Bad flavor in last 3 AG beers

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I'm sure it would work , many people do add lactic acid to the mash and continually measure til they hit their target ph. I don't have a meter so I have relied on the old taste buds method , and it works for me. Like so many other things in brewing, you have to figure out what works for you and gives you beer that tastes the way you want it to. Experiment with it. Taste it . Learn what each addition or combination does to you're beer. You will be a better brewer for it.
 
danio said:
Great! Thanks for checking, that lines up more with what I was thinking of doing.

I've been pouring over the stickies in the Brewing Science thread trying to figure out my next attempt. Is there a definitive reason\scenario to add lactic acid to water pre-heating, during mash or to sparge water? Could you add it to the mash right after adding your strike and adjust pH in realtime?
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You could. My theory is that adding it to the strike water mixes it in better for more consistency.
 
Well I figure I'll revive this dead thread in the hopes that I can get some last bits of advice.

I've brewed a few batches lately and let my old ones age. What I'm finding out is that the flavor diminishes slightly with aging but really not that much at all. It's ever-present in the finish and hits you at 3 seconds after tasting. They also don't even taste like IPAs to me.

The new brews with RO water and 1tsp lactic acid for sparge and 1 tsp lactic acid for strike water have less stale taste but its definitely there. I'm at a total loss. I'm going to do an extract brew to see whats up but I'd hate to go back to that permanently just because I can't sort out my AG brews. I've made a number of great AG beers (same recipes as ones that were recently bad) and so I'm not sure whats up. It's incredibly frustrating. Although I will say that I've learned a HUGE amount about water (I think I've memorized Yooper's water priming sticky, hehe.)

I wonder if its just something really simple like oxidation. I'm tasting it in the primary, I'm draining from my tun into my kettle with a tube (no aeration), and I'm pouring from the kettle to the carboy through a funnel like normal at about 76F. That's never been an issue before...?

Anyway if anyone as any ideas I'm at my wits end. I even put in campden tables into my RO water!

Dan
 
Did you add any minerals to you're r.o. water? That can be as bad as tyhe wrong minerals. Also, do you ferment in plastic? Perhaps oxidizing in the bucket? What sanitizer?
 
I get 2 sets of 5 gallon RO water. To each of those I add 1tsp gypsum and 1tsp calcium chloride. I use one for strike (4.5 gal of the 5) and 1 container for sparge (3.5-3.8 gal of the 5 gal container).

I ferment in glass and I use sanstar mixture in a bucket.
 
danio said:
The new brews with RO water and 1tsp lactic acid for sparge and 1 tsp lactic acid for strike water have less stale taste but its definitely there.

Anyway if anyone as any ideas I'm at my wits end. I even put in campden tables into my RO water!

Dan
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danio said:
I get 2 sets of 5 gallon RO water. To each of those I add 1tsp gypsum and 1tsp calcium chloride. I use one for strike (4.5 gal of the 5) and 1 container for sparge (3.5-3.8 gal of the 5 gal container).

I ferment in glass and I use sanstar mixture in a bucket.
Click to expand...

This might be your problem. If you're using all of that water to get to your target volume you're ending up at
Calcium = 176ppm
Chloride = 158ppm
Sulfate = 214ppm

and you're adding a LOT of acid to the water as well. 1tsp is 5ml of acid. I usually use between .8-1.2ml in a mash and I've completely stopped using it in the sparge. EDIT I also use all RO water due to my tap sucking. Not much in the the RO in terms of bicarbonates/carbonates so it should not raise your grains ph much at all.
 
Erikhild: I use 100% RO with those additions I mentioned.

Swamp: I did a batch with those same additions but no acid and same results. What would you recommend backing off from with the additions? Less gyp?
 
danio said:
Erikhild: I use 100% RO with those additions I mentioned.

Swamp: I did a batch with those same additions but no acid and same results. What would you recommend backing off from with the additions? Less gyp?
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Use 1tsp of each for the entire batch. Just plug in the amounts into one of the brewing spread sheets like brun water or the EZ water calculator. You're using 1tsp of gypsum = 4grams and 1tsp of Calcium Chloride = 3.7grams (approximate values). Just treat the mash water or if you need to to get the mash ph in line put half of the dose in the mash and the final half into the boil.
 
