bad results with malty beers, great results with hoppy beers

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liebertron

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I have brewed many malty beers and many hoppy beers. Pale ales, scotch ales, IPAs, black IPAs, porters, on and on.

I seem to get consistently good results with hoppy ales but tend to get consistently mediocre results with malty beers.

What is the deal... I more or less do the same thing per batch in regards to technique (extract brewing)... are these styles harder to get good results with?
 
What exactly is the nature of your "bad result"? It's possible that you may have a problem with all of your beers that the hops are masking when you use enough of them. Without knowing exactly what's off about your beers, all I can give is the standard advice:

- Thoroughly clean and sanitize anything that touches the wort post-boil
- Pitch enough healthy yeast
- Keep your fermentation temps under control
 
I agree. We need more information than just "bad" of "great". Seems to me that all of your beers probably have the same issue but it is just being covered by lupulin in the "hoppy" beers.

If you can't describe it, I'd suggest entering in into competitions. Not to win ribbons, obviously, but to get good feed back on what you can do better next time. That's a HUGE part of judging, constructive criticisms.
 
An often overlooked detail is your water profile.
Do you filter your water?
 
A couple things come to mind. 1) Perhaps the hops are covering up off-flavors in the beer? 2) If your water is high in sulfate the malty beers aren't going to taste super great, but the hoppy ones might.
 
A couple things come to mind. 1) Perhaps the hops are covering up off-flavors in the beer? 2) If your water is high in sulfate the malty beers aren't going to taste super great, but the hoppy ones might.

I think this holds a lot of truth, as I've noticed a similar trend in many brewing friends.
It's easy to mask a mediocre malt profile with lots of hops. My intention isnt to rag on the IPA/hop heavy crowd, however, I think that small mistakes show up more readily in a beer that has a malt forward profile.
That being said some things to look into (mind you this is a stab in the dark as I know nothing about your process) which helped my malty beers a lot were increased attention to yeast pitching rates and resting at the end of fermentation. I found that a combo of a 3-4* temp increase after primary fermentation was slowing (usually 4-5 days after pitching) with a closer attention to pitch rates really brought about a jump in my malty beverages. Generally speaking these are also good practices for general brewing but being extra cautious when taking on less hop forward recipes I think is essential.
 
I use the tap water here in Alexandria VA. It is pretty good water right from the tap, at least taste wise. I always do full 7 gallons boils down to 5 gallons in the hopes of boiling off the chlorine and nasties. Takes me exactly 60 minutes at a full boil with just a skim of water at the bottom after I siphon the wort out and leave the trub behind.

I honestly am not sure about my pitch rate. My next batch will be the first time I use a yeast starter and will also be the first time I do proper aeration with one of those drill attachments. Ive been using WYEAST but am switching to WPL after an awesome batch with it... probably just luck of the draw, but whatev.

Ferment temperatures is probably my weak point. I dont have much room in my duplex and leave my fermentation in the basement. It stays around 62-63 degrees but is constant. I do gravity readings and my gravities always end up being reached, I am not too worried about the yeast slowing down... though my porter that I just brewed had awesome flavor but tasted a little strong on the alcohol. I heard you can get from fermenting too high, which absolutely did not happen... it sat 4 weeks in the primary, the last week in the fridge for a cold crash then 1 week in the keg before I tasted it.

I used to do 10 days or so on the primary (or until FG was reached) and a week in the secondary. I am trying the "new" method of 4 week on the primary and then keg. I don't notice any difference in taste, though the 4 week primary seems much more clear.

I am pretty careful about sanitation. I get a bit OCD with it, I feel comfortable with the cleaning I do.
 
What exactly is the problem with your malty beers? The ones I've done that I felt were not right had a bitter aftertaste that showed up 2-3 seconds after you swallowed a sip.
 
The best thing to try is to do a batch with RO or distilled water. You say you do extract beers and extract contains the mineral profile of the original water so RO or distilled works very well with this.

On a similar note, you should look into the possible presence of chloramine in your water. Boiling does not get rid of this. Some filtration systems will get rid of chloramine, as will campden tablets.
 
I use the tap water here in Alexandria VA. It is pretty good water right from the tap, at least taste wise. I always do full 7 gallons boils down to 5 gallons in the hopes of boiling off the chlorine and nasties. Takes me exactly 60 minutes at a full boil with just a skim of water at the bottom after I siphon the wort out and leave the trub behind.

I honestly am not sure about my pitch rate. My next batch will be the first time I use a yeast starter and will also be the first time I do proper aeration with one of those drill attachments. Ive been using WYEAST but am switching to WPL after an awesome batch with it... probably just luck of the draw, but whatev.

