Grainy brown ale

I wasn't sure if I should post this here or in the beginner's forum, but I have had a newcastle clone in bottles for over 2 and a half months, and it still has this strong grainy taste to it, but it has a nice malty finish.

Now I'm sure if I just wait long enough that taste will eventually clear out, and I'll have a great tasting beer, but I'm looking to improve my brewing method. Is it normal for a brown ale to still taste grainy after 2 months in the bottle?

The recipe is Biermuncher's aberdeen brown ale.

I used the stove-top all-grain brewing method, and probablly used too much water in both my sparge, and my mash. I'm not sure if that would cause any problems or not.

Also I ended up using more flaked corn then the recipe called for. My scaled-down version of the recipe called for .36 lbs of corn, and I used closer to .50 lbs of corn. I'm not sure how much of a difference that would make.

I've made an Irish stout using the same method, and it came out pretty good. I used less water in the sparge so maybe that made the difference. Or it could be that I don't notice the grainy taste, because irish stouts are suppose to taste a little grainy.

Did you use generic two-row or an actual pale malt like Maris Otter for example? There is a difference. The generic two-row has lighter color (1-2 *L) as oppose to Pale malt (3-3.5 *L). Generic two-row is usually better suited to brew pilsners due to it's light color, but also taste rather grainy. If didn't use that, but used a real Pale malt, then the grainy flavors may come from your volume of sparge water that you say is too large. Then in that case, you might have extracted more than sugars during your rinse. How much water did you use and how hot was it?

mithion said:

Did you use generic two-row or an actual pale malt like Maris Otter for example? There is a difference. The generic two-row has lighter color (1-2 *L) as oppose to Pale malt (3-3.5 *L). Generic two-row is usually better suited to brew pilsners due to it's light color, but also taste rather grainy. If didn't use that, but used a real Pale malt, then the grainy flavors may come from your volume of sparge water that you say is too large. Then in that case, you might have extracted more than sugars during your rinse. How much water did you use and how hot was it?

Click to expand...

I used 2 row Pale malt US. 2.0 SRM.

I used about 1.5 gallons of water for 3.5 lbs of grain, which is almost double what I needed to use.

My mash temperture was around 150F

My sparge temperture was around 170F

It was nearly 3 months ago so I'm doing a lot of this by memory, perhaps I should start keeping notes from now on. I should also mention that I didn't rinse the grains but instead used the tea bag method with my 1.5 gallons of water.

I'm not very familiar with the teabag method of sparging or what kind of results you get with it. Your temperatures are fine and your sparge volume doesn't sound like over the top either. I sparge with 4-5 gallons for 10 lbs of grain. But I'm leaning towards your base malt as the culprit. That pale malt at 2 *L is possibly a variety that just happens to have a grainier taste or flavor. Next time you brew this beer, I would try it with a british pale malt. If you can get a hold of maris otter, that's the best. It's maltier than the American varieties and not as grainy. You might want to also look on the side of mild malt as your base for brown ale. That's another good one to use for the style.