All of my beers are bad.

[BrewnWKopperKat]

More evidence that chapter 1 of How To Brew, 4e is meaningfully different than the 3rd edition (or the online 1st edition).

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

Have you contacted Anvil for advice?

 

[BarryBrews]

More evidence that chapter 1 of How To Brew, 4e is meaningfully different than the 3rd edition (or the online 1st edition).

Did you see that "copper pennies" thing?!

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Did you see that "copper pennies" thing?!

I did. That idea is in 3rd edition as well.

 

[MackDan]

Lets all take a break and AlexIPA write out exactly what your recipe and process is. So I'll do this so you understand what you need to tell us.
I put 10-12 gallons of local tap water into my HLT and drop in a half campden tablet to drop the chlorine out, and turn on the heat. My tap water is roughly pH 7.7, .14 ppm fluoride, 4 ppm CL2 (disinfectant), Somewhere between 9 and 35 Chloride, hardness 110-500, Sodium 17-75, Sulfate 20-85. I find all of that in the local yearly water report. I'll adjust my water with some Phosphoric or Citric acid to drop the pH, and add other chemicals as I've figured out using Bru'n Water spreadsheet. Check the pH again.
I crush my grain in my mill, .0.36 gap,
Grain goes in my Mash tun (SS keggle). When the water gets up to temp (say 150 mash) I pump in a few gallons (1 quart per pound of grain usually), recheck the mash temp in about 5 min. 10 minutes I pull a sample wort and cool it to check the mash ph. depending on the beer I'm aiming for 5.4-5.2. Maybe add a little more acid to drop the pH.
Watch the temps and get my recirculation going with the pump valved down so it doesn't compact the grain bed. I can then heat the Mash tun if I need to to maintain temps or go to another mash step.
Meanwhile I'm heating more water. That goes in to raise the mash to 170F.
And I start pumping out the wort to the boil kettle slowly. The boil kettle typically already has the first hops in it. As soon as I have a gallon or so in the boil kettle I'll fire up that burner and get it working toward a boil. Depending on the size of the brew I'll fly spare or batch sparge. pump all the wort into the brew kettle. I'm usually brewing 10 gallon batches and will aim for 11 gallons at the start of the boil.
Then its just watch the boil, add hops and watch the clock.
Put the wort chiller in, cool the beer, and transfer it to a carboy. Get my yeast starter (2 x 1.5 liter starters of ~1.040 LME that were started the day before). I put the carboy on a couple layers of towel and with a santized hand over the top shake the crap out of the carboy to oxygenate the beer. Get the airlock in it and set it at the back of my 2/3 in ground garage to ferment. Then go clean up EVERYTHING with Dawn dish soap, sometimes I use PBW, then follow that with Dawn soapy water. Rinse everything well with my garden hose and I store everything upside down in my garage. . My spent grain gets composted.
|
OK, Now your turn.

 

[Unicorn_Platypus]

Wow, thanks for all the responses. In response:

I'm not overly hopping, perhaps even under hopping for the styles. I haven't tweaked my grain crush at all, this is something I'll definitely look at. I've been using the mill at the local homebrew store, which is an excellent store but I probably shouldn't blindly trust it. I haven't tested the actual pH of the mash but I'd like to try this as well. Tannins/astringency sounds likely for the flavor I'm tasting actually. My mash temp stays pretty darn consistent but I wonder if my thermometer is off... I've been mostly trusting the internal foundry reading.

If the grain crush is the culprit would it be because it's too fine? To the other comment, I wonder why my efficiency would be so low. That leads me to believe that maybe it's a crush AND temperature issue perhaps?

I do think my water could use improving but from what I've read it shouldn't cause such noticeable issues in the beer. I know others in the area that brew with the same spring water (eldorado) with good results. I'm still looking to improve here but I don't think it's the main culprit.

I made decent beer with my last system (coolers), never amazing. I entered a couple competitions and placed a couple times.

If you can start with soft water with little mineral content try this

If you use bottled water this method should work (just check the mineral content on the water to make sure its soft). If you want to use your local water carefully check your local water report or send in a sample to Ward Labs for analysis. Bottled water or reverse osmosis would be a surer starting point though.

