All grain brews have the same "tart" taste - Please help!

[stpug]

Wow that sounds exactly like what is happening to me. This latest batch I hit my strike temp on the nose, like 152.1 degrees. After the mash was done I was measuring like 149 degrees, not that big of a drop. But after I stirred it was at 143. That kind of alarmed me but I figured that most of the conversion had already happened by the time the temps dropped too much. Maybe this is where my problem is coming from? That would be great, it seems like it would be a pretty easy fix - just insulate my kettle better and maybe stir and check temps periodically during the mash and add heat if necessary.

Regarding attenuation, my last beer finished at 1.008 (target was 1.011). This was the lowest finishing gravity I have every had in any of my beers since I started brewing. Some of my other BIAB beers finished at 1.011 or 1.010, which seems like a pretty normal finishing gravity. Can you get these over attenuation issues without having a super low finishing gravity?

It's very easy to test - that's for sure. It may not be your problem but I clicked on the thread because of the "tart taste" issue you mention in the title, and the fact that I had been through something similar. Then you mentioned the slipping mash temps and I really keyed in on it because that was an issue I dealt with over the course of several batches. Again, pretty easy to test - just keep the temps from slipping down (add a cup of boiling water every 10 minutes during your mash ought to do it, plus the stirring shouldn't hurt); however you accomplish the stable mash temps is fine.

Over attenuation is simply finishing lower than you planned; that might be 1.008, 1.010, or 1.018 depending on the beer you're brewing and yeast strain you're using. I'd say look at the apparent attenuation of the beer and compare it to the manufacturers attenuation range and your mash temperature to get an idea on whether or not the beer was over attenuated. For a strain line 1968, 75% AA would be overly attenuated; but it would need to be like 85% AA for a chico strain.

I hope this helps and that you are able to figure out what's been causing your "tart" character in your beers. If, and when you do, I would certainly like to know the cause.

Cheers!

 

[dsaavedra]

After reading through all this again I am even more convinced that someone experienced needs to taste your beers. We've gone from gross/disgusting/sour to bland and kind of tart. I don't think we know what we are trouble shooting.
Hope you get it figured out though.

That will be Yooper in a few weeks

I am admittedly very bad at describing individual flavors. However I am very good at knowing what tastes good or bad. All I can say for 100% certain is that my beer does not taste good at all.

I will keep this thread updated with whatever the LHBS people and Yooper think about my beer. Hopefully that will give us a little bit of direction.

 

[Moose_MI]

sub'd

 

[Homer]

I'm interested on how this turns out as well. I did 3, 10 gal all grains in a row, they were all dark beers (same recipe), two of them were fermented in new 15 gal plastic conicals, and the last split up in two glass carboys. Both of the ones in the plastic had a sour/tart flavor. My mash tun seems to keep temp well, so not sure if this was the issue, but the two sour/tart ones did ferment out lower than the third one.

 

[Moose_MI]

That will be Yooper in a few weeks

I am admittedly very bad at describing individual flavors. However I am very good at knowing what tastes good or bad. All I can say for 100% certain is that my beer does not taste good at all.
.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Local brew pub did a thing a few weeks back where they added various things to samples of Miller Light. It was intended to give an education about the various off flavors in craft/homebrew beer. I was really excited but I couldn't really discern much diff between any of them and really didn't learn anything except I'd rather drink bad homebrew than good miller light. !@#$

 

[dsaavedra]

To everyone who has been following this thread, sorry to disappoint but UPS wanted close to $30 to ship my beer to Yooper and that just isn't an option for me at this time.

I got the itch to fix this problem again and I am going to go to the LHBS very soon to buy ingredients for a simple ESB (going to brew a 1 gallon batch of it to minimize cost if it turns out gross like my others). I will bring some of my beers with me to see if the LHBS people can provide any input.

 

[The_Bishop]

When you mash in, you need to stir the mash like it owes you money. That insures the whole mash is an equal temperature. If you don't, you'll end up with hot and cold spots.

 

[dsaavedra]

Okay I took my second and third AG attempts to the LHBS to get some feedback.

Sadly, they all said there wasn't anything glaringly wrong with them (I disagree, I find them undrinkable) but they could definitely tell that there was something subtly weird about them.

