Unpleasant Bitterness since changing to electric brewery

[YZ250]

6 or 7 batches ago I switched to an electric brewery from my old biab setup. I guess its what you call an ebiab brewery but im not sure. Its a 50L stainless pot with 2x2200w elements in the bottom. Inside this is a custom made stainless vessel with a fine mesh bottom that holds my grain during the mash (similar to the malt pipe used in other commercial elec breweries). After the mash this vessel )is lifted up and locked in place above the level of wort for sparging to pre boil vol. I basically fill the bag with my sparge water (at 75 degrees celcius) stir and let it drain. Due to the fine mesh in the bottom of my stainless bag this takes 10 or 20 mins, and is more thorough than when I used to do it with biab.

Anyway, every single brew I have put through this setup except 1 has had a really strong and unpleasant bitterness. I think calling it astringency would be misleading but another guy on this forum picked it spot on when he said it tastes like tonic water...the flavour is very similar to that and is in different strengths in different brews.

I assume its something to do with the sparge process OR the boil. I noticed straight away that my elec boil doesnt throw hops up the sides of the pot where they get stuck and wasted, like my gas boil used to do.

My questions are...

1) has anyone else experienced this flavour and what caused it?
2) has anyone experienced a sudden increase in hop utilisation when switching to elec from gas?
3) does anyone think my sparge process could be causing the issue?

Cheers,

 

[Yooper]

I didn't know what tonic water tasted like (I've never had it believe it or not!) so I googled it. And I still don't know.

It is described as bitter, but I don't know if that is from the brew water or from the technique you're using.

Has anything else changed, beside the electric? Water, grain crush, yeast, etc?

 

[milesvdustin]

I used to get a similar off flavor in my beers. Turns out I had some super stubborn oxyclean layer on pretty much all of my stainless. Tasted just like tonic and metal, bitter! Perhaps you have some residue somewhere not getting cleaned completely?

 

[CS223]

I wouldn't think sparging would have any effect. Two things I can think of is either you're scorching the wort with the electric elements during your boil. Or hop utilization. You should only need one element on to maintain a boil.

I've noticed that my green beer will be strong on hop bitterness at the end of fermentation which will mellow after 2 weeks or so of aging. Clarifying with gelatin seems to diminish the hop bitterness as well.

 

[YZ250]

Thanks for getting back to me guys..

Yooper - nothing else has changed. Ive been brewing for a few years using similar water and yeast techniques etc. I oxygenate my wort with pure 02, it doesnt seem to make a difference to the outcome.

Miles - I think you might be onto something here....I hand made the malt pipe/stainless bag and the welds were passivated with a fairly hard core acidic compound...maybe this is whats giving me grief. I washed it thoroughly after making it but perhaps not thoroughly enough.

CS223 - I actually need to keep both 2200w elements on to get a good boil (although one is dialed back as its adjustable up and down). After the boil theres no evidence of burning or scorching on the elements at all. There is a very light coating of whitish mineral deposit that wipes off with a rag though.

 

[david_42]

I would boil a mild acid in the system, then straight water to re-passivate.

 

[YZ250]

OK, I may have found the problem. I tested the finished Ph of my beers and they were around 4.8 - 5.5. This is higher than what a finished beer should be (3.9 - 4.2) A friend of mine, who is an outstanding brewer, found a passage in Gordon Strongs book about adjusting ph down with food grade acid to improve the flavour and roundness of the beer. We did this to two of my faulted beers and despite my skepticism....boy did it make a difference. The beer was so much more rounded and drinkable....and the faults were easier to pinpoint - its astringency from excess tannins...I would put my house on it.

This made me wonder why the Ph of my beer was so high so I measured the water at my home, and the ph is over 8.0 (measured a few times and got readings of 8.0 - 8.2). I have been sparging with this...which is way higher than the 5.5 which my friend uses, as this ph is below the solubility point for tannins.

So im going to brew tonight, and will adjust my sparge water down keeping an eye on things. I am thinking that this problem has only occurred in my new system because the sparging I do is much much more thorough than the quick rinse I did in my old BIAB rig.

 

[DustBow]

Good find. I started adjusting my water this year (the water adjustment/ph primer thread is a great one) and my brews definitely took a leap forward

 

[cosmo]

Did you de-gas the beer before measuring the pH? Just curious. The CO2 might make the pH of the beer lower.