How are you controlling your fermentation temperatures? Are you using liquid or dry yeast? Are you making a starter?

While an off-flavor derived from your water chemistry isn't impossible, off-flavors from stressed yeast or too high fermentation temperatures is more likely.
 
I'm double pitching US-05 (and once S-04). They aren't huge brews, either. I haven't had this problem in 3 years until I switched to AG. Then my first 3 batches were awesome and the next 6 have been terrible, even the aged\carbonated ones. Switching to RO helped but not enough.

I'm controlling my temps by taping the johnson control thermometer to the side of the carboy in my standup freezer. I have it constant at 65F.
 
Your wife was tainting your homebrew so you'd get fed up, stop brewing, and pay more attention to her. Her mistake was underestimating your determination. :D

On a serious note, are you sure the problem isn't farther down the line? Maybe something in your keg lines, faucets, etc.?
 
hehe your first theory is quite possible ;-)

As far as your second, its a taste that perserveres from the first sample 7 days into the primary all the way to weeks in the keg under carbonation. So its definately a product of mashing\sparging\fermenting.
 
Is it possible that your post boil equipment is being contaminated by lactobaccillus from milling/crushing grain or even precrushed grain? The fact that you're extract brews were all ok and the first three a.g. beers were good makes me wonder if its infection taking hold. Maybe a deep clean with starsan on your fermenter and other large equipment and replcement of any tubing is in order. I feel you're pain , I had some issues with an infection and water chemistry troubles too. Just keep eliminating things, and you will be left with the answer.
 
I suppose an infection is possible. I've been bombing my equipment almost every batch with idodophor and then star san. Also there is no surface scum even after weeks and weeks. It would have to be my funnel - I've soaked it for hours at a time but its the one piece of plastic i haven't replaced. I'm going with spring water for tonight's brew with no additions. I'll also replace funnel, airlock and stopper. I won't use my wine theif i'll use a sanitized piece of glassware to dip in and get a sample. We'll see!

Just tasted a 2 month old batch from tap water days. Tastes like horrible medicine now. Recently carbonated batches with RO + additions taste ok but not great. Kinda stale. Very curious about my spring water (walmart shipped from their plant in Tacoma WA).

EDIT: Recently I've been soaking my carboy in PBW for a day or two, as well.
 
Pretty well, although maybe not perfectly? But the flavor has been there before I even was using it. I'm brewing as we speak with spring water. I got all new plastic today too. It might take me 40 years and thousands of bad batches but one day I'll realize what stupid thing I'm doing that's ruining my beer!

Next step if this doesn't work is try an extract batch again. I did great batches for years with extract.
 
Weeeeeellllllllllllllllll...................that didn't fix it.

I just brewed my spring water batch (no additions, no lactic acid) and I got pretty much the exact same beer.

So here is a sort of table or matrix of Bad Beers over the past few months:

Name - Water used - Flavor - Sparge Method

Three diff. IPAs - Tap water - Awesome...did Tricerahops, pliny, winter ale - Fly
Tricerahops - Tap water - Cardboard\astringency turning to medicine - Fly
SN Celebration - RO +CaCL\Gyp - Cardboard\Astringency but no medicine - Batch
IPA - Same but also Lactic Acid - Cardboard\Astringency but no medicine - Batch
SN Celebration - Spring Water - Cardboard\Astringency but no medicine - Batch

I think the bad medicine flavor in the first batch was from the same problem I'm having now compounded with chloramine suddenly being in my water. The water dep. says they switch wells sometimes. That is now fixed I think, hence no medicine but the cardboard etc remains. That could be a bad hypothesis

Also I've been sanitizing more and more thoroughly each time...soaking for HOURS in PBW then sanstar, replaced all plastic parts, etc. These beers are so astringent they make your tongue go numb in the back for a long time. Tongue is numb right now as a matter of fact.

