Off Flavor - Oxidation?

Yakima 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
gifty74 said:
Their underlying comment was "oxidation", and lack of flavor, and no malt backbone. This beer was bottled, and they tasted it right at the 3 week point after bottling. Didn't have an excessive aging time or anything like that. Up until now I have recirculated during the mash as I have a direct fire system. The probe in my pump gives me my mash temp, so I need to recirculate to get an accurate reading. Then my flame kicks on whenever directed by the temp controller (if the temp drops too low). I don't think I've seen one brewery (at any level) recirculate during the mash. I'm wondering if this might be pushing the limits of aeration on the 'hot side', and making aeration an actual possibility. Because the outlet of the pump is limited by a ball valve that is maybe a quarter open, the March pump is still running at full speed, introducing the wort constantly to air/oxygen. On top of that it's being pumped in the top of the mash tun, and splashed down on top of the grain bed. I just wonder how detrimental the pump running is as it is churning the wort the head due to running at full speed but only letting a low flow rate out of the pump. Any thoughts here? How else could I have gotten such high oxidation comments on a 3 week old beer?
Click to expand...

I have the same setup as you describe and do not have issues with oxidation. That said, my wort is returned to the grain bed about 1/2" below the top of the liquid through a silicone tube (there is no splashing). Assuming you don't have any compromise in your pump system causing it to take in air, the impeller turning shouldn't affect the wort.

My guess is that it's something else in the process. It can happen at any temp above 120°F on the hot side, but is often from the cold side with homebrewers, in my experience (transferring to secondary, bottling, using a carboy cap instead of a bung, cold crashing and sucking in ambient air through the airlock, etc.)

On a side note, 2 of the 3 criticisms you mentioned from the judges are not necessarily (or even likely) related to oxygen.
 
I may not have described it exactly, but the comments were tied into the fact that the beer was oxidized. Thanks for the info on the recirculating mash. I may try to put the output from the pump (which is now ported into the top of my MT) down under the grain bed with a tube/hose. That might help. As for the cold side, not really anything out of the ordinary. I've been brewing for a while now so I know the basics about limiting exposure to oxygen as much as possible after it's fermented. I dissolved the priming sugar in sanitized water so I could add it in with minimal stirring. Not sure where else it could've come from. Guess I'll work on the hot side.
 
Horseshoot said:
"I don't think I've seen one brewery (at any level) recirculate during the mash."

Wait... What? Loads of brewers recirculate during the mash. Including me.
Click to expand...

By that I meant any brewery I've been to, not home brewery. I've done events at 3 different breweries and talked to several other brewers and they all just let the mash rest, and then recirc during the last 15 mins or so to clear it up a bit. I didn't see one of them recirculating the entire mash.
 
Ah. I misunderstood you. What some do is lay a hose (which is the covered by a couple inches of wort) on the grain bed. I use "Loc-Line" as my return. It allows me to adjust the hight of the return.
 
There seems to be a lot of things that can cause oxidation type flavors. You've only mentioned this one recipe's score, but perhaps there is not oxidation in your other beers. Perhaps you've never brewed this beer before and will never do so again?

If only your looking for simple tweaks to your setup to improve flavor and not scientifically eliminate what went wrong with this brew, then I would suggest the following in order of importance, if indeed relevant.

1.) pitch less yeast and aerate less. Yeast don't make good flavors until they run out of oxygen and ferment anaerobically. Also raise your ferm temp if your on the low end of your yeast's range.

2.) eliminate the pump from your setup. The best beer I made this year was when my pump died. The malt flavors seemed to increase. insulation and gravity are what you need here.

3.)ingredient freshness and known flavor impact on recipe. If you put Amarillo hops in your beer and you have no idea how they taste, then you really can't say if you have an off-flavor unless you have made the same recipe before with Amarillo being the only difference. Same thing goes with stale ingredients, if you put old hops in beer and you're not familiar with working with old hops, then you shouldn't have expectations.

4.) eliminate o2 from your bottles. not sure how you could accomplish this, beer has co2 in solution and will fill some of the headspace, but if they sit there while you fill 48 bottles uncapped, they could end up with air in them.