They said it didn't seem astringent or taste like green apples, but it did seem kind of green (even though one of the beers is 6 or 7 months old). They noted very dry, thin body, and a champagne like fruitiness. One person thought that my third AG beer tasted hot and boozy, which I don't detect (and is unlikely since that beer fermented no higher than 60 degrees). They noted a lack of hop flavor and aroma, which I agree with (I didn't use a whole lot of hops in either batch and the batches have aged a bit). They suspect my slipping mash temps might be to blame (I lost about 9 degrees on my third AG beer). They also suggested letting the grain bag drain itself instead of squeezing to avoid getting a lot of very fine particulate matter into the wort.

I brewed a 1 gallon batch of ESB today with 89% marris otter and 11% crystal 60, with a half ounce of East Kent Goldings. This is a darker beer than the AG beers I have brewed previously. I also used an actual bag (that I painstakingly sewed by hand from my voile cloth) which was very effective at keeping bits of grain out of my wort.

I checked mash temps frequently throughout the mash - this turned out to be a disaster... my temp after mashing in was actually higher than my strike temp because the kettle was still sitting on the warm stove top burner. I added a splash of cold water to bring it down and it was right in the sweet spot of 155 for a while but then the temp started dropping because I didn't have any insulation on the outside of the kettle (because the still warm burner melted my blanket onto the glass cooktop which outraged my mother so I had that to deal with while trying to brew). So I turn up the heat to medium high to try and get my temps back to 155. I overshot it and ended up close to 162 again.

My detailed mash temps are as follows (I was stirring the mash as I was recording the temps):
158 at mash in,
161.7 at 50 minutes left,
155 at 45 minutes left,
153.6 at 40 minutes left,
150.6 at 30 minutes left,
155 at 20 minutes left,
160 at the end of the mash.

So basically I mashed all over the place but I think I stayed in a range that won't give me super dry thin beer. So that is the first big change. I also let the bag drain on its own into another pot with a colander and added it back in to the boil once it was done draining. No squeezing - the wort that drained out of it was very clear, can't say the same for the wort that was in my kettle though.

Queue disaster part 2, I boiled off WAY more than I expected, and I only ended up with a half a gallon of 1.090 wort. I was shooting for a a full gallon of 1.059 wort. So I topped up with spring water until my OG was 1.058 and called it a day. I hate topping up because it dilutes the IBUs but according to Brewer's Friend, the amount of hops I put in to what ended up only being a half gallon of wort would put my IBUs around 100, so diluting probably helped me instead of hurt me.

Unfortunately, so many things went wrong that I don't think this will be a very good batch to compare against my previous batches. I will be able to tell right away if my mystery flavor is still present, but if I did end up fixing my problem it will be tough to narrow down what exactly fixed it.

I will keep everyone updated.

 

[stpug]

Thanks for posting back your test beer process and notes. I look forward to the tasting notes when you that far into the experiment. I hope you've somehow narrowed the range of possibilities with this batch.

I don't find the varied mash temps overly disturbing. You averaged in the mid to upper 150s for the first 30 minutes, and only had one dip for a short while into the low 150s. I suspect most of the conversion was done within 30 minutes (particularly due to the stirring) so that latter half probably only had some minor effects on the malt character of the beer.

 

[dfhar]

I really think it's a pH issue.

 

[dsaavedra]

I don't find the varied mash temps overly disturbing. You averaged in the mid to upper 150s for the first 30 minutes, and only had one dip for a short while into the low 150s. I suspect most of the conversion was done within 30 minutes (particularly due to the stirring) so that latter half probably only had some minor effects on the malt character of the beer.

Well that is reassuring. I was freaking out pretty hard at the time trying to keep my temp stable but the more I look back on it the more I agree with what you said.

I think in the future I am going to ditch BIAB in favor of mashing in a cooler, this should help with maintaining temperatures. Maybe I will do some kind of hybrid where I use a mesh bag in a cooler to simplify the process.

How do you think the topping off will affect the final brew? I think Brewer's Friend was telling me my IBU would have been around 85 before topping off, so I assume that doubling the volume by adding spring water should halve the IBUs and put me in the low 40's which would actually be perfect.

 

[thekraken]

I'm dealing with some of the same issues I think. Do you sample your batches as they ferment? I've noticed that they taste fine to great during primary and starting secondary but turn bad after 6ish weeks. This is making me think I'm dealing with some kind of infection that I'm introducing with maybe the auto siphon or tubing or something.

I took some to the LHBS yesterday for a diagnosis and he immediately said diacetyl. This confused me since I don't taste anything remotely similar to a butter flavor my self, and I have had some nasty buttery beer before...