Ferment temperatures is probably my weak point. I dont have much room in my duplex and leave my fermentation in the basement. It stays around 62-63 degrees but is constant. I do gravity readings and my gravities always end up being reached, I am not too worried about the yeast slowing down... though my porter that I just brewed had awesome flavor but tasted a little strong on the alcohol. I heard you can get from fermenting too high, which absolutely did not happen... it sat 4 weeks in the primary, the last week in the fridge for a cold crash then 1 week in the keg before I tasted it.

I used to do 10 days or so on the primary (or until FG was reached) and a week in the secondary. I am trying the "new" method of 4 week on the primary and then keg. I don't notice any difference in taste, though the 4 week primary seems much more clear.

I am pretty careful about sanitation. I get a bit OCD with it, I feel comfortable with the cleaning I do.

You probably use Potomac water, the same water that I use. I live in Falls Church. I've had great results with the water. I can send you a spreadsheet that has the values for our water plugged in and will show you how to make the proper additions. All our water needs is some extra calcium, which gypsum or calcium chloride will fix. I just add 2-4 grams of gypsum, depending on the level of hops. Also, our water does have chloramine, so you definitely want to add some campden. You may also need to add some acid malt to hit the proper PH. The last thing is to watch your sparge. Too big of a batch sparge will result in astringency because the PH will be off. Better to top off with water than do a massive 4 gallon sparge to hit pre-boil volume.

I would say your problems are probably due to not using a starter. Stressed yeast will often times produce off-flavors. Making a starter is so easy, you can use a gallon or so of second runnings from another brew. Once you've made one, you can reuse the yeast from successive batches and you will have more than enough. I highly suggest doing this because it's economical but more importantly, it will help you learn the characteristics of a yeast if you practice using it. For example, I know WLP001, 002, and 530 really well because that's pretty much all that I use. Sometimes Nottingham, too.
 
rexbanner said:
You probably use Potomac water, the same water that I use. I live in Falls Church. I've had great results with the water. I can send you a spreadsheet that has the values for our water plugged in and will show you how to make the proper additions. All our water needs is some extra calcium, which gypsum or calcium chloride will fix. I just add 2-4 grams of gypsum, depending on the level of hops. Also, our water does have chloramine, so you definitely want to add some campden. You may also need to add some acid malt to hit the proper PH. The last thing is to watch your sparge. Too big of a batch sparge will result in astringency because the PH will be off. Better to top off with water than do a massive 4 gallon sparge to hit pre-boil volume.

I would say your problems are probably due to not using a starter. Stressed yeast will often times produce off-flavors. Making a starter is so easy, you can use a gallon or so of second runnings from another brew. Once you've made one, you can reuse the yeast from successive batches and you will have more than enough. I highly suggest doing this because it's economical but more importantly, it will help you learn the characteristics of a yeast if you practice using it. For example, I know WLP001, 002, and 530 really well because that's pretty much all that I use. Sometimes Nottingham, too.

Awesome advice. I bet we use the same water but it could be treated differently because of county regulations, or something... Im just thinking out loud. How do you get your water tested to see?

And I would love that spreadsheet! Could you send it to me at [email protected]

I really appreciate it!
 
I think to really help identify your problem we need to know more about what you consider mediocre in your malty beers. Is it an off flavor (examples and a few good descriptions here http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html)? Without any additional information the only thing I can come up with that hasn't been mentioned already is the fact you are brewing with extract. Is your extract liquid or dried? If its liquid its very important to make sure you have fresh extract. Also extract brews tend to have a very plain malt profile because you cannot vary the base malt, only steep specialty malts. So this could be the source of your problem if its not a specific off flavor you are experiencing, rather just an unsatisfactory flavor.
 
For the first year of brewing, I had the same problem. Hoppy beers tasted good, while malty beers all had the same bitter/sour aftertaste. I found out that my local water has more sulfates than chloride and therefore is better for hoppy beers. Adding 1tsp of calcium chloride per 5 gallons of water used has fixed this for me. YMMV.
 
You should also consider yeast selection. Some strains will really let the malt profile come through. WLP 028 comes to mind. I use this in a porter, as the clean profile it gives allows the malt bill to shine. Other yeasts will give different results. WLP 002 for the same beer muted the malt flavor and kicked off some of that English fruitiness its known for. Not a bad thing, but I got more positive comments about 028 for that particular beer. I'm not saying this is the answer, but it's something to consider after you've reigned in your water profile.
 

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