My Partial Mash Brew Day For Moron's..

[dstranger99]

For the past several batches I've been in a terrible slump,

1. Overconfident - Screwed up an IPA by racking/bottling to early.
2. Idiocy - Went to bottle a brown ale only to realize I only had 1 ounce of corn sugar, so I added table sugar to make up for it. Beer is awful.

Yesterday I did a PM. Mashed at 160, should have been 154, then I was gonna sparge the grains @ 170 but the paint strainer bag broke, poured the grains into another bag and tea bagged it into the sparge water. Later the wort chiller tubing slipped off and shot boiling water on me, I even dropped the yeast packet into the wort, and my OG was 1.040 and should have been 1.046..

Oh, well. In 4 weeks I'll let you know how it turns out. John Palmers "Elevenese" from NB...

 

[twistr25]

Sounds like a good time. Maybe RDWHAC"raft"B

Was there something wrong with your table sugar? It should not have added any flavor to your beer

 

[dstranger99]

^

I'm not sure what went wrong, I used 1 ounce of corn and 3 ounces of table sugar, but the beer is awful.....

 

[twistr25]

Was it under carbed, extra sweet? Can you describe what was wrong? What was your OG/FG?

 

[dstranger99]

Another error, forgot to take FG, but the OG was 1.042, tastes kinda flat with a medicine taste ?? Did it AG BIAB, here's the recipe from Brewmasters, had high hopes for it......

Crisp Maris Otter 0101465 8.5 lb
Aromatic 0101492 0.5 lb
Briess 2 Row Caramel 80 0101447 0.5 lb
Crisp Chocolate Malt 0101485 0.25 lb
Nugget Pellets - Mainly Bittering Hop 13.0% AA 0101963 1 oz
Wyeast Labs London ESB Ale - 1968

 

[TheSmithsEra]

cane sugar has never made me beer taste bad

 

[Uziyahu]

I use table sugar for all my bottle conditioning. It's never given me a problem.

 

[KepowOb]

According to How to Brew

Medicinal
These flavors are often described as mediciney, Band-Aid™ like, or can be spicy like cloves. The cause are various phenols which are initially produced by the yeast. Chlorophenols result from the reaction of chlorine-based sanitizers (bleach) with phenol compounds and have very low taste thresholds. Rinsing with boiled water after sanitizing is the best way to prevent these flavors.

 

[twistr25]

Another error, forgot to take FG, but the OG was 1.042, tastes kinda flat with a medicine taste ?? Did it AG BIAB, here's the recipe from Brewmasters, had high hopes for it......

Crisp Maris Otter 0101465 8.5 lb
Aromatic 0101492 0.5 lb
Briess 2 Row Caramel 80 0101447 0.5 lb
Crisp Chocolate Malt 0101485 0.25 lb
Nugget Pellets - Mainly Bittering Hop 13.0% AA 0101963 1 oz
Wyeast Labs London ESB Ale - 1968

The sweetness could have been from not letting it finish fermenting, more important to make sure in taking the FG than the OG

 

[dstranger99]

That brown ale I made still tastes awful, checked one yesterday. Should I just dump them all, and start over ?...........

 

[sok454]

How long since you brewed it?

I would let it sit int he bottles for a while. I did a milk stout and it was horrible 2 months after brewing... well I gave some to my wife to use while making cupcakes... I tasted the left overs and was surprised how much better it was 6 months later. It was over carbed, my fault, but the taste was spot on.

Also like the guys said the minimal sugar should not have effected the taste. I mean it was 3-4 oz of sugar in a 5+ gallon batch... even if it never carbed that's still a minimal effect... as a point of reference... I used 20 oz of irish whisky in a beer I did... I sent it to contest... the judge said he couldn't really tell there was whisky in it... Uhhh... ok.

 

[dstranger99]

It was brewed on 7-21 and bottled 8-4.........I have at least 40 bottles of it..........lol

 

[twistr25]

Does it still have the same medicine taste? Or are there any other flavors now?

What do you use for cleaning and sanitizing your equipment and is it the same for the bottles?

 

[JimRausch]

That brown ale I made still tastes awful, checked one yesterday. Should I just dump them all, and start over ?...........

If it's been less than 6 months in the bottle, then I'd just put it somewhere and forget about it. My 'dumpit' point is 6 months. I nursed a Mocha Cherry Stout for that long before giving up on it(although I did save a sixer for marinade purposes).

 

[dstranger99]

Does it still have the same medicine taste? Or are there any other flavors now?

What do you use for cleaning and sanitizing your equipment and is it the same for the bottles?

I use a Vinator with Star San on each bottle, then hang on a bottle tree.... And yeah, still had that odd taste that I can't put my finger on ??........

 

[ChuckO]

Don't dump it unless you have an immediate need for the bottles or the storage space. Sample one every couple of weeks until it tastes good or until you are out of bottles to sample. You don't need to finish the sample bottle if it's bad, but this will give you an idea of the types of flavors that change over time. The couple of questionable brews of mine started to taste good about the time that I ran out of bottles to sample.

 

[Renegades_Brew]

I've had brews take even 10+ months to have the flavors balance out to where I wanted them. Granted those were fruit beers and the lengthy time in secondary and then even in a conditioning state was before carbing the beer up. However I did get a nice 6.5% Dark Cherry Wheat out of it.