Nottingham and Tartness

I have had two beers, that I used nottingham on..both were brown ales with lots of roasted or caramel malts, and both fermented between 62 and 64 degrees. They have a very cloying tartness that I notice, but some folks love it and the beers are very dry. I would like to avoid this tartness.

I just made a cream ale with nottingham, and I let the fermentation get to 69 degrees at it's peak, you can't hide off flavors in a cream ale, and there is no sign of tartness or off flavors at all.

I am wondering if anybody else has noticed this with nottingham, and if there is a way I can avoid it? My thinking is to bring it up near 70 degrees towards the end of fermentation....or maybe it is a dark/roasted malt issue with Nottingham?


I did email a question regarding this tartness to danstar today and I will post the answer on this thread if I get one.

Not sure.

... or maybe a dark grain problem when combined with your water....

I had a friend in VA (HBT's "Dude") who claimed that he absolutely could not brew dark beers using his tap water because they always had off flavors.

Walker said:

... or maybe a dark grain problem when combined with your water....

I had a friend in VA (HBT's "Dude") who claimed that he absolutely could not brew dark beers using his tap water because they always had off flavors.

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I have brewed great stouts with US-05 before with my water, with no tartness. But I do think you may be on to something. I have now began filtering my water, so maybe it is a dark grain, and water issue. A quick online search showed that other folks also get a tartness sometimes from notty.

I am concerned, because I plan on using notty for my Arrogant Bastard clone tomorow and I don't want tart...although the hops would probably mask it.

I suspect water issues as well, I cannot brew any light colored or hoppy beers with my tap water, a malty red or stout is great with it, but for most other beers I mix RO with tap. I ferment most of my Notty beers at 60 degrees and have no tartness at all, they come out very clean.
Your water may be more suited to the lighter beers where mine is the opposite, get a water analysis done so you know for sure and adjust with salts or RO to correct for the beer being brewed

I'm no chemical expert, but I'm almost certain dark grains will make your beer more acidic. I've only begun reading on the subject of water chemistry, but I think adding the right levels of the relevant minerals helps to curb those effects. Also, you mentioned your beers turned out pretty dry. It's my experience that carbonic acids that come from CO2 carbonation tend to stick out more when the beer is particularly dry. So that may be contributing on top of the dark grains to a general tartness. If these were all grain beers, try mashing a couple of degrees hotter to get a bit more residual sugars which will mask the carbonic tartness a bit better.

I am going to mash my Arrogant Bastard at 154 and hope for the best! I am also hoping that the addition of charcoal filtered water and the usage of my fancy new wort chiller, make my latest brews my best yet.

I am going to have to send in a sample of water for analysis as I can't get my hands on a water report for some reason.

If Notty takes your final gravity down pretty low (like 1.080 or below), then my experience is that it will be dry tasting with tartness (same beer/wort using a different, less attenuating yeast finishing at 1.011 left me a rounded, fuller flavor with no hint of tartness). If you are not able to use 2 different yeasts on the same wort like I do, then another way to test and see if it is a water/dark grain issue or Notty would be to mash your next beer at a higher temp (like 158-ish degrees) and do a mash-out after 60 minutes to lock in dextrins and unfermentables. Then rack the beer off the yeast after not more than 10 days in primary and cold crash. This would likely prevent Notty from fully attenuating the beer and keep your final gravity above 1.010. If the tartness is gone, then Notty is likely imparting the tartness thru its well-known ability to fully attenuate; if it is still there, then the water/dark malt issue prolly deserves a closer look.

I have an answer for you that is likely the cure for your issue - this happened to me with notty, and once with US-05.

Whenever I ferment a dry ale using either of these yeasts I often get a tartness that is difficult to describe. Lo and behold, the tartness goes away completely after about 10 weeks in the bottle and I am left with an awesome beer.

I dont know why, but this yeast appears to leave behind detectable tartness that is more noticible when there is not as many dextrins (or excessive hops) to mask it.

Seriously, give it a few more weeks and you might be suprised. Kind of sucks to bottle condition that long though.

jjones17 said:

I have an answer for you that is likely the cure for your issue - this happened to me with notty, and once with US-05.

Whenever I ferment a dry ale using either of these yeasts I often get a tartness that is difficult to describe. Lo and behold, the tartness goes away completely after about 10 weeks in the bottle and I am left with an awesome beer.

I dont know why, but this yeast appears to leave behind detectable tartness that is more noticible when there is not as many dextrins (or excessive hops) to mask it.

Seriously, give it a few more weeks and you might be suprised. Kind of sucks to bottle condition that long though.

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In homebrewing, just like most things in life, time heals everything. Well, time hurts most IPA's!

permo said:

In homebrewing, just like most things in life, time heals everything. Well, time hurts most IPA's!