I gave some to a friend (thought I might be crazy) and she said they had a finish that reminded her of newspaper\ink\cardboard. My Mash temp never gets very high and even the lactic acid OVERDOSE batch had it (2 tsp total) so I can't imagine I'm leaching tannins but maybe I am - post-sparge wort is mildly astringent. I never get above 168 during sparge. Could it be that I'm not immediately boiling my Wort from my first runnings and the reaction is continuing? Residue in mash tun? Reaction to wort chiller? It's only like 10 batches old. Maybe wort chiller + star san? As you can see, I'm banging my head against the wall for answers.

For those that weren't following this thread earlier, I had 3 awesome AG batches and now ALL new ones are bad. I refuse to think its an infection...this last batch it was all new plastic, a 2 hour PBW soak in a carboy and a 2 hour Sanstar soak. Flavor is there with or without PBW.

Finally this flavor is in very aged beer that has been primary\secondary\cold crash\kegged\conditioned. It maybe gets a bit milder but doesn't go away. My first three AG batches were awesome after 7 days in the primary! I even redid one of my first good recipes and the new ones were AWFUL. Sigh.
 
Do you have access to a pH meter? You mentioned measuring your mash pH between 5 and 6 with strips but that is a big range. I think it would be worth buying, renting or borrowing a meter. Otherwise your attempts to adjust pH are just shots in the dark.

This may or not be helpful, but my beers suffered from an off-flavour, slight astringency and lack of maltiness and mouthfeel for over a year. I tried adding 0.10 g/l of CaCL because my water is low in chloride but it had little effect. Then, last time I brewed, I made two batches, one IPA and one stout. I added 0.15 g/l of CaCL and used sauermalz for 3% of the grist in both batches. The difference between these brews and previous batches is night and day. I just went from brewing mediocore beer to brewing craft quality product, something I was starting to sadly think wasn't possible at home. Both beers are outstanding. I tell you this because I wish I had taken the initiative to accurately measure my mash pH much earlier. I still haven't measured it yet but so far the lactic acid in 3% of sauermalz seems to do the trick for me.
 
jbsg: I had checked my thermometer before but when I checked it again I started noticing anomalies. Its accurate if you only put in the tip (when brewing\checking mash I usually stick it waaaaaaaaaaay in). If you put in even a half inch more it drops radically. For 170F water it drops to 140F. So when I heat to ~170F I could be almost boiling thus making my mash and sparge wayyyy too hot. I wonder if this could be it? Also, right after my last good batch (pliny) I bought my new thermometer....hmmmm. I guess when I calibrated etc. I only stuck in the tip, but when I brew I stick it way in.


robcj: Was the CaCl to adjust pH or something else? I checked with precision strips (4.6>6.0 I think?) and it seemed like I was in the range (around 5.3 room temp). I know those are mostly bogus though. I also haven't tried sauermalz. Would this be preferable to lactic acid? If my thermometer is NOT the culprit, I'm just going to buy a pH meter as you suggest.

Thank you both for your suggestions!

EDIT: Interesting....at lower temps (120F), putting the probe in deeper makes no difference. So that explains why I never noticed it during calibration (32F for this model.) BTW for posterities sake this is a CDN DTQ-450X.
 
Awesome. After so many bad batches the cost of good equipment seems so.... negligible.

I wish they were sold locally - my next brewday is tomorrow. Oh well my analog thermometers all read really accurately, just kinda slow and not super accurate to the degree. Thats nothing compared to 30-40F tho, hah. If this does solve my problem i'm going to guillotine my bad thermometer for killing so much beer....*ssshhhhttttuuuunnnkkkkk*
 
I was wondering that too. I'm using a AHS copper wort chiller. I soak it in star san for 10 min and then put it in my boil for 15 min. Could there still be issues?
 
There's no reason to sanitize the wort chiller with Star*San. 15+ minutes sitting in the boiling wort is more than enough to sanitize the chiller.

I can't say that the Star*San + copper reaction (and it is a pretty significant reaction, chemically speaking) is a good thing to be introducing, but I don't think it's necessarily a smoking gun, either.
 
