my beer is too bitter

Hello everyone,

Few weeks ago I tasted my second AG brew and it was beer like, but I wasn't satisfied at all. The taste was too bitter. It's a wheat beer and it tastes as bitter as a pilsner urquell. Not like a good pilsner, in the back part of my tounge, I feel bitterness everywhere in my mouth. The first mouthful tastes as a wheat beer should, but all the rest is just bitter.

I believed that this happened only once and the next brew will be better. Unfortunately it wasn't. Yesterday I was about to bottle a Hoegaarden clone and the bitterness was exactly the same. It smelled like Hoegaarden, but it was just too bitter again.

What may have I done wrong?

- hard water?
- I tried to keep mash-out at 78C
- short time in the bottle? (like 2 weeks)

I'd appreciate any inputs.

Thanks!

I had a wheat beer taste like this once. It's the only batch I've ever dumped. The problem in my case was that the mash pH was far too high... Around 6. Hard water doesn't necessarily mean you'll have a high mash pH, but check your city or county's water report and do a bit of research. John palmer's book is a good place to start. Anyway with a high mash pH, y ou extract too many tannins from the husk of the grain, which tastes bitter in a weird, powdery way at the back of your tongue. This could also be caused by sparging at too high of a trnperature. I'd bet you have a thermometer though... so this likely wasn't the issue. Pick up some pH strips and check with a small amount of crushed grain and the water you usedat mashing temperature and see what you get!

Add a couple of pellets of calcium chloride to a glass and see if that makes an improvement.

yeah man, could be water chemistry. Try a batch with pure RO with a little calcium chloride added.

also, stop drinking hoegaarden! .. seriously, i cant drink that stuff....

Thanks for all your comment. I checked the water quality report as well as the Mash pH chapter in the Palmer book. I played with the excel sheet I downloaded from here: http://www.howtobrew.com/section3/chapter15-3.html (bottom of the page)
I knew that our water is hard, I used boiled water so far, but I'll certainly measure and cut the mash pH next time if needed.

I think I have an other problem with SO4 - Na ratio. Could you please check this for me too? According to the excel sheet adding some canning salt would help, but it sounds a litte weird.

Thanks a lot!

Ca: 80,5 mg/l
Mg: 22,2 mg/l
HCO3:281 mg/l
SO4: 72,2 mg/l
Na:18,4 mg/l
Cl:26,9 mg/l

You can buy a ph buffer that will lock your mash ph right at 5.2. It has saved me a lot or worries.