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Yeah true. I have only made 1 IPA that actually got better with time. It had a crapload of aroma hops though.

jjones17 said:

I have an answer for you that is likely the cure for your issue - this happened to me with notty, and once with US-05.

Whenever I ferment a dry ale using either of these yeasts I often get a tartness that is difficult to describe. Lo and behold, the tartness goes away completely after about 10 weeks in the bottle and I am left with an awesome beer.

I dont know why, but this yeast appears to leave behind detectable tartness that is more noticible when there is not as many dextrins (or excessive hops) to mask it.

Seriously, give it a few more weeks and you might be suprised. Kind of sucks to bottle condition that long though.

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Same experience here... Its madening how good the beer gets once you have drunk most of it : / I had given up on Notty all together as I did two brews (a hoppy irish red and a toucan dark gingered ale) and they both came out with this fuzzy thing happening on my palate and a quite unpleasant tartness.

The red went from 1.042 to 1.012. Bottled mid Feb and its really peaking now. Fermented at 17C ambient.
The dark ale I missed an OG on but it finished at 1.022 and I'd given up as it was very strong tasting ( I think becaue of ferment temp of 21 C ambient) I will crack a bottle tonight and see if its improved as much as the red.

I was starting to think it was my temps (didn't realize how much higher than ambient fermentation was) but if your at 62F that's pretty close to bottom end of this yeast.

Could water be the culprit? Or perhaps handling? Do you rehydrate jones? I havn't rehydrated the Notty in either attempt.

Any other thoughts?

I personally do rehydrate mine or use a yeast cake.

I have just heard back from Danstar. Rob Moline, from danstar is going to give me a phonecall this afternoon and we are going to discuss Nottingham! How cool is that?!!

Let us know what he says. I'm quite curious myself. I've experienced a similar tartness with Wyeast 1098. I'm guessing the problem you had with nottingham is probably similar.

I just got off of the phone with Rob from Danstar. He is almost certain that leaving the beer on a Nottingham yeast cake for more than two weeks is causing this flavor. He thinks it is the early onset of autolysis and suggests either racking or bottling off of the primary yeast cake, when using nottingham, at the two week mark. He was a very experienced brewer and homebrewer and stated that this is somewhat unique to nottingham, prone to autolysis. Very odd and I am unsure if I agree.

I call BS. The Red ale I used it for was in primary for 6 days, then racked to secondary. Plus, would autolysis condition out?

If it's a dry powdery taste that sucks the moisture off of your tongue then look at my thread. I'm going through everything in the last two batches I did that came out with the exact problem. One finished really dry, the other didn't. Different water, different malts, different hops. Different mash temps. Different packs of Nottingham Yeast.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ipa-brewed-nottingham-tastes-powdery-funky-177826/

hmm powdery doesn't sound right to me. More of a fuzzy thing up front and then a tartness... not a pleasant one.

Finnagann said:

hmm powdery doesn't sound right to me. More of a fuzzy thing up front and then a tartness... not a pleasant one.

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Fuzzy kind of described it and tartness could be what I described as water being sucked off my tongue and back of my throat. I have a high tolerance tastes like sour and tart from eating lemons and limes.

Jdecarol said:

Fuzzy kind of described it and tartness could be what I described as water being sucked off my tongue and back of my throat. I have a high tolerance tastes like sour and tart from eating lemons and limes.

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Could well be the same, these things are hard to describe . Definetly not the puckering give me more sour/tart of citrous. It might be a tad astringent... and is more of just a bad flavour.

I think that the fuzzy thing may have had to do with yeast in suspension, I believe it did go away fairly quickly.... 1-2 weeks after bottling iirc. But the tart stayed for about 10 weeks or so.

Finnagann said:

Could well be the same, these things are hard to describe . Definetly not the puckering give me more sour/tart of citrous. It might be a tad astringent... and is more of just a bad flavour.

I think that the fuzzy thing may have had to do with yeast in suspension, I believe it did go away fairly quickly.... 1-2 weeks after bottling iirc. But the tart stayed for about 10 weeks or so.

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I'm just glad to find something that kind of explains what I'm tasting. I just hope I don't lose too much aroma in the IPA waiting for it to go away. After searching through I see alot of mention about tartness. I'm wondering if it's just a chemical being produced by the nottingham that only a few people are sensitive too in the amounts it being produced at. Kind of like how certain people don't mind Habanero peppers and others think Ploblanos are hot.

For the fuzzy, is that two weeks after bottling or two weeks sitting in the fridge? I'm going to pop a few more in the fridge at the end of the week. Drink one in two days and let the other sit for a week and then another for two weeks to see if the longer chill drops more yeast out into the bottle bottom.