Still plagued by "THT"... "The Homebrew Taste"

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Stein

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I'm still trying to figure out where my beers are going wrong... I've been all over the place, and it seems to follow me. I started off as an extract + steeping grains brewer, went to all grain after my 2nd batch, went back to extract, and now I'm a partial mash brewer. The one thing that has followed my beers since the very beginning has been the dreaded "homebrew taste". It's not always there, but I've had extract batches that have had it, as well as all grain batches that have had it. I'm still trying to pin it down...

It's really hard to describe the flavor I'm getting, but I'm guessing that many people will know exactly what it is I'm talking about. My first two extract batches had it, so I assumed it was either "extract twang" or an unwanted flavor from the dry yeast I was using. I then went to all grain and my first all grain batch had it. I stopped using dry yeast at this point. I also started controlling my fermentation temperatures by putting it in my keezer with a stainless steel thermowell + temperature probe. The flavor went away for the most part, but every once in a while it would return.

The last batch I did was an extract + steeping grains + dry yeast recipe that my friend recently did with GREAT results. My version came out with the "homebrew taste" and beared very little similarity to his version. Since we both used the same recipe, I'm beginning to think I'm doing something else wrong.

I'm thinking this might be a fermentation problem. I used dry yeast in this one (rehydrated), and pitched it at about 68 degrees. To my horror, I awoke the next morning to no fermentation due to the temperature dropping to 60 degrees overnight. It had to warm up before fermentation occurred, and I think I might have stressed out the yeast.

Any suggestions? What should I change? I think I need to go back to doing yeast starters.... anything else?
 
Start with water.

With extract you can use 100% RO water. That is the easy (and more expensive) way to eliminate water issues as the root cause. Do you know if you have chloramine in your tap water?
 
Water? Personally I use bottled water.

Yeast count? Maybe you're under pitching.

Ingredients? Are they maybe old?

Also I don't know too many people that use a thermowell on a ferm chamber. But that could be my inexperience in that department.
 
Start with water.

With extract you can use 100% RO water. That is the easy (and more expensive) way to eliminate water issues as the root cause. Do you know if you have chloramine in your tap water?

A cheaper way and along the same lines, get some water from your buddy that is not having any problems and see if that makes a difference.
 
Start with water.

With extract you can use 100% RO water. That is the easy (and more expensive) way to eliminate water issues as the root cause. Do you know if you have chloramine in your tap water?

I've been buying Crystal Geyser and/or Arrowhead water at the store for my beers, generally. I use Arrowhead when I want to do a style that requires a harder water profile, Crystal Geyser for the lighter ones. The taste seems to follow the Crystal Geyser batches the most.

I have fairly soft tap water, but yes it does have Chloramine. I can probably buy a filter to remove it, or I can just go down and get some RO water for 25 cents a gallon at the store.
 
You could try sending a beer to a judge, and ask them to critique it. It sounds like it could be only a couple of things to me- one, water.

Have you used RO water or tap water? Any additions at all?

How about boiling the wort? Do you get a nice hard rolling boil, with a good hot break? Do you hit your volumes, or have to top up (or go over)?

For your last brew, can you go, step by step, through everything? Even if it's not important sounding, like "I crush my grains with my own mill at .037" gap...."etc. We may pick up something. Make sure you tell us boil size if you're not doing a full boil with the partial mash, or extract. The brand of extract, type, etc, would help.

Since you have the same flavor with AG, I'm leaning towards water. But technique is crucial, and I wonder if there is something that is just a small thing that is being missed.
 
Another thing to think about is when was the last time you changed out all of your tubing? I like to change mine out at least every six months, more if I'm doing more batches. They get hot and cold and expand and contract and after a while, the Starsan just doesn't work on them like they used to and you end up with something wrong with your beer and you just can't quite nail it down. I'd change my tubing and brew another batch and see what happens.

Also, use RO/Distilled water instead of spring water and if you're steeping grains, don't go above 2 gallons of steeping water, depending on how many lbs of steeping grains you have.. don't want a PH spike from not enough grains. Once you add your LME/DME then you can top up to 5 gallons and start your boil. I apologize if any of this is terribly obvious to you. Just trying to help out.
 
I stopped using dry yeast at this point. I also started controlling my fermentation temperatures by putting it in my keezer with a stainless steel thermowell + temperature probe. The flavor went away for the most part, but every once in a while it would return.

I'm thinking this might be a fermentation problem. I used dry yeast in this one (rehydrated), and pitched it at about 68 degrees. To my horror, I awoke the next morning to no fermentation due to the temperature dropping to 60 degrees overnight. It had to warm up before fermentation occurred, and I think I might have stressed out the yeast.