Below is a suggestion if you want to just keep it simple without PH meters and brewing software. Using a water calculator and brewing software would be more precise and allow you to dial stuff in better for different styles. However, I had good experience for many years before I started using water calculators with this method. I stuck to mainly lighter beers and as dark as brown beers, but avoided very dark beers like stout. This worked fine and I even took home some ribbons at brewing competitions including an american barley wine.

Try brewing a beer with a lighter grain bill. Maybe start with a Blonde Ale with some pilsner malts that isn't heavily hopped early in the boil. Darker malts are much trickier and less forgiving if you don't get the PH right (this typically requires adding baking soda or some other salt with bicarbonate to raise the mash PH). You definitely need a PH meter for darker beers if you want to get them right.

For a lighter beer I think you can get away more easily without a PH meter and water calculator. If you are starting with soft water it's pretty easy to hit an acceptable PH range. Just use a touch of acid malt (maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of a pound per 5 gallon batch). If you have crystal malt in the mash add less acid malt. If you are brewing a hoppier beer then add 1 tsp gypsum and .5 tsp cacl (maltier beer skip the gypsum, balanced beers use equal amounts each). As you get more advanced in brewing then start experimenting with upping the salts and using software like Bru'n Water.

 

[IslandLizard]

I read this post this morning and went to my Palmer book for some reading after. I came across this which is what everyone seems to be telling you. [...]

That's just steeping some malt for flavor and color, to which malt extract will be added.

Mind, the OP is brewing all grain, mashing a whole load of base malt and other grain that provide all the sugars, color, and flavor that are needed. No malt extract is used.

 

[Newtobrewing85]

That's just steeping some malt for flavor and color, to which malt extract will be added.

Mind, the OP is brewing all grain, mashing a whole load of base malt and other grain that provide all the sugars, color, and flavor that are needed. No malt extract is used.

Yeah, that’s true. I just read it and thought it mildly relatable to the topic at hand with the temperature comments and squeezing the bags. I’ll let the smart people tell him what he’s doing wrong.

 

[IslandLizard]

Yeah, that’s true. I just read it and thought it mildly relatable to the topic at hand with the temperature comments and squeezing the bags. I’ll let the smart people tell him what he’s doing wrong.

That's from the beginning brewer's section, a first brew, well before water chemistry is addressed. I think Palmer is discouraging squeezing and oversteeping (too long or too high temps) there, since the water composition is generally unknown, to minimize the risk of extracting tannins and creating more trub.

From what I understand, as long as the steeping water's pH remains under 5.8 while steeping the bag, you can steep or squeeze it as much as you like, tannins should not be extracted. By squeezing you may release some more dust, not-so-soluble fiber, and such, giving extra cloudiness that's gonna settle out as trub in the end, either in the kettle and/or in the fermenter. It won't harm your beer.

 

[Bill9000]

I have two successful batches under my belt. I use an 8 gallon boil kettle with propane burner and ferment in a 5 gallon carboy. Both brews were extract kits and I have one more extract kit to brew before attempting all grain. Using extract kits gave me experience with boiling wort, fermenting, and bottling. I've learned those techniques so I'm ready to tackle all grain.

 

[BarryBrews]

Starting with Reverse Osmosis (RO) water makes water chemistry easy peasy. Here's mine.

First add salts for your beer character:
1. Malty beer = 20 gallons + 5 grams (CaSO4-2H2O) + 10 grams (CaCl2-2H2O)
2. Balanced beer = 20 gallons + 7 grams (CaSO4-2H2O) + 8 grams (CaCl2-2H2O)
3. Bitter beer = 20 gallons + 11 grams (CaSO4-2H2O) + 5 grams (CaCl2-2H2O)

Second enter your grains into EZ Water Calculator or equivalent program to determine if pH adjustment is needed. EZ Water Calculator shows the effects of the proposed adjustment addition.

Third add a yeast nutrient as per directions for your magnesium levels.

These three RO waters have the needed 50 ppm of calcium for the mash. The low salt content makes refreshing beer. Try it.

I know off topic, but where's the OP?

 

[chipmunk]

Did you significantly change your liquor to grist ratio when working with the Foundry (as opposed to your 3V system)? I have a similar system and had problems initially when trying to brew with the lower liquor to grist ratios - b/c of the dead-space under the basket. Just speculating here, but I wonder if a BIAB system like the Foundry might be more sensitive to “pulling tannins” than a static mash tun when exposed to alkaline water (high RA)? It constantly recirculates the liquid through the mash, and higher liquor to grist ratios would result in higher pH if not adjusted.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

That's from the beginning brewer's section, a first brew, well before water chemistry is addressed. I think Palmer is discouraging squeezing and oversteeping (too long or too high temps) there, since the water composition is generally unknown, to minimize the risk of extracting tannins and creating more trub.

