crocks86
Well-Known Member
I don't want to go into a crazy amount of detail (unless people want it), but I've been having trouble lately getting consistent good tasting brews. My main concerns are contamination, chloramines, or hot side aeration.
I've been getting varying degrees of astringency, a little medincal flavour, or a generally dirty/hard to define off flavour. This varies from beer to beer but the astringency is the main serious flaw. I generally hear high sparge pH, high sparge temp, or excess grain material in the boil will cause that but all those things are in check (I think) in my process. I check the mash and sparge pH, mash is usually 5.2-5.4 at room temp, sparge hasn't been above 5.8. I filter in the tun with a braided ss hose, then at the end of the run off hose with a nylon bag (just tried with on my last 2 brews because grain in the boil was on my mind as the source of astringency). My sparge temp is generally aimed at 170F, and I batch sparge. I've tried colder temps to see if it changed anything, and it didn't.
These off tasting brews have been a big range of styles, and a range of intensity of these off flavours. I have a pils (95% pilsner, 5% carapils, magnum for bittering, Tettnanger for flavour/aroma, to 32 IBU) that just came from primary now in cold conditioning, it doesn't have much of an actual bitterness, but instead is fairly astringent and still slightly sweet even though it's at the F.G I was going for (1.010 from 1.048). Also did a Baltic porter with a pretty medicinal taste, odd thing was I did a "Baltic Mild" from the last gallon of the runnings of that batch (1.035 with 13 or so IBU) since I slightly overshot the efficiency and it tasted fine. I rebrewed this recipe this past weekend and it tasted slightly astringent going into the fermentor but we'll see how that goes.
Basically I think my process rules out tannins for astringency, and the mild coming out tasting much better than the porter should rule out the chloramines (although I've since started using campden tablets but only on one brew so far). Everyone seems pretty adamant that HSA isn't an issue, I do stir quite a bit while chilling though. Could this be doing it? The beers generally taste fine while fermenting and at the 2 or 3 week mark when the yeast have settled down and I transfer to a keg they usually go south fast.
Only other thing I'm considering is contamination. But I've had bad and good beers in two different fermentors in a period of a few months, so this doesn't make much sense to me. Also, the F.G is pretty much always bang on what I'm aiming for, and there is no sourness in any of these beers.
Is it possible that HSA and/or chloramines could be responsible for the various degrees of off flavours depending on the given recipe? This is all I can figure, but I'm still waiting on the fermentation to finish up on my rebrew of the baltic porter where I was very careful with aeration and used campden tablets.
Sorry for a bit of a long post. Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks.
I've been getting varying degrees of astringency, a little medincal flavour, or a generally dirty/hard to define off flavour. This varies from beer to beer but the astringency is the main serious flaw. I generally hear high sparge pH, high sparge temp, or excess grain material in the boil will cause that but all those things are in check (I think) in my process. I check the mash and sparge pH, mash is usually 5.2-5.4 at room temp, sparge hasn't been above 5.8. I filter in the tun with a braided ss hose, then at the end of the run off hose with a nylon bag (just tried with on my last 2 brews because grain in the boil was on my mind as the source of astringency). My sparge temp is generally aimed at 170F, and I batch sparge. I've tried colder temps to see if it changed anything, and it didn't.
These off tasting brews have been a big range of styles, and a range of intensity of these off flavours. I have a pils (95% pilsner, 5% carapils, magnum for bittering, Tettnanger for flavour/aroma, to 32 IBU) that just came from primary now in cold conditioning, it doesn't have much of an actual bitterness, but instead is fairly astringent and still slightly sweet even though it's at the F.G I was going for (1.010 from 1.048). Also did a Baltic porter with a pretty medicinal taste, odd thing was I did a "Baltic Mild" from the last gallon of the runnings of that batch (1.035 with 13 or so IBU) since I slightly overshot the efficiency and it tasted fine. I rebrewed this recipe this past weekend and it tasted slightly astringent going into the fermentor but we'll see how that goes.
Basically I think my process rules out tannins for astringency, and the mild coming out tasting much better than the porter should rule out the chloramines (although I've since started using campden tablets but only on one brew so far). Everyone seems pretty adamant that HSA isn't an issue, I do stir quite a bit while chilling though. Could this be doing it? The beers generally taste fine while fermenting and at the 2 or 3 week mark when the yeast have settled down and I transfer to a keg they usually go south fast.
Only other thing I'm considering is contamination. But I've had bad and good beers in two different fermentors in a period of a few months, so this doesn't make much sense to me. Also, the F.G is pretty much always bang on what I'm aiming for, and there is no sourness in any of these beers.
Is it possible that HSA and/or chloramines could be responsible for the various degrees of off flavours depending on the given recipe? This is all I can figure, but I'm still waiting on the fermentation to finish up on my rebrew of the baltic porter where I was very careful with aeration and used campden tablets.
Sorry for a bit of a long post. Any suggestions are appreciated, thanks.
