A little Beer troubleshooting, dryness or flavor fading.

[SullyHB]

Hey All -

Been lurking around here a good bit, but it's my first post. I thought I'd pick your brains about an issue I've been having with my homebrews, and it's driving me batty.

I recently finished two beers. One was a pumpkin beer we were experimenting with, and one was an IPA we "hop-bursted" with a blend we've been experimenting with. Both have an issue of finishing way too dry, but not in the Saison sense. The flavors fade very quickly. It's like you get these great flavors up front and the it just kind of dies on your palette.

Both were all grain recipes. The IPA was 12lbs 2-row, 2lbs Caramel 60. Mash was at 154. OG was 1.064 and FG was 1.010. We did a 20-0 hop burst addition of 1.25oz every 5 min with a 2 oz Dry Hop. The hop flavor itself is fantastic! It just dies out instead of washing the palette.

The pumpkin was an experiment, and I don't have the numbers handy, but it it has a similar "dying out" with a great up front flavor. I'm assuming the problem is the same in both beers.

Is there any way to identify what the problem could be? I'm not sure if it's in the Mash, the water pH. It might be too generic of a question. Something of note is our previous IPA we made beforehand had the same problem and we tried to up the caramel malt-ratio and that is not the problem either.

Sorry, driving me crazy.

Thanks,
Sully

PS - Both AG and Batch Sparged.

 

[mthelm85]

For the IPA you might try to add more hops, earlier in the boil. For example, instead of doing equal additions of 1.25oz every 5 mins. you could start with 2 - 2.5 oz. and then step down the amount that you are adding each addition after that.

You probably already know that your 5 and 10 minute additions are going to lend much more aroma (which will change the perceived flavor) than they will flavor while your 15 and 20 minute additions are going to be responsible for most of the hop flavor but not as much aroma.

I would try the same recipe just with larger flavor additions and smaller aroma additions.

Also, based on your OG and FG, your apparent attenuation is 84% which is pretty high, what yeast did you use? You can either switch to a less attenuative yeast or increase your mash temp to compensate.

 

[SullyHB]

It's definitely not the hops. I am probably not using accurate descriptions. The beer, malt, hops, overall flavor doesn't "wash" the palette. It is extremely strong forward flavor that just sort of "dies". I'm not really sure how if I'm using correct terms to correctly communicate the issue we're having.