How are you aerating the wort and at what temperature? I ask because I once got bad cardboard flavors in a porter from aerating at 85F (my tap water is warm). Now I use a bucket of ice water and pump to get it down to ~65F.
 
I get a ton of foam when i pour from kettle to carboy. I also then shake it for a long time. All this is (supposedly) below 80F.

I'm also going to stop soaking wort chiller in star san...just found out about that reaction last night.
 
SixFoFalcon said:
There's no reason to sanitize the wort chiller with Star*San. 15+ minutes sitting in the boiling wort is more than enough to sanitize the chiller.

I can't say that the Star*San + copper reaction (and it is a pretty significant reaction, chemically speaking) is a good thing to be introducing, but I don't think it's necessarily a smoking gun, either.
Click to expand...

I was thinking more along the lines of a counter flow chiller, either homemade or off the shelf.
Had pretty much the same thing happen to about 4 batches of my beer, because even though I flushed and oven cooked my CF chiller, there was still gunk in there giving off flavors. Flushing with PBW, revealed how important it is to properly clean those things. No more bad flavored beer.
 
I found a thread last night on cf chillers having that problem. I've been thinking...you could almost make a giant visual workflow chart of all the problems you run into with brewing. Like...'cardboard flavor' > 'oxygenation' or 'infection' or 'chloramine' etc. Kind of an 'if not this, then proceed to this.' You could have arrows directing you and a list of symptoms etc. You could even include weird anomalies like that CF idea or even check your thermometer.

Anyway, those are the thoughts one has after spending months trying to solve one stupid problem and making a ton of bad beer.
 
Yeah and I used that a bit lately and its really nice. But I'm thinking you could even include over\under attenuation, carbonation, etc. all in a graphical, flowchart format. It could even be built into a java applet or a flash webpage. Or just a giant poster like those hop charts. Maybe it wouldn't be that useful but anyway, one of those thoughts rattling around in my head for a while.
 
No I thought that was it early on but I added a tube and got no improvement :-/
 
Maybe I missed it, but what opinion did you get from your local brewery? Perhaps you could get enough water from THEIR source / supply for a batch and try brewing with it after you've eliminated temperature errors..... Good luck!! It must be very frustrating.
 
The local brewer and his helper just thought it was 'off' and had kind of a chemical taste. I think certain people are sensitive to the differences. The one he tasted was the one with tap water. I've got my fingers crossed that it's the temperature. Also I've tried tap water, RO, and spring water and theres no major difference.

I'm curious what mashing at 160-180 results in. I mean assuming my thermometer is 30F low, I'm heating mash water to 200 instead of 170 and hitting way too high a range. Also I'm sparging super hot too if this is all true.

Gonna brew tomorrow with plain old tap water and campden tablets *crosses fingers*
 
danio said:
The local brewer and his helper just thought it was 'off' and had kind of a chemical taste. I think certain people are sensitive to the differences. The one he tasted was the one with tap water. I've got my fingers crossed that it's the temperature. Also I've tried tap water, RO, and spring water and theres no major difference.

I'm curious what mashing at 160-180 results in. I mean assuming my thermometer is 30F low, I'm heating mash water to 200 instead of 170 and hitting way too high a range. Also I'm sparging super hot too if this is all true.

Gonna brew tomorrow with plain old tap water and campden tablets *crosses fingers*
Click to expand...

It sounds like your thermometer. Making starters made my beer go from home few to beer and it will clear up a lot, but it doesn't sound like the root cause. Your water isn't good, but using ro water should have corrected that. It doesn't sound like an infection to me, and in my experience, 6 beers in a row with infection that causes a flavor usually associated with extraction issues seems unlikely. I think you are coming in way too hot.

I had this problem for a while and got fixated on my tubing not being able to take the heat as the culprit. I still to this day don't know what the issue was, but i know the flavor you are describing and it is not good. When I moved, the issue was resolved, but my situation changed all of my brewing habits.

I feel for you, just make sure you know your temps, mash out a little cooler in general, and ensure your tubing is correct on the hot side of your process.
 

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