maybe it hurt me here.
Everything else on the bottling and storing I did the same as I have successfully done on 25 other brews .





Here are some of the brew basics.
toasted the barley flakes and wheat flakes 10 minutes at 300 deg.
preheat 3 gallons in small pot to boil for mash tun pre heat for 21 minutes
heated 5 gallon to 165
put 1 gallon in the bottom then added the grains, 3.75 gallons of water(15 qtrs)
checked temp at 7 minuts was only 148.
water temp got 165 and shut off right away better to go hotter and cool down.
temp outside was 80 inside 80.
at 50 minutes temp was 142 stir a little left alone
Note not sure why the temp drop. Shoud have starte out a litte hotter.
preheated teh hlt take with hot tap water for about 20 minutes. est.
added water at 170
1st runnings 2 cups clear.
temp at middle 148 during sparge.
ph was 5.8 at mash??
first 1/2 ran at 1.5 galons or about 3 gph. sped up at this point at 1 hours we had 2 3/4 gallon
took to 3 3/4 or 6.75 gallons tool from 9:50 to 11:30 1 hour 40 minutes really moved it up the last 1/2 hour.
at the end was about 1.015 . temp in mash was 1.048
started boil added hops
used the new wort chiller worked but only chilled t 110 deg. took about another 2 -3 hours to tool once in the carboy. should have ran slower. disappointed.
Gonna pitch the yeast in the am.
pitched yeast in am. and by night nice head by day 2 was really active bubbling alot
alot of blow off with about 1/4 yeast cake on the bottom. lost a lot out the top.
empty the water again, with more yeast in bottom and a little mold growing in the water hopefully I got it in time.
bubbling about 1 every second til day 11/12.
transferred to secondard 7-1-12 68 deg 1.012 which equals a 1.013 well within fg
bottling day 7/11/12 10 day in secondary 4 oz sugar 2 cups water

Hmmm. I'm wondering what happened. I didn't see it in there, but what was the fermentation temperature of the beer?

How's your sanitation? Maybe a little acetobacter infection happened? That you got mold growing in the blowoff container tells me there's a probability of something else that could have been going on, but that's the OCD part of me.

Fusel alcohols are fermentation issues and don't really have anything to do with your mash.

How do you know your fermenter didn't get above 73?

I thought I saw cidery component in the title?

Sorry, I commented on the wrong thread.

Bill-I do all my brewing in a 12 x 12 room where I've added a sink, a/c unit (to control it during the summer) . Unless it got hot during the primary fermenation.

This is the first time I used a yeast starter could that have cause higher temps during fermantion. Also after 6 weeks the beer is farily flat compare to the all grain I did before. The only 2 componets I did different were the plate chiller that I ran a litel to fast and took longer to cool and the yeast starter.

As for cleaning I am very good with that except the issue I had with the blow off.

Would it be normal to not taste fusal alcohols when you bottle then after they condiiton they come out.

thanks Dale

qtd3612 said:

Unless it got hot during the primary fermenation.

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The fact that you haven't stated your fermentation temperature leads me to believe that it was not measured (i.e. controlled). Going forward watch your fermentation temp as this is the leading cause of fusels. It has nothing to do with your starter, your mash, your chiller, etc.