Sounds like you have a good start here, but keep those ferm temps low and stable. Also check your pitch rate and aeration.

And +1 for water.
 
Im not privy to your entire process etc... but I would go right to bottled water and try out a batch and see how you like the results. Its far worth the $5 you need to spend for 5 gallons of water to have a kickass batch of beer.

Im about to start tinkering with taking out carbon and adding gypsum in my water :)
 
You could try sending a beer to a judge, and ask them to critique it. It sounds like it could be only a couple of to me- one, water.

Have you used RO water or tap water? Any additions at all?

How about boiling the wort? Do you get a nice hard rolling boil, with a good hot break? Do you hit your volumes, or have to top up (or go over)?

For your last brew, can you go, step by step, through everything? Even if it's not important sounding, like "I crush my grains with my own mill at .037" gap...."etc. We may pick up something. Make sure you tell us boil size if you're not doing a full boil with the partial mash, or extract. The brand of extract, type, etc, would help.

Since you have the same flavor with AG, I'm leaning towards water. But technique is crucial, and I wonder if there is something that is just a small thing that is being missed.

I'm really thinking it might be yeast problems because it always seems to correlate with long lag times.

That reminds me, I seem to always have a long lag time in my batches, no matter if I'm using liquid yeast or rehydrated dry yeast. Even when I do a yeast starter, I don't get the 3-4 hour start times like some of you guys get. Usually 12 hours is standard, though the last one took 24 hours. I've used pure O2 in my beers as well, but it didn't seem to do much in terms of me getting a faster start in the fermentation.

I think I'll use dry malt next time, see if that helps anything.

As far as my process is concerned, I steep the grains in 1 gallon of water at 155 degrees for 30 minutes. I boil 2 gallons in another pot, turn off the heat, stir in the LME, sparge and then add the runnings from the grain and bring it back to a boil. I follow the standard hop additions, turn off the heat, cool the wort down as much as I can, and if I can't get it all the way down, I put it in my chest freezer and wait til it's around 68 degrees before I pitch.

One thing I forgot to mention.... when I take sample tastes of the beer while it's still in the primary, it tastes good. The mysterious taste always seems to come along after I add the corn sugar and bottle it. Maybe not all of the corn sugar is being eaten by the yeast?
 
Another thing to think about is when was the last time you changed out all of your tubing? I like to change mine out at least every six months, more if I'm doing more batches. They get hot and cold and expand and contract and after a while, the Starsan just doesn't work on them like they used to and you end up with something wrong with your beer and you just can't quite nail it down. I'd change my tubing and brew another batch and see what happens.

Also, use RO/Distilled water instead of spring water and if you're steeping grains, don't go above 2 gallons of steeping water, depending on how many lbs of steeping grains you have.. don't want a PH spike from not enough grains. Once you add your LME/DME then you can top up to 5 gallons and start your boil. I apologize if any of this is terribly obvious to you. Just trying to help out.

I've tried RO/Distilled before, and I don't remember a homebrew taste occurring, but that could be because of something else. I don't see why mountain spring water could cause these flavors, but they might somehow. Thanks for the advice.
 
Sometimes with mountain or spring water they add in extra minerals that the body needs. Most of the time these dont affect extract batches because the wort has already been made/mashed and all you're doing is rehydrating. You dont have to worry about how the water will affect the mash when using extract, but it's worth a shot to try it if everything else seems to not be working.
 
Sometimes with mountain or spring water they add in extra minerals that the body needs. Most of the time these dont affect extract batches because the wort has already been made/mashed and all you're doing is rehydrating. You dont have to worry about how the water will affect the mash when using extract, but it's worth a shot to try it if everything else seems to not be working.

Thing is, I can't go straight RO/distilled now because I'm partial mashing. I need minerals for the mash now. I suppose I can get RO and then build my own water profile, but that's the kind of thing that made me abandon all grain in the first place.
 
Sorry for the confusion.... I actually forgot that I had two usernames. I'd like to keep "Brewskier" and get rid of "Stein", if possible. How do I do this?
 
Thing is, I can't go straight RO/distilled now because I'm partial mashing. I need minerals for the mash now. I suppose I can get RO and then build my own water profile, but that's the kind of thing that made me abandon all grain in the first place.

No, you don't. You can use RO water.

If you feel that you absolutely must add something (and you don't) you can add 1 teaspoon calcium chloride per 5 gallons of brewing water in the mash. If you have a 2.5 gallon mash, that's only 1/2 teaspoon of calcium chloride.
 