 

[dsaavedra]

I'm dealing with some of the same issues I think. Do you sample your batches as they ferment? I've noticed that they taste fine to great during primary and starting secondary but turn bad after 6ish weeks. This is making me think I'm dealing with some kind of infection that I'm introducing with maybe the auto siphon or tubing or something.

I took some to the LHBS yesterday for a diagnosis and he immediately said diacetyl. This confused me since I don't taste anything remotely similar to a butter flavor my self, and I have had some nasty buttery beer before...

Typically the only time I take samples are on brew day (though I don't taste the wort because I don't like the way wort tastes in general), and then on bottling day. I do drink my samples on bottling day and on these AG batches, the taste was exactly the same on bottling day as it is now 7 months later.

Although now that I have a refractometer and can take gravity readings with only a few drops, I may take small eyedropper-full samples more often and get a little taste of the progress.

 

[stpug]

How do you think the topping off will affect the final brew? I think Brewer's Friend was telling me my IBU would have been around 85 before topping off, so I assume that doubling the volume by adding spring water should halve the IBUs and put me in the low 40's which would actually be perfect.

That sounds correct to me and should put you in a good spot for an ESB. Hopefully you don't sense the problem on this test batch.

 

[dsaavedra]

The beer is chugging along in my basement. It is pretty cool down there and I have the gallon jug sitting in a bath of water (no ice bottles though). The water bath is about 56 degrees and since I am using a 1 gallon jug and the beer is right near the top, I was actually able to take a temperature reading of the beer itself and it was at 56.8°F. Slightly cooler than the ideal temperature range of S-04 but still within the tolerable range. It doesn't seem like it is struggling to work either, there are tons of bubbles riding up the sides of the jug and collecting at the top to form a nice thick tan/greenish krausen. I'm just going to leave it, I will warm it up in a few days after the krausen drops so the yeast can finish up if it was a little bit too cool for them. Hopefully fermenting on the cool side will just give me a cleaner tasting beer.

 

[The_Bishop]

Be prepared to rouse the s04. I did an ESB with S04, kept at 66 degrees during the whole ferment. It fermented out, flocced hard and dropped before cleaning up after itself, leaving behind far too much diacetyl. I had to rouse it back up twice to get it to clean up after itself.

 

[dsaavedra]

Be prepared to rouse the s04. I did an ESB with S04, kept at 66 degrees during the whole ferment. It fermented out, flocced hard and dropped before cleaning up after itself, leaving behind far too much diacetyl. I had to rouse it back up twice to get it to clean up after itself.

I will keep this in mind. How did your beer eventually turn out?

I moved it upstairs to warm it up a little bit but it is still on the floor where the air temp is a bit cooler, probably close to 60 degrees. Still seeing a fair amount of small bubbles riding up the sides of the jug, just not at the rate they were previously, so it may be winding down. I'll do a gravity reading and report back.

 

[dsaavedra]

According to my refractometer and Brewer's Friend's alcohol correction calculator, my beer at at 1.028 SG now, so the yeast still have some work to do. I know that hydrometers are more accurate for taking FG measurements but I don't have much beer to spare to take a hydrometer reading. I will take a hydrometer reading when its time to boil though.

The little pipette worth of beer that I sampled today tasted... not very good. It is still way too early to make any judgement calls but I think it may end up tasting like the rest of my AG beers.

 

[The_Bishop]

The beer turner out OK, but I got a little of the dreaded '04 twang' from it. I did a second batch with Nottingham at 68 degrees that I liked a *lot* more. All else in the recipe was the same.

 

[serum]

I've had something similar to this with my lighter beers and was getting concerned, whereas darker beers I've done tended to taste a bit better.

However I've noticed that a few of them really seemed to sort themselves out after about 4 months (athough this doesn't seem to have happened in OP's case)

I was getting a harsh and grainy taste and I think I've got a few potential pH and temperature issues. The few dark beers I've done fared better and I think that was due to the acidity they provide.

I'm making Belgian style beers so they all attenuate pretty well but I was getting no sweetness at all from them.

I've got myself a much better thermometer and done a bit of rudimentary water treatment on my latest brew so hopefully that'll sort things out.

I'll keep an eye on this thread as there have been some excellent tips already.

 

[Radboud]

I have the same problem, a tartness that persists after ageing, sometimes a weak body etc.

