My last few batches not so good.

I have been brewing about 9 months now and my first few batches were good. Now my last 4 im not that happy with, off flavors, mouthfeel, and seem not to be fizzy , sorry about that last one.

Bock - good
Blonde - good
Pale ale - great
Porter - great
Ipa - great
Golden ale - not so good
Porter - bad
Pale ale - ok
Wit - ok

So all of these kits were partisl mashes from AHS except 1 which was the last porter. The only thing I changed was I started filtering my water around when it went south. Im getting upset as I spend plenty on this and im not happy with my results on the last 4. The mouthfeel is different like it is not fizzy at all which have all been carbinated, 1 bottled 3 kegged. My last porter is awful, kind of bitter and my Og was low. My Og was low on the last 3 to tell you the truth. I have not changed my methods but the only thing I think it could be is my mash temp or sparge temp on the OG . I know my temp has spiked high due to bad thermo readings in my mash a few times. Any help or direction would be great as I have 15gal in kegs im going to force down to gain room for another try. Sorry for the rant.

Well, keep in mind that if your OG is low and your hopping at your "scheduled" rates into an "understrength" wort you are going to get higher hop utilization and thus higher bitterness which will throw your recipes out of balance. The most common source of changing efficiencies leading to your low OG is changing crushes of your grain. Other than that the common conclusion to jump to with batches getting worse is some sort of infection. However, it is hard to point the finger at infection when we don't really know what is "wrong" with your beer. Are there off flavors or aromas? or is the flavor just "not right?"

The "high spiking" mash temps could be harming the enzymes necessary for conversion which would be leading to your low efficiency (I assume this why you mentioned it though).

Step, they are off flavors mainly. Like the porter is bitter and just way off, the golden ale mouth feel was not right but flavor seem ok, the pale ale is ok but seems blan, and the wit is ok. They all are kind of blan

The porter being bitter with a low OG seems to make sense to me and the golden mouth feel being not right could very easily both relate to an "off" thermometer. The pale being blan could just be ishy recipe and honestly a wit with proper ingredients, roughly correct ferm temps, and good yeast is going to taste like a wit (strong yeast characteristics).

Calibrate your thermometer and use a proven (multiple times) recipe (your own or not) Sanitize the ish out of your equipment on the ferm and bottle/keg side of things and you should be fine.

Quick question... did you start making your own recipes after your first few successes?

I use bleach to sani my ferms, and brewing equip,i use glass carboys as my prim and second. I just now got sanstar to start using. So I dont think it is an infection but my next round I will go over board with the cleaning.

No I have ordered kits from AHS most that have great reviews.

For the bleached stuff make sure you rinsing properly. In the homebrewing scenario I am a big fan of the "no rinse" sanitizers always assuming you are sanitizing an already clean vessel.

Not sure if you got a new thermo or calibrated the old, but I always try to calibrate at ~freezing in heavily iced water and then in boiling water and try to account for any deviation.

I built a water filter setup off byo.com and im thinking maybe that thing has some kind of infection in it as I dont know if you can clean it and not mess it uo.

Are you topping off with water from this sytem?

If you are using this system solely for water that is subsequently boiled than it "shouldn't" matter if its clean or not....

Lets figure this out...

I wish you could describe more about what is "off" in these beers

Yes im using this water for everything. It is hard for me to tell the exact off flavors.

While most of the time people get away with using municipal water fro top off I would say in your case using water that has not been boiled or chemically adjusted may be leading to some of your problems.

It appears (your screen name) that you are from one of our larger states which depending upon specific locale could heavily influence your beers. Try to dial in that thermo and also get a local water report and adjust your mineral accordingly.

Are you using fermentation temperature control? Are you pitching the correct amount of yeast? Yeast starters?

Honestly most off flavors are likely derived from yeast.

I brewed good extract beer for two years, and then started getting flat, astringent tasting beer. I finally got through the problem by doing a few things (thanks to help from this board):
- Replaced all the plastic equipment
- Started using Star-San instead of bleach
- Thoroughly rinsed the bottles with hot water to be sure there is no bleach left.
Good luck.

Ferm temps arent controlled. It was an average of mid 70s. Also yeast is always white labs.

If your air temps were mid 70's, your fermenter temps were likely 80 or higher. Yikes!! You need to get your wort down to the mid to upper 60's at least before pitching. Then actively control the fermentation to that temp with a swamp cooler, ferm chamber, refridge w/ temp controller, SOMETHING. You could be dealing with something as simple as seasonal temperature changes.

Also get rid of the bleach. Buy a $8 bottle of Starsan which is no rinse. It will last you for at least a year, probably 2.

Make sure you are using good water. And look at your crush for your mash conversion. Tighter crush may up your effieciency.

Well my home temp in texas is going to be cooler now until next spring I will build a ferm chamber.

TejasBrewing said:

Ferm temps arent controlled. It was an average of mid 70s. Also yeast is always white labs.

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Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner ! Your beers probably always had the off flavours, but you were too ecstatic to be actually producing beer that you didn't realize they were there: I know I was. You get more and more critical of them as time goes on.

Mid 70's for most ale yeast is a tad on the high side. Stick the carboy/bucket in a water bath with ice bottles and replace bottles from time to time. I have a floating thermo in the bucket that I check peridocially in the first 48 hours of fermentation to make sure everything is okay. You can manage with a stick-on thermometer too, but it is less accurate.

Try to keep your beer under 68F, or even 62F, for clean, american yeasts. Some English strains can tolerate higher temps if you want more esters, but 68F is my ceiling 99% of the time.

Ok im going to dump the porter keg and brew an ipa which I like more . Watch ferm temps and revert back to my older ways. I have some of my older stuff left and it taste much better than my new stuff. Thanks for all the help.

Good luck. I too would say ferm temps will get your beers back into excellent mode. Let us know how it turns out!

TejasBrewing said:

Ok im going to dump the porter keg and brew an ipa which I like more . Watch ferm temps and revert back to my older ways. I have some of my older stuff left and it taste much better than my new stuff. Thanks for all the help.

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How long have you been aging these?

I age them from 3 to 5 weeks usually.