IPA brewed with Nottingham tastes powdery and funky

Two brews with Nottingham have left the same funky powdery after taste with a weird bitterness.

Both where brewed with different malts and hops and at the low end of the temperature spectrum (mid - upper 50s). One was cold crashed, the other wasn't. Both used two different brands of spring water. First one finished way low (1.007) and this one finished 1.015 but still tastes like powder.

First was an English Mild that faded kind of but still has the powdery taste after a month. This one has been bottled for almost 2 weeks and it overpowers the hops.

Powdery taste or powdery feeling?

I've personally brewed five or six different ales with Nottingham with good success. I usually ferment in the low 62 - 64° range though.

mullenite said:

Powdery taste or powdery feeling?

Click to expand...

Both. I'm going to wake another week and stick two bottles in the fridge. One for 2 days and one for an entire week to see if its the yeast still in suspension that I just happen to be overly sensitive to tasting.

How does powder taste? Like cocaine or kool-aid?

moosetav said:

How does powder taste? Like cocaine or kool-aid?

Click to expand...

Like its sucking the moisture off my tongue and leaving a dry powdery taste/feeling on it and the back of my throat.

Sounds like astringency. I don't think it's the notty.

What does yout brewday look like?

mullenite said:

Sounds like astringency. I don't think it's the notty.

What does yout brewday look like?

Click to expand...

EDIT - Turn the radio to 93.1 Rock or BIG 105.9 Classic Rock <---Most important step.

Set all of my equipment up outside. (Burner, MLT, 5 gallon water jugs/2.5 gallon jugs, setting up hose with a fog nozzle in case of need)
Re-clean pots, cooler for MLT, braid, ball valve, gaskets/washers and nipple. Leave Siphon/tubing in cleanser while I rinse the rest of the stuff.

Test fire propane tank to see if it's going to cut off on me (I have already had issues and had to go and fill a 2nd tank to finish my Strike heating).
Dough in and begin to clean out carboy and scrub like hell. Set it up to dry in the stand.

Cannonball into the pool

Check mash temps every 20 minutes and add water if I need to bring it up or down. Begin soaking IC and scrubbing off whatever gunk is left then rinsing it.

Open a beer or Two.

First runnings while heating sparge water. Vorloughing (Couldn't pick a harder spelling word) until grains/husk are gone but never ever have I gotten the clear wort I hear all about. Sparge as close to 168 as I can, mix and wait 10 minutes.

Call my dog fat.

Heat 2nd sparge while vorlaughing (sound close enough) and doing 2nd run off. Dump and mix in again. Wait 10 minutes.

Point out to my fiancee that the dogs so fat that if it fell in it would never drown. (Density joke) Attempt a back flip into the pool and do a back flop.

Get up to a boil and skim off hot break. Fling it like I have Tourette out into the grass. After 10 minutes of boiling I add the first hop addition for a 60 minute addition (or wait until it calls for it, ex 45 minute addition) and begin my timing for the hour.

Attempt to stir and control the boil from the pool, epic fail.

Immersion chiller after boil is done while ice bathing. Used my pools top step when the water was still in the 70s but now that its 88 it "aint gonna cut it".

Tried whirlpooling last batch to form a cone. Didn't get ****. Siphoned off enough beer to feel that the handles would break in my hands from trying pour from my el cheapo pot. Sannitize my hoses and carboy/stopper/airlock.

Make Fiancee hold strainer above funnel with 2nd strainer in it. Get as much beer as I can. First batch I dumped everything, 2nd batch I tried my best to strain/leave behind most of the gunk.

Wash and get annoyed at my crap for being too big to fit in the sink but too small to not boil over.

I've brewed literally hundreds of batches with notty and never had anything like this. My guess is you have a bacterial infection and something needs sanitized big time. Maybe step up your cleaning/sanitizing routine; it sounds like aceto bacteria. Also, do you secondary? If your not getting the beer off that left over scum it can have a similar flavor.

Good luck!

knightbeer39 said:

I've brewed literally hundreds of batches with notty and never had anything like this. My guess is you have a bacterial infection and something needs sanitized big time. Maybe step up your cleaning/sanitizing routine; it sounds like aceto bacteria. Also, do you secondary? If your not getting the beer off that left over scum it can have a similar flavor.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Doesn't have an acid or vinegar flavor or anything other then a dry powdery sucking the water off your tongue feeling.

First batch with it was Primary for 2.5 weeks then bottle. Primed with corn sugar.
2nd batch was 2 weeks primary, 2 weeks secondary with dry hopping below 45 degrees then cold crashed for a few days then bottled cold. Primed with DME, all I had on hand.

It definitely sounds like astringency to me as well, but I'm not sure that your process has anything to do with it. I avoid Notty as they have had some QC issues in the last couple of years... Do you do anything to your water? Could be a result of chlorine or something?

