*CRISP* carbonation

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SkaBoneBenny

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My friend and I were sitting around enjoying a couple Sam Waterston's and ignoring our responsibilities the other day when he pointed out that though my beers are tasty, they lack that "crisp" taste of a store bought six pack. He seemed to think this was an element that could only be added through artifical "industrial" carbonation.

On further thought I realized that though my beers are extremely flavorful and aromatic, they do lack that crisp bite of say Sam Adams, Smuttynose, or Harpoon. Or most commerical craft beers for that matter.Yet when I talk to other homebrewers, and sample their creations, their beers are more or less akin to commerical brands in this respect. Is there something more I can do with my brews to take them to the next level.

I'm very satisfied with my falvor and aroma, its just that texture that really needs work. Could using slightly more than the 5oz pack of bottling sugar perhaps help to add that kick? Or would that just lead to over-carbonation. Maybe I should switch to a different sugar? Maybe... it's something I'm doing wrong in another part of the brewing process. Any suggestions? I'm looking to really bring my bottles to the next level. When my friends come over I watch them to choose Sam Waterston always over the Sam Adams. Well... maybe someday. Thanks!
-Ben
 
By crisp do you mean something like an extremely clean flavor? If so, then I'd say chilling your wort as fast as possible, reducing your lag time with a starter, cold conditioning ales, and lagering at the absolute coldest temperatures you can. I think you can get cleaner flavors in a lager by force carbonating if you want to go that route.
 
Well, so far I've only produced Ales, no lagers. What effect does quickly chilling the wort have on the beer? Also, really, what is the benefit of a yeast starter. Why does it help to produces a cleaner, crisper flavor?
-Ben
 
I don't know if I have enough experience to say much about the effect of cold conditioning except that it seems to make beer taste better. It probably has something to do with crashing proteins and particulate matter out of your beer.

A starter helps because it reduces your lag time. From the moment you turn the heat off, there are microorganisms getting in your beer. And they will stay there and influence the flavor of your finished beer the more of them there are. When you pitch your yeast, the goal is to completely overwhelm any competing microbes that are in there. A starter contains more yeast cells than a vial, so it has a better chance of overwhelming the competition.

The White Labs webpage also says something about starters reducing fruity ester flavors in your beer because the yeast has already gone through the phase where it produces them in a starter. I don't understand the reason for saying that, but they're probably correct.
 
Others will debate this, but try switching to priming your bottles with DME rather than bottling sugar--I think it produces tighter bubbles and a "crisper" beer.
 
SkaBoneBenny said:
Well, so far I've only produced Ales, no lagers. What effect does quickly chilling the wort have on the beer? Also, really, what is the benefit of a yeast starter. Why does it help to produces a cleaner, crisper flavor?
-Ben

Chilling the wort quickly cuts down on the risk of contamination. I'm not sure if that'll really help the "crispness" of the beer, though. Same with lag time. The benefits of yeast starters are many, and include a more vigorous and thorough fermentation. The main idea, though, is to cut down on the lag time---the amount of time between pitching the yeast into the wort and when fermentation begins. This might help with your crispness issue, but probably not all that much.

My few pieces of advice are:

1) Keep your fermentation temps down below 70f for most ales. Since the weather has gotten colder, I've been fermenting at 62-64, and I love how things are turning out---much better than during the summer when my fermentations hung around 75.

2) Keep your beers in secondary longer, so that more junk is able to fall out. And keep the temps down, in the lower 60's if possible, during this period.

3) Add a small amount of rehydrated dry yeast at bottling. This will ensure thorough carbonation.

4) After your certain that the bottles have carbonated (test one!), cold-condition the bottles as best you can.

5) Buy a $30 aeration kit to properly aerate your wort before pitching. This ensures healthy metabolism in your yeast, resulting in a better, more thorough fermentation. I believe that some of this lack of "crispness" you're experiencing has at least something to do with higher final gravities than you're lookign for. All it takes is a little bit of extra unfermenteds in your final brew to make the beer seem "fat" or "flabby". And it's difficult to make a flabby beer with "crispness".

Aside from that, you could keg...but I do think that industrial carbonation practices do produce something that we can't emulate perfectly. Oh well. I have plenty of "crisp" beers myself...just see if you can get your FG down a little bit, stay away from unfermentable adjuncts, and do all you can to have a low-temp, healthy fermentation.

Lastly, when you said you were drinking "Sam Waterstons", I thought, hey, the guy from Law & Order is making beer now? Cool! :D
 
Have you brewed these beers using mainly extract brewing? If so, I'd recommend moving towards a mini-mash type process, "mashing" a small amount of base malts w/ specialty grains and then fortifying this with a smaller amount of liquid or dry extracts to make sure you've got your sugars covered. By mashing, you have much more control over which direction your beers flavor and "feel" will go in. Mash it closer to 150f and you will be inviting a more "malty" flavor and a bigger "body" to your beers. Mash it up closer to 160f and you are going to lessen that maltiness and invite higher alcohol production and a higher ABV %. If you get a good mini-mash process down you can get some satisfactory yields and usually beat the SG that certain recipes will call for.

