Astringent Wort

[organicrust]

So yesterday, I brewed a saison with 9lbs of Belgian Pils. Right now it is fermenting rather violently (WLP566) and smells great, but I am worried that I may have oversparged and extracted some tannins.

After I collected the runnings in my kettle, I gave it all a good stir and collected a sample for a gravity reading. After it cooled and I got my reading, I tasted it.

The flavor was unmistakably similar to black tea. It wasn't as bad as sucking on a tea bag, but more on the level of iced tea. I asked my friend to taste it as well and without any prompting from me, he also identified the taste as black tea.

Is my beer going to taste awful or is it too early to tell? If it does end up tannic, are there any remedies?

Thanks for your consideration.

 

[wolfman_48442]

In my opinion, there are 2 tools that an all-grain brewer must have to avoid your exact situation, and brew great beer in general.
An accurate thermometer, and a ph meter that you can calibrate at 2 points (4 and 7).
Astringency can only happen if your wort ph is 6 or higher, and the temperature goes over 170.
With a light grain bill like you have, a starting water ph of between 5 and 5.5 would prevent almost any chance of astringency, which is easily accomplished with a little phosphoric acid.

In my experience, astringency does not go away sufficiently, and I've dumped a couple of batches before I knew what I've mentioned above.

 

[Transamguy77]

Not sure how many AG batches you have done but I noticed since switching to AG that all of my AG brews taste bitter right before going into the fermenter where my extract did not have that bitter taste and the taste is gone by bottling time.

 

[organicrust]

Yeah, I've been sparging blind to pH, but I guess I should at least buy some strips. I've never been happy with glass electrodes, but it seems like I need some way to monitor my sparges.

I do carefully monitor the temperature of my mash tun, and it was never over 170 F. I did perform two batch sparges and I assume that the second was too thin.

So it may turn out poorly or it may mellow with conditioning? Has anyone ever rescued a tannic beer?

 

[Denny]

Dude, you're worrying at least a month too soon. Calm down and be patient.

 

[duboman]

Do not judge a beer before it has fermented, carbonated and conditioned, sampling your wort is fun to do but do not put much into it because it's just not beer yet, like Denny said, just relax and be patient!

 

[Jakeintoledo]

If all else fails, you could give it away to your friends that think Coors is high end beer. They'll be thankful, and would enjoy tannic beer about as much as any good beer, which is to say nnot at all...but they'll appreciate the gesture.

Lol

 

[shelly_belly]

"Gelatin removes a quantity of tannin roughly equal to its own weight."

Read about it here...
http://www.winebook.webs.com/

 

[ArcLight]

"Gelatin removes a quantity of tannin roughly equal to its own weight."

Read about it here...
http://www.winebook.webs.com/

If this works for beer, this is REALLY good to know! :fro:

 

[Number2]

I'd like to hear from someone who has tried gelatin.

 

[flabyboy]

I agree it needs time. What are you using for a water source. Pretty hard to get a pH over 6 when using RO water.

 

[organicrust]

I agree it needs time. What are you using for a water source. Pretty hard to get a pH over 6 when using RO water.

Funny you asked. I generally brew strictly with RO and add salts according to style.

This time, I had purchased 5 gals of Primo brand water to get the plastic carboy. Not wanting to waste the water, I used 2.5 gal of it to sparge with. I added it to 5 gal of RO.

Seems like that was a mistake because Primo adds sodium bicarb to their water for taste. If I had read the label, I would have hit it with some phosphoric acid.

 

[CS223]

I would never take the taste of unfermented wort as an indicator of anything serious. Every time I've sampled my wort, it's tasted bad and I got worried. Yeast are magic little creatures, let them do their jobs then taste.

 

[organicrust]

Hey, just an update to anyone in the future who searches the thread. Today, I racked my beer to secondary to allow it to clear and in the process took a sample for SG testing. On tasting it, I noticed no astringency. Whatever flavor that I had tasted in the wort was no longer present. It just tasted like a saison (a little clove and a little funk).

So, RDWHAHB.