hopandgator
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- Jan 11, 2007
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Dear Brewers-
I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I really need some help, and I'm hoping that someone on this forum might have some good advice. I've been brewing for a couple years, and have made a number of good beers of all different styles. For the first year and a half or so that I brewed, I was consistently happy with my results. I have made a number of all-grain brews, and gotten reasonable extractions and tasty beer.
But, over about the last five months, every brew I have attempted has been middling to awful. I'm wondering if someone has some advice about what might have gone wrong.
Let me give you some details about my brew setup/situation. I suppose there could be a number of factors that could be screwing me up, but I don't know which, so I think I'd better just be as detailed as possible.
In the past, I was doing my mashes in a rectangular picnic cooler, with a manifold in the bottom made of PVC piping. I had three parallel pipes in the bottom with thin slits cut in them, and a plastic valve outside the cooler for draining. I would usually mash for one hour at 152 degrees, then spend about an hour sparging by just pouring the 170 degree water over the grain bed with a pitcher. This method was getting me reasonable extractions (at least 70%), although I thought I could do better. I wanted to get up toward 80% efficiency, so I could try to make some stronger, more full-bodied beers. Anyway, like I said, the beer was normally pretty solid. I was doing my primary fermentation in a plastic bucket, and then racking to a glass carboy for secondary, and then bottling. All of that I hope sounds reasonably standard.
This past summer I moved into a new house. I decided to build a mash tun out of a cylindrical cooler, hearing that this could give slightly better extraction efficiency, and instead of a manifold I installed a Phils Phalse bottom, reading that this encourages the most uniform possible flow through the grain bed. Also, hearing that fermenting multiple times in my same plastic bucket could *possibly* lead to off-flavors in the long run, I started doing my primary and secondary in different carboys. I really went overkill in also building a sparger that spins over the grain bed and sprays it completely equally. Lastly, I purchased a powder that, when added to the mash, promises to adjust the pH to exactly 5.4, making pH issues not a worry.
However, all of these changes, which I hoped would be subtle improvements, have just led to worse beer. For one thing, my extractions have been terrible. Using 12 pounds of grain, I'm often getting 6 gallons of wort at like 1.035. For another, my beer justs tastes funky - kind of like chlorine. I suspect that the second problem may be a reflection of the first - thin beer probably makes it easier to taste off-flavors, but I don't know. But in sum, the beer tastes weak and barely drinkable.
Can ANYONE tell me something obvious that I seem to be overlooking here? I just don't know why my extractions have gotten so bad when my beer used to be good. I always have my grain crushed at the brew store and I insure it's a good crush. I always check with iodine to be sure that conversion is complete, and just to be sure I have started mashing for an extra half hour (to a total of 1.5 hours). I take at least an hour to sparge, with my water always at 170 degrees, so I am draining very slowly. I always use a fresh vial of White Labs yeast. Obviously, I always am extremely careful about sanitation (I use Iodophor, and I rinse equipment with water that has been boiled for 5 minutes). I cool with a copper coil wort chiller that is very efficient and usually gets the temperature down in about 30 minutes, and I always pitch my yeast at 75 degrees.
Could it be the water in my new house? Could something just have gone wrong with my sanitation several straight times to produce the off-flavors? Is the cylindrical cooler or new sparging system somehow hurting more than it's helping? Should I go back to primary fermentation in the plastic bucket rather than the carboy?
I should mention that I was using the tap water at my old residence, and where I live now is only about 4 miles away, so I wouldn't think that the water difference would be tremendous.
Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated. Last year I was honestly loving homebrewing and taking every opportunity to work on my beer, but now I'm just getting exasperated and nothing I try seems to help my beer. I've been asking people at brew shops and reading books from the library, and nothing seems to help. I just don't know what's different now that is screwing things up.
Thanks so much to anyone who reads all of this and can offer some help.
Martin
I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I really need some help, and I'm hoping that someone on this forum might have some good advice. I've been brewing for a couple years, and have made a number of good beers of all different styles. For the first year and a half or so that I brewed, I was consistently happy with my results. I have made a number of all-grain brews, and gotten reasonable extractions and tasty beer.
But, over about the last five months, every brew I have attempted has been middling to awful. I'm wondering if someone has some advice about what might have gone wrong.
Let me give you some details about my brew setup/situation. I suppose there could be a number of factors that could be screwing me up, but I don't know which, so I think I'd better just be as detailed as possible.
In the past, I was doing my mashes in a rectangular picnic cooler, with a manifold in the bottom made of PVC piping. I had three parallel pipes in the bottom with thin slits cut in them, and a plastic valve outside the cooler for draining. I would usually mash for one hour at 152 degrees, then spend about an hour sparging by just pouring the 170 degree water over the grain bed with a pitcher. This method was getting me reasonable extractions (at least 70%), although I thought I could do better. I wanted to get up toward 80% efficiency, so I could try to make some stronger, more full-bodied beers. Anyway, like I said, the beer was normally pretty solid. I was doing my primary fermentation in a plastic bucket, and then racking to a glass carboy for secondary, and then bottling. All of that I hope sounds reasonably standard.
This past summer I moved into a new house. I decided to build a mash tun out of a cylindrical cooler, hearing that this could give slightly better extraction efficiency, and instead of a manifold I installed a Phils Phalse bottom, reading that this encourages the most uniform possible flow through the grain bed. Also, hearing that fermenting multiple times in my same plastic bucket could *possibly* lead to off-flavors in the long run, I started doing my primary and secondary in different carboys. I really went overkill in also building a sparger that spins over the grain bed and sprays it completely equally. Lastly, I purchased a powder that, when added to the mash, promises to adjust the pH to exactly 5.4, making pH issues not a worry.
However, all of these changes, which I hoped would be subtle improvements, have just led to worse beer. For one thing, my extractions have been terrible. Using 12 pounds of grain, I'm often getting 6 gallons of wort at like 1.035. For another, my beer justs tastes funky - kind of like chlorine. I suspect that the second problem may be a reflection of the first - thin beer probably makes it easier to taste off-flavors, but I don't know. But in sum, the beer tastes weak and barely drinkable.
Can ANYONE tell me something obvious that I seem to be overlooking here? I just don't know why my extractions have gotten so bad when my beer used to be good. I always have my grain crushed at the brew store and I insure it's a good crush. I always check with iodine to be sure that conversion is complete, and just to be sure I have started mashing for an extra half hour (to a total of 1.5 hours). I take at least an hour to sparge, with my water always at 170 degrees, so I am draining very slowly. I always use a fresh vial of White Labs yeast. Obviously, I always am extremely careful about sanitation (I use Iodophor, and I rinse equipment with water that has been boiled for 5 minutes). I cool with a copper coil wort chiller that is very efficient and usually gets the temperature down in about 30 minutes, and I always pitch my yeast at 75 degrees.
Could it be the water in my new house? Could something just have gone wrong with my sanitation several straight times to produce the off-flavors? Is the cylindrical cooler or new sparging system somehow hurting more than it's helping? Should I go back to primary fermentation in the plastic bucket rather than the carboy?
I should mention that I was using the tap water at my old residence, and where I live now is only about 4 miles away, so I wouldn't think that the water difference would be tremendous.
Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated. Last year I was honestly loving homebrewing and taking every opportunity to work on my beer, but now I'm just getting exasperated and nothing I try seems to help my beer. I've been asking people at brew shops and reading books from the library, and nothing seems to help. I just don't know what's different now that is screwing things up.
Thanks so much to anyone who reads all of this and can offer some help.
Martin