Another thing that occurred to me is that most of the beers you mentioned are dry-hopped beers. Try to separate the "crispiness" of the beer's body from the "crispiness" that can be achieved by dry hopping. Maybe you are thinking of a more defined hop bite than a beer body issue. Just a possibility, and something to think of. Whenever you are comparing your homebrews to commercial beers there are a lot a variables at play. Choosing what adjustments to make is just as important as executing them well. I'd also recommend not making too many process-changes at once. Change only a few variables, and take good notes.

Editor’s note: I’m no pro, so any more informed brewer out there feel free to correct me!

BTW good to see another Bostonian - whereabouts are you 'round here? college? live? Keep on 'brewin.......
 
Evan! said:
5) Buy a $30 aeration kit to properly aerate your wort before pitching. This ensures healthy metabolism in your yeast, resulting in a better, more thorough fermentation. I believe that some of this lack of "crispness" you're experiencing has at least something to do with higher final gravities than you're lookign for. All it takes is a little bit of extra unfermenteds in your final brew to make the beer seem "fat" or "flabby". And it's difficult to make a flabby beer with "crispness".
I couldn't agree with this more. Not a big investment money-wise but you will notice much faster and effective fermentation. Lots o' bang for the buck, so to say. Good tip.
 
:off:

Samual Waterstons! Mmmm, MMMMM, *****!

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180px-Chappellejackson.jpg
 
Fiery: Yeah, one of the best investments I've made. Ever since I got that thing, my attenuation has skyrocketed. Coincidence? I think not.
 
I think you need to get your final gravity down some to get crisper beers. I think what your beers are is just plain "Heavier".
 
The only other thing I have to add is most commercial beers are filtered, then force carbonated. Filtering may give it the "crisp" flavor you're talking about. My ales have a "clean" aftertaste and I do ferment it cool, and cold condition. I also do a pretty long secondary- at least two weeks, more if I don't have time to bottle.

Lorena
 
the_bird said:
Wanna have a debate about why they might be too sweet? :D

Birdman, I think it has something to do with how much of the water from the wort is absorbed into the yeast cells...;)
 
Fiery Sword said:
Have you brewed these beers using mainly extract brewing? If so, I'd recommend moving towards a mini-mash type process, "mashing" a small amount of base malts w/ specialty grains and then fortifying this with a smaller amount of liquid or dry extracts to make sure you've got your sugars covered. By mashing, you have much more control over which direction your beers flavor and "feel" will go in. Mash it closer to 150f and you will be inviting a more "malty" flavor and a bigger "body" to your beers. Mash it up closer to 160f and you are going to lessen that maltiness and invite higher alcohol production and a higher ABV %. If you get a good mini-mash process down you can get some satisfactory yields and usually beat the SG that certain recipes will call for.


Editor’s note: I’m no pro, so any more informed brewer out there feel free to correct me!


Hmmm. Maybe I am reading your post incorrectly, but I think that you have mash temps mixed up here.

If you mash around 145-149 degrees, your wort will be much more fermentable. The finished beer should be higher ABV and dryer (btw, I associate a certain degree of dryness with "crispness" - the character you are trying to achieve. Be careful, though, too much dryness is just that - dryness). Mashing in the 153-157 range will yield a wort that has more body because it is less fermentable.

High mash temps = lower fermentability, more body
Lower mash temps = higher fermentability, less body
 
I'm too new to the hobby to be taken seriously, but I can tell you I was shocked how "clean" my first lager turned out. Well, actually I haven't bottled the lager yet but it was the first batch that actually tasted smooth when I racked to secondary. The previous ales tasted way green at that stage.
 
sonvolt said:
Hmmm. Maybe I am reading your post incorrectly, but I think that you have mash temps mixed up here.

If you mash around 145-149 degrees, your wort will be much more fermentable. The finished beer should be higher ABV and dryer (btw, I associate a certain degree of dryness with "crispness" - the character you are trying to achieve. Be careful, though, too much dryness is just that - dryness). Mashing in the 153-157 range will yield a wort that has more body because it is less fermentable.

High mash temps = lower fermentability, more body
Lower mash temps = higher fermentability, less body
damn. you are 100% correct! nothing like re-reading something twice and still getting it backwards! thanks for the correction! :eek:
 
I think the crispness is due to two things: hops and clarity. May have to add aeration on my list of things I need. I've always used the spoon method.
 