Hmm. Are the yeast kind of old, or are you getting them from a place that might turn over stale product? Because if the yeast are weak, they can lose out to bacteria pretty easily. Are these fresh bought, or are you cleaning your old yeast, etc?

I don't know if I'd worry about infection first off, but if you've been using your fermenter for more than 10 batches it might be time to trade that bad boy out. Bottling bucket could be an issue as well... those red spigot things are supposedly pretty bad when it comes to infection.

I can only guess at what the issue is, without tasting the beer myself.

carnevoodoo said:

It definitely sounds like astringency to me as well, but I'm not sure that your process has anything to do with it. I avoid Notty as they have had some QC issues in the last couple of years... Do you do anything to your water? Could be a result of chlorine or something?

Click to expand...

Used Publix Spring Water on one, used Zephyrhills Spring on another.

Justibone said:

Hmm. Are the yeast kind of old, or are you getting them from a place that might turn over stale product? Because if the yeast are weak, they can lose out to bacteria pretty easily. Are these fresh bought, or are you cleaning your old yeast, etc?

I don't know if I'd worry about infection first off, but if you've been using your fermenter for more than 10 batches it might be time to trade that bad boy out. Bottling bucket could be an issue as well... those red spigot things are supposedly pretty bad when it comes to infection.

I can only guess at what the issue is, without tasting the beer myself.

Click to expand...

Fresh bought from only HB store on the SE side of FL. First batch took 2 days to take off, 2nd batch took hours. No starters. I take the bottling bucket spigot off and soak it in cleaner and sanitizer. When I sanitize the bucket I run everything out through the spigot. I doubt its an infection since the taste dissipated in the 1st batch after a month but never went away.

Searching through the Nottingham post on pages 13-15 I found some interesting things.

- Stange minerally, metallic type taste (Mineral taste could be powdery, right?)
- Cloudiness, my beers didn't clear up much in the cold crash or secondary.

If my next batch (US 05) comes out dry and powdery tasting then I know it's something definately on my end. I think it was my fault for not tasting the beer during the fermentation.

Jdecarol said:

Fresh bought from only HB store on the SE side of FL. First batch took 2 days to take off, 2nd batch took hours. No starters. I take the bottling bucket spigot off and soak it in cleaner and sanitizer. When I sanitize the bucket I run everything out through the spigot. I doubt its an infection since the taste dissipated in the 1st batch after a month but never went away.

Click to expand...

Time to fermentation can be deceptive, but if it took off in two hours, then the yeast weren't weak.

If the flavor went away in a month, then it's unlikely to be infection.

I feel ya on the bottling bucket, but the spigots can be nasty -- even if you run sanitizer through them. Remember that sanitizers can only work if something is completely clean. Heat sanitizing, however, can work even if there are microscopic junk bits in there, so near-boiling the disassembled spigot (or even running it in the dishwasher) can get any residual nasties dead, and then running sanitizer through should be good.

I'm really just spitballing here. If you are sure there are no temperature stresses on the yeast, then I'm drawing a blank.

Found another notty thread where they described a metallic twang that lasts for about 10 weeks and after reading all the pages in the big notty page I might be pretty much hosed.

So is it metallic or is it drying? There is a big difference between the two. From what you initially said it REALLY sounds like astringency.

You say you aren't getting a clear run off, are you getting any grain husks or anything going in to your boil kettle or is it just hazy?

mullenite said:

So is it metallic or is it drying? There is a big difference between the two. From what you initially said it REALLY sounds like astringency.

You say you aren't getting a clear run off, are you getting any grain husks or anything going in to your boil kettle or is it just hazy?

Click to expand...

Just hazy. Talking to others in another thread where they are describing it as tartness that dissipates after 10 weeks. So thats tartness and metallic tastes in 10 weeks. I was also thinking it just may be my taste buds that are sensitive to it because so far SWMBO and others haven't mentioned it.

Astringency can be described as tart, it is a puckering dryness. I'm just not sure how the yeast would cause it.

Not as dry tasting as the last bottle I tried but now has that sort of tart flavor in the back of the throat instead of the sucking the water off of your tongue.

Jdecarol said:

Just hazy. Talking to others in another thread where they are describing it as tartness that dissipates after 10 weeks. So thats tartness and metallic tastes in 10 weeks. I was also thinking it just may be my taste buds that are sensitive to it because so far SWMBO and others haven't mentioned it.

Click to expand...

SWMBO and I can taste things in our wine that none of our friends tasted. Maybe we had associations between our sanitizer and the process, whereas other people wouldn't necessarily have formed the same connections in their limbic systems... We thought our wine was crap and we were giving it away, while our friends were taking any bottle we mentioned. After a few weeks, finally we tasted what they were tasting all along, and we horded the last few bottles for ourselves.

And one bottle for Mom. I mean, c'mon, she's my Mom.