Missing Finish

I brewed a Palilalia IPA recently and have just sampled the bottles after 4 weeks conditioning. The beer tastes great, it's smooth but bitter, and not overpoweringly skunky like some IPA's tend to be.

However, the beer is lacking that crisp finish at the end. The initial flavor is about all I could ask for, but something is missing on the end.

I used a standard 5 gallon batch, off the top of my head ingredients were...

1lb crystal barley
5.5lbs Amber DME
.5 lbs roasted malted barley
1oz 8% northern brewer hops
1oz 7.7% cascade hops at flameout
1oz 7% challenger hops
2 tsp gypsum
american ale yeast

Steeped the barley for 30mins, then strained wort. added DME stirring while dissolving, added northern brewer/challenger hops for 60 mins and gypsum, then final minute added the cascades, and strained the wort again.

Sometimes the finish on a beer relates more to the temperature of your wort, so that'd be my first guess. After that, your guess is as good as mine!

Perhaps try dry hopping with cascade hops 7 days before bottling.

One of the questions I have never had answered YET - is how to get a certain finish that some pro brewery's have.

For instance - Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar! I have made some pretty good clones of this but can not get that final taste event that they seem to get.

Dry Hopping gives you the opening taste event but no one seems to understand how the closing event works!

mash temp? (if this was even all grain...the recipe looks like extract w/ steeping grains?)
OG?
FG?

my guess is there's just too much body left. if you can find the OG and FG of the beer you're cloning, it can give you a good idea of how dry it is.

with extract recipes it can be hard to get things dry enough since you can't control the wort fermentability like you can with all grain brewing. you can, however, use adjuncts like sugar to dry out the beer. just don't go overboard.

malkore said:

mash temp? (if this was even all grain...the recipe looks like extract w/ steeping grains?)
OG?
FG?

my guess is there's just too much body left. if you can find the OG and FG of the beer you're cloning, it can give you a good idea of how dry it is.

with extract recipes it can be hard to get things dry enough since you can't control the wort fermentability like you can with all grain brewing. you can, however, use adjuncts like sugar to dry out the beer. just don't go overboard.

Click to expand...

LOL! When I answered I just looked at what he put in, not at the amounts. You're right, if he only used 1.5 pounds of grain for 5 gal. of beer it had to be a mostly extract recipe.

I've never done all-grain, but for brewers sophisticated enough to worry about mouth-feel, they should probably be moving on towards all grain (maybe even using Death's all-grain, two pot, smaller batch stovetop method at first).

I had this kind of issue with all my early AG brews... great opening flavor, little finish. Every batch had moderately high attenuation, but still within reasonable range for the yeasts I was using. Some adjustments that I've made:

Water - I use a mix of distilled and a small amount of local tap water, and supplement with either calcium chloride or gypsum (or some mix of both) depending on the style. CaCl2 is good for maltier styles, Gypsum for IPA's and the like in moderation. If you're extract or partial mash brewing, this should be less of an issue, but you could play with a little gypsum if you think your sulfates could be low

Mash - I started using a single decoction mash to hit my second sacharrification rest temperature for a lot of brews. Sometimes I will add some additional malts or adjuncts during the extracted portion's rest (pre-boil) and hold it at the high end (156 to 158) to generate some big fat complicated sugars. I would swear this has produced some excellent body / mouthfeel in recent attempts.


Specialty Malts - I find that using smaller amounts of darker crystal malts produces better finish than larger amounts of lighter crystal malts. Also, specialties like Munich and Ashburne Mild seem to round things out nicely. Small amounts of oat and wheat adjuncts can help a lot, though wheat messes with clarity to some degree.

Yeast - Obviously a big deal... but I'm sure you've heard plenty about this before. Pick the right yeast, and given choices, compare expected atttenuations and profiles for each strain.

Hopefully the water and specialty malt comments are helpful if you're partial mashing...

Oh sorry, completely forgot. I used 5.5lbs of amber DME in the mix.