Mashing Oxidation Problem vs too young - What went wrong?

I started partial mashing about 5 batches ago and just tapped the 3rd batch yesterday to find something went wrong. I brewed a pale ale with a couple pounds of rye and lightly hopped it with Hallertauer (about 30 IBU) and it had an OG of 1.060 and FG of 1.012.

The beer is not undrinkable by any means, but definitely has a sort of viscous, tangy quality to the taste that seems out of place, especially since I got the FG down to 1.012. A part of this taste is definitely the pepperiness of the rye coming through but I have had many rye ales before and none have this sort of taste. I basically narrowed down why this has happened to two possibilities:

1) I did a partial mash in a separate 5 gal water cooler (about 5 lbs of grain and 7.5 quarts if water), but shattered my large cup that I was going to use to scoop out the wort from the cooler before transferring to the brew pot so I just dumped the wort from the mash tun into my brewpot.

2) I definitely tapped this beer too young. It conditioned in the primary for about 2 weeks after primary fermentation was done then in the keg for a week before I put it in the kegerator. It cold conditioned at about 40 degrees in the for another week before drinking so excluding the cold conditioning since they yeast could not live at that temp, I only really conditioned the beer for about 3 weeks.

Does anyone have any insight on this or experience with making either of these mistakes? I have 3 more partial mash batches in fermentors now and am worried they may come out like this and also obviously want to know how to correct for this in the future.

Thanks very, very much for any repsonses

The two "mistakes" you listed aren't really mistakes.

Most properly fermented beers are ready for consumption within 3 weeks after pitching. So long as the fermentation was healthy, I see no problem with your technique.

As far the "viscous, tangy quality" you noted, has the beer cleared? Suspended yeast will certainly leave a "tangy" flavor in the beer (a la hefeweizen).

My only recommendation would be to cold crash as close to 32F as possible before racking to a keg for serving. Cold crashing settles the vast majority of yeast and improves the flavor stability.

So just dumping the 7.5 quarts from my cooler to the brewpot does not put me at much risk for off flavors? I read in Mosher's Radical Brewing that this can contribute a sort of tangy taste.

The beer has not cleared yet even though it has been cold conditioning for a week. I will try to get it lower and possibly transfer to a new keg.

rtbrews said:

So just dumping the 7.5 quarts from my cooler to the brewpot does not put me at much risk for off flavors? I read in Mosher's Radical Brewing that this can contribute a sort of tangy taste.

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No, not in the short term. A healthy fermentation will cleanup most hot-side oxidation flavors. However, it may contribute to long-term flavor stability issues.

rtbrews said:

The beer has not cleared yet even though it has been cold conditioning for a week. I will try to get it lower and possibly transfer to a new keg.

Click to expand...

Bingo. You're tasting suspended yeast.

Like I mentioned in the last post, focus more on clearing the yeast (cold crash, gelatin, filtering, etc.) before racking to a serving keg.

This may be a simple question, but I have tried looking with little success. Is there a good resource on how to transfer between corny kegs using co2 pressure? or would you recommend using my siphon? It seems I should be concerned about oxidation at this point using the siphon into another keg.

just run a jumper line from one "out" tube to the other "out" tube and push over

Use one of these

http://kegcowboy.com/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=183

If you are using your fist keg to cold crash and let the yeast settle out won't you get the yeast into the second keg when transfering using the jumper?

I found a good resource from BYO by Chris Colby on this. You basically watch the jumper line because the yeast will be pulled out first. Once you see the line clear, stop the jumper line, blow out the yeast from the keg through the tap then re-attach and continue.

http://***********/stories/techniqu...rewing-tips/1556-transferring-beer-techniques

Thanks for the link rtbrews! I have not looked into this yet, but was thinking of a way to cold crash my beer using a keg insted of my fermenter bucket as my bucket is too big for the fridge.

I'm sure I'll be using this method very soon....like in one week when I cold crash my beer that is fermenting as we speak.

Or you could just cut an inch or so off the bottom of the dip tube and you won't transfer any yeast.