Help needed...A bit of an alcohol taste

[jacobitti]

I'm having a bit of trouble, consistently, that unless I have a high hoppy beer I get a higher than normal alcohol taste. Id say if I broke the taste up into three parts, the initial, the middle and the finish, the middle has the strong "estery" alcohol taste; Not an overall bad taste but very noticable I've been brewing AG the last 2 years and I get this almost every time I look at a brown ale, Irish red, anything that's not Hoppy. Any help in understanding this will be greatly appreciated. I know its not a lot to go on, but I'm pretty sure this must be a common question for us newer brewers....

 

[day_trippr]

Can you provide a run down on your fermentation practices?

Cheers!

 

[seatazzz]

Sounds like you're fermenting a bit too warm, that can cause the fusel alcohol taste you're getting. Usually it will fade out with time. If you're not getting any other "off" flavors, I would bet it's the fermentation temperature. How do you control temperature during fermentation? What yeasts have you used with your recipes?

 

[bpgreen]

Sounds like you're fermenting a bit too warm, that can cause the fusel alcohol taste you're getting. Usually it will fade out with time. If you're not getting any other "off" flavors, I would bet it's the fermentation temperature. How do you control temperature during fermentation? What yeasts have you used with your recipes?

I thought that fusel alcohol was one of the few off flavors that won't fade with time. I could be wrong, though.

 

[don_bran321]

if it's fusel it definitely will get worse. I was having the same problem with my IPAs. I found that I was under pitching my yeast.

 

[divrack]

it could be pretty much anything without knowing your typical process in detail.
especially as you describe the taste as estery which i wouldn't use as a descriptor for alcohol. perhaps you are meaning 'phenolic' which is closer in my opinion to alcohol. esters are closer to fruity bubblegum type flavours and often desirable in beer. most common factor for both is variable or too hot fermentation temp. since you are in ny id guess your temperature is swinging when the heating goes on and off. do you have any kind of temp control/monitoring having sugar in the bill will make some hot alcohol flavour, which does mellow with time.

 

[badclamz]

Can you post any details regarding your fermentation - specifically the temp in primary and the types of yeast you have been using?

 

[jacobitti]

Can you post any details regarding your fermentation - specifically the temp in primary and the types of yeast you have been using?

So this is the process:
1. Sanitize everything, and keep bucket full of sanitizer and drop everything in after each use.
2. Filtered water into HLT
3. Mash 152 degrees, after 75 mins 148
4. Boil, 60 mins
5. Chill to 72(ish) degrees
6. transfer to glass carboy
7. Pitch yeast rehydrated WLP004 Irish Ale 2 packages
8. Fermentation went like a gang buster, for about 72 hours
8. leave alone for 2 weeks at 70 degrees. house is set at 70...
9. rack to secondary, everything was sanitized, 2 weeks
10. bottle, 1 week had to try, hardly any carbo but good flavors, had a bit of the off taste, but not bad
11. 3 weeks later carbo was spot on this time, but now the middle taste is that alcohol flavor

 

[Smellyglove]

My first impression is that its your temps.

Without any active cooling, and pitchtemp at 21c the wort might be looking at 24c in the fermentor during active fermentation. I'd say for a next brew cool to maybe 14c, keep it in a room which holds 17-18c, when krausen starts to fall move it up to your original 21c-ambient temp.

A "gangbuster" fermentation is not a good sign for good beer. It's not a bad one either, but without tempcontrol I'd say it's on the "bad" side if you pitch a normal amount of yeast.

 

[seatazzz]

Light fusels may not "go away" completely, but they will fade as the beer ages and the other flavors come to the fore. At least that's been my experience with bigger beers I've made that have started out a bit 'hot'. Work on keeping your fermentation temperature lower than 72 if you can. I just killed a keg of brown that got up to 78 in the fermenter (surprise heat wave in March, jeez) and although the first few days it had a bit of 'hot' alcohol flavor, after about 5 days it had faded once the carbonation set in and the other flavors had a chance to settle. I may be talking out my a**, YMMV. But in two years brewing I've never had fusels ruin a beer. Other things, yes (too many to mention), but not fusel alcohol.

 

[jacobitti]

Thank you for all of the input, I am grateful for all of the information here. Brewing this weekend and will report back in a few weeks on how it turns out. I did just rack over a Hibiscus Saison this past weekend to the secondary and will dry hop on Saturday for 7 days, then bottle next weekend....

 

[Ed Thibault]

One suggestion to control temps on the cheap that I've done is to place your carboy into a tub of water which helps to increase the thermal mass and then have a fan blowing on the open water to get some evaporative cooling going. You can also add a inkbird temp controller to control an aquarium heater and the fan to really lock in the temps. If you want pictures of what I'm talking about just let me know.

 

[jacobitti]

One suggestion to control temps on the cheap that I've done is to place your carboy into a tub of water which helps to increase the thermal mass and then have a fan blowing on the open water to get some evaporative cooling going. You can also add a inkbird temp controller to control an aquarium heater and the fan to really lock in the temps. If you want pictures of what I'm talking about just let me know.

Yes, any and all help will be greatly appreciated!

 

[Ed Thibault]

Here's some pics of my setup/poor man's fermentation control. The tub is from Costco, inkbird controller from Amazon, aquarium heater from Walmart, along with the fan. Temp is controlled pretty accurately and has really increased the quality of my brews.

Let me know if you have anymore questions.