JuanKenobi
Well-Known Member
I recently found myself with a very rare day off and decided that I had to brew a batch for the pipeline's sake. To keep things simple I decided to BIAB. I knew things wouldn't be very predictable as this was my first true BIAB and I bought the grain from a local brewery pre-crushed rather than using the usual sources and crushing myself.
The recipe was pretty a simple IPA, 2-row base, 8% wheat, 8% Crystal which was supposedly C45, but looked more like 120 or even 150. I ended up getting pretty low efficiency, and got a 1.053 wort, 7pts lower than my target 1.060. I started the mash out at ~153* which fell to something like 142 over 60 minutes, so I fired it up to 158 for 15 minutes before stepping up to 168 for mash-out. I stirred quite a bit during each of the step ups, but I am still concerned that there may have been some tannin extraction from higher temps at the bottom of the kettle.
After primary fermentation was complete (~5 days) I took a sample. It was crushingly bitter. Now, I've only experienced tannin extraction once on any real scale, and that was the result of over-sparging the small beer of a partigyle. This bitterness could be described as astringent, but it struck me as different than the astringency in the small beer which was pretty much undrinkable. I described this in my notes as a somewhat dry bitterness in the finish, similar to the bite of unsweetened grapefuit juice. Beersmith predicted the IBUs at 60 (Tinseth). I took another sample the other day at 3 weeks in primary and the harsh bitterness/astringency has mellowed somewhat, but is still very noticeable. So I'm wondering if the low starting gravity combined with the hop bill has just created a monstrously bitter beer, or have I extracted the dreaded tannins and ruined the batch.
I don't have the hop bill in front of me, but it is something like this:
Columbus, 60 minutes ~45 IBU
Cascade at 20 and 10 minutes to fill out the 60 IBU
Chinook at flameout
All whole hops
The recipe was pretty a simple IPA, 2-row base, 8% wheat, 8% Crystal which was supposedly C45, but looked more like 120 or even 150. I ended up getting pretty low efficiency, and got a 1.053 wort, 7pts lower than my target 1.060. I started the mash out at ~153* which fell to something like 142 over 60 minutes, so I fired it up to 158 for 15 minutes before stepping up to 168 for mash-out. I stirred quite a bit during each of the step ups, but I am still concerned that there may have been some tannin extraction from higher temps at the bottom of the kettle.
After primary fermentation was complete (~5 days) I took a sample. It was crushingly bitter. Now, I've only experienced tannin extraction once on any real scale, and that was the result of over-sparging the small beer of a partigyle. This bitterness could be described as astringent, but it struck me as different than the astringency in the small beer which was pretty much undrinkable. I described this in my notes as a somewhat dry bitterness in the finish, similar to the bite of unsweetened grapefuit juice. Beersmith predicted the IBUs at 60 (Tinseth). I took another sample the other day at 3 weeks in primary and the harsh bitterness/astringency has mellowed somewhat, but is still very noticeable. So I'm wondering if the low starting gravity combined with the hop bill has just created a monstrously bitter beer, or have I extracted the dreaded tannins and ruined the batch.
I don't have the hop bill in front of me, but it is something like this:
Columbus, 60 minutes ~45 IBU
Cascade at 20 and 10 minutes to fill out the 60 IBU
Chinook at flameout
All whole hops