5.) get a 2nd opinion. You might be surprised how unqualified some judges are. The judge might be telling you oxidation, but the off flavor is really a combination of diacetyl, dms, tannins, phenols, and starch/protein and they had to write something down so that is what you got.
 
gifty74 said:
I also have many of the off flavors described in this thread (although I now know there could be several different issues going on here), but I recently got results back from a local homebrew competition. Two master judges both gave my Tripel a 19/50 (the worst I ever got). Their underlying comment was "oxidation", and lack of flavor, and no malt backbone. This beer was bottled, and they tasted it right at the 3 week point after bottling.

[snip]

Any thoughts here? How else could I have gotten such high oxidation comments on a 3 week old beer?
Click to expand...

I sort of doubt that two master judges would agree that oxidation was a flaw unless it was really there. I mean, you could have something like that happen, but it seems like the more unlikely scenario.

Most oxidation happens after fermentation, usually during packaging. This is the most likely source of your problem. Since all beer is exposed to oxygen during packing, oxidation is pretty much inevitable, eventually. Note that poor handling either by competition organizers or delivery will accelerate oxidation rates very quickly, so that might be what's happened. The particular bottle that the judges got might have been a low fill or a bad on in the batch too.

Do you still have some? Does it seems oxidized to you now? Here's another problem that you might be having: your beer was confused with someone else's. I've organized a competition before and there's a lot of opportunity to mix things up when you are properly blinding everything. I hate to say that you may have gotten a score for someone else's beer, but there's a possibility that's what happened.
 
This has been an awesome thread to read since I seem to be having a similar problem as many of you seem to have had. I notice my DIPA's and IPA's seem to suffer the most, my APA's hold up better, and my non-hoppy beers are fine. The beer that's the most impacted by whatever this problem is happens to be the best beer I brew, a Heady Topper like DIPA.

I figured my problem has to be oxidation from the bottling process, but after seeing how many people with kegs have this issue, I'm not so sure. I'm switching to kegs soon anyway, but I'm wondering how much that will help. The biggest signs that point to oxidation to me is the color change my beer goes through. My DIPA starts off a beautiful golden/light orange color. It basically looks like a glass of OJ. After about 2 to 3 weeks, it pours a brown color and the hops have become muddled and there's a sweetness that wasn't there prior. I use Conan yeast in this thing, so the yeast never really drops out, and this looks like a completely different beer after a few weeks.

I don't secondary, I dry hop for 4 or 5 days after the first week of fermentation, then bottle. I'm very careful while racking. I'm hoping when I can flush everything with C02 it will help, but that doesn't seem to be helping some of you.

The only things I can think of are my dry hops causing oxidation, or something on the hot side. I do BIAB, but I mash with normal volumes, with a "batch sparge" in a second kettle that I move the grain bag to for 10 or 15 minutes. I basically have two worts that I combine by pouring my "sparge kettle" into the other. I had heard hot side aeration wasn't a big deal on this scale, but could this be my problem and maybe hoppy beers are more sensitive to it? Otherwise it has to be something with the large dose of dry hops my DIPA and IPAs get.

This sucks, hoppy beers are my favorite, and I'm scared to brew anything bigger than a 2.5 gallon batch of them since I won't get to drink any more than that before the beer turns to crap.
 
Bramstoker17 said:
This has been an awesome thread to read since I seem to be having a similar problem as many of you seem to have had. I notice my DIPA's and IPA's seem to suffer the most, my APA's hold up better, and my non-hoppy beers are fine. The beer that's the most impacted by whatever this problem is happens to be the best beer I brew, a Heady Topper like DIPA.

I figured my problem has to be oxidation from the bottling process, but after seeing how many people with kegs have this issue, I'm not so sure. I'm switching to kegs soon anyway, but I'm wondering how much that will help. The biggest signs that point to oxidation to me is the color change my beer goes through. My DIPA starts off a beautiful golden/light orange color. It basically looks like a glass of OJ. After about 2 to 3 weeks, it pours a brown color and the hops have become muddled and there's a sweetness that wasn't there prior. I use Conan yeast in this thing, so the yeast never really drops out, and this looks like a completely different beer after a few weeks.