Have you check out AJ's primer? His advice is 1tsp Calcium Chloride per 5 gallons of RO water and either some phosphoric acid or 2% of the grain bill as acidmalt. Very easy and you can do a couple of easy batches and tweak it from there. I'd not worry about Gypsum at all until I tasted it and really thought it would help. Do you have any way to test your PH during the mash?
 
+1 to aerating/oxygenating your wort before pitching. Yeast without oxygen will get stressed out.
 
+1 to aerating/oxygenating your wort before pitching. Yeast without oxygen will get stressed out.

I was never sure how much O2 to give it.... It was usually 45 seconds worth.... is that enough? My friend gets good beer just by transferring the wort from the stock pot to the better bottle through a stainless steel strainer.
 
I was never sure how much O2 to give it.... It was usually 45 seconds worth.... is that enough? My friend gets good beer just by transferring the wort from the stock pot to the better bottle through a stainless steel strainer.

With pure O2, 2 minutes. If shaking it, you can do it for 15-25 minutes. According to the folks at White Labs.
 
Have you cleaned the bottling bucket good enough? In my experience no matter how well you think you are flushing out the spigot, beer still gets left in the spigot creating a GREAT place for bacteria to hang out until the next bottling time.

I'm not suggesting you forego the water change. But if you haven't done this, take the spigot off the bottling bucket and pull it apart and wash it very well and sanitize it before using it.

As for the water, I suggest following Yoopers advice of using RO and maybe adding a bit of CaCl to give the yeast some calcium. It doesn't take much. The whole water chemistry thing is very fun and frustrating at first, but worth learning about IMO.
 
I was never sure how much O2 to give it....

Oxygen can be tricky. Too much or too little can be detrimental.

This is a great presentation from Wyeast where they showed that 40 seconds of shaking is all that is needed to saturate the wort with O2. I don't know why Wyeast and White Labs give different info on this.
http://www.bjcp.org/cep/WyeastYeastLife.pdf

It's hard to guess how much O2 is in the wort without expensive equipment and everyone's system is a little different. On one of Jamil's podcasts, he recommended trying to be consistent with the flow rate and doubling or reducing the time by half until you get the results you want. Too much O2 can give a harsh dry flavor and possibly fusels. Too little O2 can increase esters and finish too sweet. Of corse you should maintain appropriate temp control, pitching rate, etc. Hope this helps.
 
If you're using dry yeast, one satchet is usually the appropriate pitching rate for a ~1.050 beer. You can aerate US-05 after pitching.
 
Have you cleaned the bottling bucket good enough? In my experience no matter how well you think you are flushing out the spigot, beer still gets left in the spigot creating a GREAT place for bacteria to hang out until the next bottling time.

I'm not suggesting you forego the water change. But if you haven't done this, take the spigot off the bottling bucket and pull it apart and wash it very well and sanitize it before using it.

As for the water, I suggest following Yoopers advice of using RO and maybe adding a bit of CaCl to give the yeast some calcium. It doesn't take much. The whole water chemistry thing is very fun and frustrating at first, but worth learning about IMO.

Hmmm, you may be on to something. I haven't swapped out my bottling bucket in years, and there's a stained seal at the bottom. I always soak the bottling bucket in Star San, though. Wouldn't that take care of it?

It still would not explain why the flavor I'm getting is the same exact flavor I had from the beginning, back when the bucket was new. I read through Palmer's list, and the closest flavor I could match it up with is "cardboard". It's got a lingering "sweet" flavor as well in the follow up. It really is hard to describe. If I was a beer judge, I could probably describe it perfectly, but I'm not. I know that other people have complained about this flavor in the past, though, so I was hoping they would just *know* what I'm talking about. I suspect that many of them do.

I will take your advice and dump the bottling bucket for my next batch. I've been looking for an excuse to go back to kegging, anyway. My keezer is just a fermentation chamber at this point.
 
Oxygen can be tricky. Too much or too little can be detrimental.

This is a great presentation from Wyeast where they showed that 40 seconds of shaking is all that is needed to saturate the wort with O2. I don't know why Wyeast and White Labs give different info on this.
http://www.bjcp.org/cep/WyeastYeastLife.pdf

It's hard to guess how much O2 is in the wort without expensive equipment and everyone's system is a little different. On one of Jamil's podcasts, he recommended trying to be consistent with the flow rate and doubling or reducing the time by half until you get the results you want. Too much O2 can give a harsh dry flavor and possibly fusels. Too little O2 can increase esters and finish too sweet. Of corse you should maintain appropriate temp control, pitching rate, etc. Hope this helps.