"Clean" beers, IMO, are a result of two brewing practices. First, sanitation is key. If you brew in a sanitary fashion, you can get some very clean beers. The second practice is monitoring fermentation temperature. I always try to keep my primary fermentation temperature at the lower end of the suggested range. If you can do these two things, you will end up with a "clean" beer.

Clean and crisp, again IMO, are two different descriptors, however.

To go one step further with this, most ales shouldn't even be referred to as "crisp." I wonder if your Sam Waterstons don't have that same "crispness" as commercial beers simply because the recipe you are brewing does not feature this particular characteristic.

Most of my non-homebrewing/craft-beer drinking friends all assume that every good beer should be as "crisp" as the BMC they love. If we can say one good thing about the American Light Lager brewers is that they have mastered the art of developing crispness. The propensity for American drinkers to prefer that crispiness also affects the craft-brew industry. Sam Adams Boston lager is "crisp," and Sierra Nevada's Pale is "crisp." I even visited a brewpub in St. Louis recently where the brewer informed me that he lagers his porters (brews with lager yeast and cold conditions) in order to make it "crisp." He claims that it started selling better when he did it!

I guess that my point is this - if you are aiming at crispness, you should be brewing styles that feature that trait in their profile. Any lager seems to feature crispness. and cold conditioning will help your ales achieve a more crisp character.

IMO, here is what you can do:
1. Be sure your brewing practices are sanitary (duh!)
2. Do big starters so that fermentation happens quickly (b/c of #1)
3. Mash at lower temps if you are doing AG or Partial Mash
4. Primary ferment at the lowest temp in that yeast's range
5. Cold condition for extended periods of time (twice as long as you would normally do a secondary) at just above freezing temps.
 
jeffg said:
Others will debate this, but try switching to priming your bottles with DME rather than bottling sugar--I think it produces tighter bubbles and a "crisper" beer.

My understanding was that using DME for priming would create a denser, creamier carbonation, more like how beers like Guinness and Belhaven are when you get them on draught. Anyone else care to comment on this?
 
I (almost) always bottle with DME. I think it gives a bit more body to the beer and a bit of a richer taste compared to corn sugar. The sugar seems to "carbonate" a bit quicker and maybe accentuate the hop flavor a bit more (not a lot of research on this, just something i've noticed once or twice). However, you aren't going to get anywhere near Guiness-land with either. You'd need a nitrogen setup for that <reaches into wallet aaaaaand.....puts it back quickly. it's not time.>
 
Torchiest said:
My understanding was that using DME for priming would create a denser, creamier carbonation, more like how beers like Guinness and Belhaven are when you get them on draught. Anyone else care to comment on this?

I definitely would not call it creamy. I just remember when I switched to dme the finished product was a little drier with more of a snap, crackle pop carbonation than a sudsy carbonation--the kind where if you didn't tilt the glass you got a glass full of head thick enough to stand a toothpick upright in. To me that is one of many factors that provides a "crisp" carbonation...

The opposite to me would be more "sudsy" like a cask conditioned beer...
 
jeffg said:
I definitely would not call it creamy. I just remember when I switched to dme the finished product was a little drier with more of a snap, crackle pop carbonation than a sudsy carbonation--the kind where if you didn't tilt the glass you got a glass full of head thick enough to stand a toothpick upright in. To me that is one of many factors that provides a "crisp" carbonation...

The opposite to me would be more "sudsy" like a cask conditioned beer...

Well, I've bottled three batches so far, and I've used Dextrose, Brown Sugar, and Molasses, in that order. I was planning to use DME for my upcoming stout to give it more body. I could be confused because I read in the thread about Cheesefood's Caramel Cream Ale that he used DME for priming, and the photo of his beer showed a really thick, creamy looking head. Perhaps something else in the recipe was responsible for that?
 
Torchiest said:
....I read in the thread about Cheesefood's Caramel Cream Ale that he used DME for priming, and the photo of his beer showed a really thick, creamy looking head. Perhaps something else in the recipe was responsible for that?
That's what a well-balanced recipe primed w/ DME looks like @ proper aging. To contrast to you earlier post, though, it is definitely not a guiness-like head. You just can't get a guiness/belhaven draught head with DME/bottle conditioning. You can get great results, but it won't be "like" one of those commercial brews.....w/o nitrogen.
 
How are commercial bottles (non-bottle-conditioned) force-carbed? Do they use CO2 tanks to carbonate the entire batch, then bottle that?
 
Yep, they overcarb the batch and then bottle it without being under pressure. The Beer <being overcarbed> outgasses once the bottle is capped and the overall carbonation lessens to the correct amount as the heaspace pressurizes.

The capping machines fill the headspace with unpressurized CO2, so that any O2 is purged from the bottle.
 
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