 

[YZ250]

Measured the beer carbed, so it would be even higher if I degassed it...well out of range of what is reccomended.

I tasted my first brew last night made with adjusted water. An english bitter that is lowly hopped to make any flaws stand out. Its as clean as a whistle.. there isnt a hint of astringency in it. Pretty sure I have solved the mystery and will keep brewing simple beers like this to confirm it was tannins from the sparge that was making my beer taste rough and bitter.

 

[Junkster]

My beers improved when I started adding acid to my sparge water. I don't recall the pH numbers off of the top of my buzzed head at the moment however.......

 

[aarong]

I'm fairly certain I'm running into the same problem what did you add to your bottled beer to change the flavor? What are you using to lower your ph? Calcium chloride? Thanks!

 

[YZ250]

Phosphoric acid for both adjusting the beer down and adjusting my sparge water. I think I used 1.5mls to bring 45L of sparge water down from 8.2 to 5.5

When adjusting the beers for the experiment we put 1 drop of 85% phosphoric in a glass of 200mls water, then took 1 drop of this solution and added it to the beer. You wouldnt believe the difference such a tiny tiny addition could make...it really smoothed the beer out.

 

[YZ250]

Update - I eventually stopped getting this fault by pulling the electric elements out of my brewery and going back to a bog stock BIAB brewery, with a plastic bag. I had convinced myself the fault was wort scorching from the electric elements.

The thing is - when I stopped using electric elements I also stopped using the home made stainless bag/malt pipe (similar to a braumeister) that I built for my brewery. I was always suspicious of this piece of kit.

To confirm it once and for all I finally got around to doing a brew on the weekend with the malt pipe again....I have done 6 or 8 beers without it and none had the fault.

Bam - faults back with a vengeance AND I can confirm 100% that its present after mashing and before sparging. So it wasn't the electric elements afterall. It was this malt pipe thing. The way I built it (to clear the previously mentioned electric elements) meant that there is lots of deadspace in my brewpot so I have to use a water to grain ratio of about 5L per kilo of grain. This is way too much and I suspect is what is causing the off flavor. The flavor is fairly classically astringent...its an unpleasant, back of mouth, dry bitterness.

YZ

 

[augiedoggy]

Glad you finally found (and shared) the cause.

 

[doug293cz]

Update - I eventually stopped getting this fault by pulling the electric elements out of my brewery and going back to a bog stock BIAB brewery, with a plastic bag. I had convinced myself the fault was wort scorching from the electric elements.

The thing is - when I stopped using electric elements I also stopped using the home made stainless bag/malt pipe (similar to a braumeister) that I built for my brewery. I was always suspicious of this piece of kit.

To confirm it once and for all I finally got around to doing a brew on the weekend with the malt pipe again....I have done 6 or 8 beers without it and none had the fault.

Bam - faults back with a vengeance AND I can confirm 100% that its present after mashing and before sparging. So it wasn't the electric elements afterall. It was this malt pipe thing. The way I built it (to clear the previously mentioned electric elements) meant that there is lots of deadspace in my brewpot so I have to use a water to grain ratio of about 5L per kilo of grain. This is way too much and I suspect is what is causing the off flavor. The flavor is fairly classically astringent...its an unpleasant, back of mouth, dry bitterness.

YZ

Did you ever measure actual mash and sparge (after adding to grain) pH when using the "malt pipe"?

Brew on

 

[kal]

This made me wonder why the Ph of my beer was so high so I measured the water at my home, and the ph is over 8.0 (measured a few times and got readings of 8.0 - 8.2). I have been sparging with this...which is way higher than the 5.5 which my friend uses, as this ph is below the solubility point for tannins.

You've already found the issue but I thought I'd mention:

pH of the water doesn't matter, it's the buffering ability that matters. For example, my city what's over 9 pH but it's so soft (low buffering ability) that it quickly drops very low with the addition of any grain or even a minute amount of acid (lactic or phosphoric).

Kal

 

[biertourist]

Congratulations on finally getting to root cause. A great troubleshooting effort; glad to see you didn't give up on this one.



Adam

 

[YZ250]

No I never measured the PH throughout the process as im halfway through a major renovation and a lot of my stuff is boxed up and stored - including my pH meter. I probably should have though.