I don't secondary, I dry hop for 4 or 5 days after the first week of fermentation, then bottle. I'm very careful while racking. I'm hoping when I can flush everything with C02 it will help, but that doesn't seem to be helping some of you.

The only things I can think of are my dry hops causing oxidation, or something on the hot side. I do BIAB, but I mash with normal volumes, with a "batch sparge" in a second kettle that I move the grain bag to for 10 or 15 minutes. I basically have two worts that I combine by pouring my "sparge kettle" into the other. I had heard hot side aeration wasn't a big deal on this scale, but could this be my problem and maybe hoppy beers are more sensitive to it? Otherwise it has to be something with the large dose of dry hops my DIPA and IPAs get.

This sucks, hoppy beers are my favorite, and I'm scared to brew anything bigger than a 2.5 gallon batch of them since I won't get to drink any more than that before the beer turns to crap.
Click to expand...

Maybe HSA is a thing? It might be but commercial breweries aren't concerned and I've never met a homebrewer who believes in it but didn't have a post fermentation source of oxidation they were overlooking.

Oxidation is very noticeably in light coloured hoppy beers and it won't take much to ruin them. Get rid of ALL of your possible post fermentation oxygen sources before blaming the mythical hot side aeration. Get some kegs, add the dry hops to a purged keg and transfer in, etc. If you still have a problem (you won't), then lets talk about the hot side.
 
gbx said:
Maybe HSA is a thing? It might be but commercial breweries aren't concerned and I've never met a homebrewer who believes in it but didn't have a post fermentation source of oxidation they were overlooking.

Oxidation is very noticeably in light coloured hoppy beers and it won't take much to ruin them. Get rid of ALL of your possible post fermentation oxygen sources before blaming the mythical hot side aeration. Get some kegs, add the dry hops to a purged keg and transfer in, etc. If you still have a problem (you won't), then lets talk about the hot side.
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks! Hopefully kegging will fix this for me. I feel like I've done everything possible to minimize oxidation while bottling, but I feel like its unavoidable to some extent with a big hopped light colored beer unless I can keg
 
Kegs will change your life. I put it off for too long because of the initial costs but if you love beer you won't regret it. Its worth it just to get rid of oxidation but it also makes it relatively easy to serve perfectly carbonated, perfectly clear beer which is very hard to do when bottle conditioning and it makes a world of difference.

...and if you can, get used pepsi kegs then you can consider them "an investment" because they are awesome and will only go up in value. If you give up on homebrewing you can easily sell them for as much or more than you paid for them as the new chinese made ones aren't near as good.
 
Purge your secondary with CO2 before transferring. Transfer beer with as little agitation possible. I had 2 batches of oxidized tasting sasion in a row, been purging my carboys since then. No issues.
 
A lot of people forget to purge the racking cane. They flush the carboy and keg and then blast that air in the cane and hose right into the receiving vessel.

I just wanted to say I am finally having some success with IIPAs. I have 4 month old keg that is still drinkable. It had 10oz of hops including 5 in the dry hop.

I think the biggest change for me was sticking with hops I like (thanks Tagz) and eliminating other off flavors (diacetyl, yeast, bad recipe, keg cleaning). And then lastly the oxygen. I have completely reworked brewing/racking process with focus on avoiding 02 at every stage. Eventually I will go back one piece at a time to see what is/isn't nessessary.
 

Similar threads

refect
How far will the flavor from lactic acid carry over?
Replies
9
Views
497
mabrungard
mabrungard
Zenmeister
Cold Dry hopping
Replies
7
Views
369
day_trippr
day_trippr
refect
Has Sabro ruined my beer?
Replies
28
Views
2K
Brooothru
Brooothru
Clint Yeastwood
Citrus Aroma from Crystal Hops?
Replies
6
Views
410
day_trippr
day_trippr
A
Oxidation
Replies
32
Views
2K
doug293cz
doug293cz
Brewer's Friend 300

Latest posts

Back
Top