tdjb
Active Member
I've been searching around and haven't found anything really that I think can help me with my issue. Last week was probably my 8 or 9th all grain batch but during this time I've run into an issue that is starting to bother me. Every couple of batches turn out lacking "backbone", they taste like bitter water (water + hops) kind of. On all of my beers I've used known good recipes (EdWort's pale ale, Jamil's american brown, etc), same process, same equipment. On most of these (aside from one) I've at least hit my target of 70% eff. and many times go a bit over. The OG and FG are almost always within a few points of each other (nothing drastic to cause these issues).
So my question is, what could be causing this? The only thing I can think of is mash temp or fermentation temp. I typically use two thermometers and am pretty good about keeping my mash temps where the recipe calls for (I use a 10 gal. cooler). For fermentation I don't have anything to control that but I do monitor the room the beer ferments in to make sure nothing gets out of hand (70+ or under 60).
At first I thought it might be my water but I would think all of my beers would have come out bad. I've actually brewed EdWort's pale ale twice, the first time (my first brew ever) it turned out great, the second time (about 3 months later) it just didn't have any backbone to it. It's really just frustrating because I hit all my numbers and everything tastes great going into the fermenter but I never know what I'm going to get when I open a bottle. Are there any tests/steps I can do in the future to make 100% I'm getting "good" beer into the bottle?
Just as an FYI I do a double batch sparge and use a CFC chiller to get the wort down to temp pretty quickly if that matters.
So my question is, what could be causing this? The only thing I can think of is mash temp or fermentation temp. I typically use two thermometers and am pretty good about keeping my mash temps where the recipe calls for (I use a 10 gal. cooler). For fermentation I don't have anything to control that but I do monitor the room the beer ferments in to make sure nothing gets out of hand (70+ or under 60).
At first I thought it might be my water but I would think all of my beers would have come out bad. I've actually brewed EdWort's pale ale twice, the first time (my first brew ever) it turned out great, the second time (about 3 months later) it just didn't have any backbone to it. It's really just frustrating because I hit all my numbers and everything tastes great going into the fermenter but I never know what I'm going to get when I open a bottle. Are there any tests/steps I can do in the future to make 100% I'm getting "good" beer into the bottle?
Just as an FYI I do a double batch sparge and use a CFC chiller to get the wort down to temp pretty quickly if that matters.