Advice on Toronto Beerweek feedback

[mhermetz]

For the 2011 TBW I entered a Dunkel.

Here's the feedback I received:

Great appearance and a good body and carbonation are the highlights of this brew, which otherwise has a sour off-note that ultimately reduces the drinlability. Ditch the sourness and this is a good entry.

I agree 100% with this assessment, however to me it was more of a sweet and/or sour taste. So I ended up equating this with missing my mash temp of 152 and hitting 158 instead. Hence that extra sweet/ tartness of the extra unfermentables. I'm starting to second guess myself though since the judge didn't seem to think there was any sweetness to it at all! Seeing as I'm far more inexperienced then the judge when tasting I'm just going to assume he's correct in it only being a sour taste.

The beer was definitely still drinkable, but like the judge said, it simply kept it going from "okay" to "good".

Here's the recipe I used.

5 lbs Pale malt
5 lbs Wheat
.5 lbs Special B
.25 lbs Chocolate malt

I used a harvested yeast from a Weizenbock made by Mill St.
I also missed the fermentation temp of 70 with 68 degrees. I've heard that this type of yeast can be very picky at what temp it ferments at, so maybe this is a partial culprit?

 

[mhermetz]

really... nothing ?

 

[elproducto]

I won American Pale Ale in this comp, just remember these are not BJCP judges. I entered 4 beers, and almost all of the comments were the same

I'm no expert by any means, but perhaps it was more tart than sour, which could have been the wheat, or the harvested yeast. Are you sure that yeast is pure, and that they didn't bottle with a different yeast?

Great looking beer BTW! I really need to brew a dunkel.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

Is this supposed to be a german dunkel, or a dunkelweizen? (I'm not seeing the picture, not that it would help!).

If it's dunkelweizen, the wheat is in line. If it's a regular dunkel beer, the wheat isn't in line.

I've had downright bizarre comments on some beers with various levels of Special-B malts. One judge said "licorice" (which is not even close lol).

M_C

 

[mhermetz]

I would say it walks the tart/sour line. I did harvest the yeast from a 2L jug of dunkleweizen. I don't think it was bottle conditioned because the yeast still produced that great banana flavour.

I'm kind of leaning towards too much wheat. I read that on a old 2008 post here today. So I'll have to attempt changing that I think.

 

[orangehero]

Dextrins contribute to the structure but not necessarily sweetness of the beer. Regarding the tartness I would say look first to your yeast, stressed yeast can throw sour off-flavors (or maybe that's just how the yeast behaves with your grist, water, gravity, etc.), then consider water chemistry and hops. If you recultured from a bottle, the yeast may well be not good. Do you monitor and/or adjust pH?

 

[mhermetz]

I just thought of something and it was definitely a mistake on my part. This beer was the first time used 100% RO water. The one thing i didn't change was the amount of acid malt I added. Using RO should have lowered my PH from my regular water. So I suppose it's possible that when I added the same amount of Acid malt to the mash tun I inadvertently lowered the mash ph too low.