First I thought this was caused by fermenting too hot using Notty but I also had the exact same taste in a batch of Belgian Blond using yeast harvested from a couple of La Chouffe bottles which should not have this taste component in the low 70s.
I was also ready to blame my water chemistry but the things about slipping mash temp would also make sense. I do AG, I batch sparge in a 5g cooler. Usually strike temps are spot on but I haven't really done anything up to now to check what is happening during the mash, just left it alone for 60 mins after which I drain.

 

[dsaavedra]

I had the chance to taste a beer from a local brewery (Patuxent Pale Ale, from Mully's brewery) over the weekend and I will be damned if it doesn't taste nearly identical to the pale ales that I have brewed AG. I couldn't believe it when I took the first sip. This got me thinking that if a brewery can produce and sell a beer that tastes like this, maybe there isn't a problem with it after all, it is just a kind of bland recipe that I don't happen to like.

All of my AG beers (except for the ESB) have been pretty similar, very pale colored, simple malt bills and not a lot of hops. Maybe this just doesn't make for a beer that I like? I really thought I would have liked EdWort's Haus Pale Ale though, given its massive popularity. But then again, taste preferences are truly individual. This would back up my LHBS claims that there wasn't much wrong with the two beers I brought in for them to try.

Nothing conclusive, just something that got me thinking. Still looking forward to giving this ESB a taste to see if it was truly just a style thing I didn't like, not anything fundamentally wrong with the beer.

My AG journey has been fun but super frustrating :cross:

 

[jackwhite]

I find myself in the same situation. However I make my own recipes and find what I get fails to match my expectations. also I have been looking into mash thickness and starting to find that mash thickness may not affect fermentability but does impact style. My beers lately have this thin sour tang that I really find distasteful. My wife thinks they are fine. I usually us 1.3 quarts as my thickness. I plan on using 1.0 quart mash thickness and hopefully this will better meet my expectations.

 

[The_Bishop]

I don't think that mash thickness is going to make a big difference.

I have done beers back to back, one at 1.25 qt/pound and one at 1.5 qt/pound, and saw no perceptible difference in the two, except the larger thermal mass of the thinner mash held temperature better. It was also easier to make sure there were no dough balls.

 

[dsaavedra]

I don't think that mash thickness is going to make a big difference.

I have done beers back to back, one at 1.25 qt/pound and one at 1.5 qt/pound, and saw no perceptible difference in the two, except the larger thermal mass of the thinner mash held temperature better. It was also easier to make sure there were no dough balls.

What about when you get into the 2-3 qt/lb range that is common with full volume mashes?

 

[McKnuckle]

What about when you get into the 2-3 qt/lb range that is common with full volume mashes?

If there was any issue with this in general, then people wouldn't be so satisfied with BIAB. As long as your mash pH is given appropriate attention and adjustment (if necessary), then the larger amount of water-to-grist ratio doesn't matter in terms of flavor and overall quality.

 

[dfhar]

A full volume mash isn't 2 quarts per pound, it's more like 4+ quarts per pound.

There can be significant pH issues with full volume mashes, especially when brewing light colored beers with alkaline water; it can easily exceed 6.0. I believe that this is the underlying cause behind some of the low efficiency/dull malt flavor complaints that pop up from time to time regarding BIAB. Darker beers or beers with lots of crystal malt are far less prone to these problems. Even a 100% pilsner malt BIAB beer only requires a little lactic acid to put it in the right range, but it's still very important.

 

[dsaavedra]

So I moved the fermenter to a warmer room several days ago, the beer temp has been about 67 degrees since then, and I have been swirling the jug every day or so to try and rouse up some yeast but my gravity hasn't dropped. It still reads 1.041 on my refractometer which when corrected for alcohol presence corresponds to 1.028.

I'm not sure if this is just a stuck fermentation since I fermented it so cool at the beginning (although it didn't look like the yeast were having any trouble fermenting) or if my high and variable mash temps just left me with a pretty unfermentable beer... I guess the only thing left to do is keep it warm and wait.

 

[chickypad]

A full volume mash isn't 2 quarts per pound, it's more like 4+ quarts per pound..

My full volume mashes are 2.25 to 2.7 qt per lb generally. I agree it would be the pH that would be the issue with off flavors, not the thickness itself. Sorry you're still frustrated OP. With these elusive problems I'm always thinking water, but it still seems like we don't really know what we're troubleshooting. Undrinkable vs. not really anything wrong with them - hard to know what we're looking for.

 

[dfhar]

You're right, full volume mash thickness will depend on other factors such as gravity and efficiency. I was assuming an OG of 1.050 with an 80% mash efficiency and a 90 minute boil, none of which need be the case here.