Arrghh, that doesn't help. That makes me even more frustated, since there are more variables I need to pin down. I am definitely afraid of giving it too much O2, which is why I eventually stopped using it and just poured the wort through a strainer when it was done cooling. I've read that that would be enough, but I've also read it's not enough. I wish there was some sort of concensus on these types of issues.
 
Arrghh, that doesn't help. That makes me even more frustated, since there are more variables I need to pin down. I am definitely afraid of giving it too much O2, which is why I eventually stopped using it and just poured the wort through a strainer when it was done cooling. I've read that that would be enough, but I've also read it's not enough. I wish there was some sort of concensus on these types of issues.

If you've poured it through a strainer, it's enough for most beers. A huge beer, with a super high OG, or a lager might benefit from more aeration. But don't sweat it so much!

There are only a couple of keys to great beer, whether extract or all-grain:

- good water (beer is 95% water, after all)
- proper yeast health. This means pitching at or below fermentation temperatures, and using the proper amount of yeast. This is most often the step skipped by "good" and not "great" brewers.
- fermentation temperature control
- fresh quality ingredients
- sanitation

Really, that's it. Sure, aeration is part of "proper yeast health" but pitching the proper amount of yeast at the correct temperature and controlling fermentation temperature is crucial. If the wort goes through a strainer, and splashes/foams on the way to the fermenter you can generally call it good, and guestimate it about 8 ppm oxygen.
 
If you've poured it through a strainer, it's enough for most beers. A huge beer, with a super high OG, or a lager might benefit from more aeration. But don't sweat it so much!

There are only a couple of keys to great beer, whether extract or all-grain:

- good water (beer is 95% water, after all)
- proper yeast health. This means pitching at or below fermentation temperatures, and using the proper amount of yeast. This is most often the step skipped by "good" and not "great" brewers.
- fermentation temperature control
- fresh quality ingredients
- sanitation

Really, that's it. Sure, aeration is part of "proper yeast health" but pitching the proper amount of yeast at the correct temperature and controlling fermentation temperature is crucial. If the wort goes through a strainer, and splashes/foams on the way to the fermenter you can generally call it good, and guestimate it about 8 ppm oxygen.

Good points. I've had maybe 5 or 6 batches that I believe were flawless (at least, no complaints I could think of), and all but 1 were done with simply pouring through a strainer, so O2 may not be my issue. I'm thinking yeast health is the commonality at this point. The first couple batches were done without fermentation temperature control, and both had long lag times and a very strong "THT" problem. The last batch had it, and this time the yeast was too cold and didn't start fermenting until after 24 hours.
 
Brewskier said:
I read through Palmer's list, and the closest flavor I could match it up with is "cardboard". It's got a lingering "sweet" flavor as well in the follow up.

Hmm, maybe oxidation? Do you take care not to splash the wort around when it's hot, or after fermentation? Also, what are the conditions your keeping the bottles in? Are you leaving as little head space as possible when bottling?

This may be a stupid question, but how about pouring? Do you leave the last bit or pour the whole bottle in? I wouldn't think that would add a cardboard flavour, but it would add sweetness at the end (the yeast).
 
Cardboard is often described as being the result of oxidation, so careful handling of the finished beer is very important. Gentle siphoning, gentle stirring, careful filling of the bottles, etc. It's important to avoid the beer coming in contact with oxygen after pitching the yeast (unless you are re-oxygenating a barlywine or something unusual like that.)
 
I'm really thinking it might be yeast problems because it always seems to correlate with long lag times.

That reminds me, I seem to always have a long lag time in my batches, no matter if I'm using liquid yeast or rehydrated dry yeast. Even when I do a yeast starter, I don't get the 3-4 hour start times like some of you guys get. Usually 12 hours is standard, though the last one took 24 hours.

I wouldn't worry about that, lots of yeasts don't get going for at least that long, and some ferment quite successfully with little or no evidence thereof. 12-24 hours is plenty quick.
 
Hmm, maybe oxidation? Do you take care not to splash the wort around when it's hot, or after fermentation? Also, what are the conditions your keeping the bottles in? Are you leaving as little head space as possible when bottling?

This may be a stupid question, but how about pouring? Do you leave the last bit or pour the whole bottle in? I wouldn't think that would add a cardboard flavour, but it would add sweetness at the end (the yeast).

I typically swirl the wort chiller around when cooling down the beer. I use an autosiphon and bottle via the normal approach. It foams up a little when bottling, but I use oxy caps to get rid of that last little bit of oxygen.

I leave the last bit out, typically.
 
Try a few things mentioned on your next brew and let us know how it goes. We can troubleshoot all day but won't know until it's tested! Good luck!
 
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