Hi guys
I've been brewing solidly for about a year now and am happy with my progress. All my beers are drinkable and fairly enjoyable but they do all have a bit of a taste that I wish they didn't.
The taste is quite faint, I don't it's an infection as I've had a few of those before. It's quite hard to describe. You could maybe describe it as being slightly tart but definitely not vinegar. Particularly with hop driven beers this taste seems to compete a bit with the hops.
I brew using dry extract with specialty grains and my process is as follows:
- Recipes usually taken from the forums or brewing books and scaled to 5,10 or 15L
- Mill then steep grains in small amount of water
- 60min, full volume boil (tap water), about a third of extract added at start of boil, rest at flame out
- Chilled with immersion chiller and ice bath then transferred to glass or plastic fermenter
- I use dry yeast packets but more recently yeast slurry saved from previous brews. My measurement when adding the slurry is quite crude
- I think my temperature control is OK, usually keeping ales within a few degrees of 18 degrees celcius (64F)
- Transferred to bottling bucket, sugar added, and bottled after around 2 weeks (and correct FG measured)
- I've never left one more than a few months but this taste is definitely still present at around 2 months from brew day.
I know there are so many possible areas that I could focus on but does anything jump out as being an obvious place to start?
Should I try using bottled water? Or switch to liquid extract?
Cheers
I've been brewing solidly for about a year now and am happy with my progress. All my beers are drinkable and fairly enjoyable but they do all have a bit of a taste that I wish they didn't.
The taste is quite faint, I don't it's an infection as I've had a few of those before. It's quite hard to describe. You could maybe describe it as being slightly tart but definitely not vinegar. Particularly with hop driven beers this taste seems to compete a bit with the hops.
I brew using dry extract with specialty grains and my process is as follows:
- Recipes usually taken from the forums or brewing books and scaled to 5,10 or 15L
- Mill then steep grains in small amount of water
- 60min, full volume boil (tap water), about a third of extract added at start of boil, rest at flame out
- Chilled with immersion chiller and ice bath then transferred to glass or plastic fermenter
- I use dry yeast packets but more recently yeast slurry saved from previous brews. My measurement when adding the slurry is quite crude
- I think my temperature control is OK, usually keeping ales within a few degrees of 18 degrees celcius (64F)
- Transferred to bottling bucket, sugar added, and bottled after around 2 weeks (and correct FG measured)
- I've never left one more than a few months but this taste is definitely still present at around 2 months from brew day.
I know there are so many possible areas that I could focus on but does anything jump out as being an obvious place to start?
Should I try using bottled water? Or switch to liquid extract?
Cheers