Water composition is known - the process in chapter 1 recommends starting with distilled / RO water.

As mentioned in the picture in reply #30, the grains are steeped in wort, not water: "Steeping the grains in wort as opposed to plain water improves the wort pH ...". More details in the book.

 

[Unicorn_Platypus]

Starting with Reverse Osmosis (RO) water makes water chemistry easy peasy. Here's mine.

First add salts for your beer character:
1. Malty beer = 20 gallons + 5 grams (CaSO4-2H2O) + 10 grams (CaCl2-2H2O)
2. Balanced beer = 20 gallons + 7 grams (CaSO4-2H2O) + 8 grams (CaCl2-2H2O)
3. Bitter beer = 20 gallons + 11 grams (CaSO4-2H2O) + 5 grams (CaCl2-2H2O)

Second enter your grains into EZ Water Calculator or equivalent program to determine if pH adjustment is needed. EZ Water Calculator shows the effects of the proposed adjustment addition.

Third add a yeast nutrient as per directions for your magnesium levels.

These three RO waters have the needed 50 ppm of calcium for the mash. The low salt content makes refreshing beer. Try it.

I know off topic, but where's the OP?

I've found this type of schedule will work quite well for almost all beer styles except for ones with very heavy additions of roasted grains like stouts.

For stouts, I think skipping the gypsum (which also has a drying quality like roasted grains) and using baking soda to raise the PH is the way to go.

I was never happy with my stouts until I started using baking soda. It's made a world of difference for me in those styles.

 

[BarryBrews]

For stouts, I think skipping the gypsum (which also has a drying quality like roasted grains) and using baking soda to raise the PH is the way to go.

I was never happy with my stouts until I started using baking soda. It's made a world of difference for me in those styles.

Thanks. About to make a chocolate stout and will try without using gypsum and also see whether my recipe will need some baking soda or not.

 

[Unicorn_Platypus]

Thanks. About to make a chocolate stout and will try without using gypsum and also see whether my recipe will need some baking soda or not.

cool...give it a shot. Think you will be happy with it.

I like hitting the higher end of the PH range 5.5-5.6 for those dark beers. Those roasted grains can be quite acidic without using hard water in the mash. Kind of similar concept to "dutching chocolate" via alkalization to get a smoother vibe going. Martin Brungard (of Bru'n Water) had published something on this concept at one point which is what led me to try it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_process_chocolate
Note that you should only be adding the baking soda to the mash. Never add it to the sparge.

the baking soda should be used solely for the purpose of raising the mash PH. It's not added with the intention of impacting the final water profile like gypsum or CaCl. It will leave some residual sodium in the final profile which is not bad thing for darker styles though.

what I like to do is brew up a mini test mash with the same proportion of grains salts and strike water I plan to use per the software and water calculators I've already planned for the recipe. I'll do this on the stovetop with a half gallon scale of strike water prior to brew day. Then I'll test the PH on this after about 30 min to see if I hit my target. I'll adjust baking soda up/down slightly on the final full scale batch for brew day.

Those roasted grains can be very tricky and the water calculators won't always get it exactly right.

 

[BarryBrews]

Note that you should only be adding the baking soda to the mash. Never add it to the sparge.

the baking soda should be used solely for the purpose of raising the mash PH. It's not added with the intention of impacting the final water profile like gypsum or CaCl. It will leave some residual sodium in the final profile which is not bad thing for darker styles though.

what I like to do is brew up a mini test mash with the same proportion of grains salts and strike water I plan to use per the software and water calculators I've already planned for the recipe. I'll do this on the stovetop with a half gallon scale of strike water prior to brew day. Then I'll test the PH on this after about 30 min to see if I hit my target. I'll adjust baking soda up/down slightly on the final full scale batch for brew day.

Those roasted grains can be very tricky and the water calculators won't always get it exactly right.

Thank you again. I always take careful pH measurements of my mash and will shoot for the higher end of acceptable mash pH on my chocolate stout. I've been brewing for 9 years and just recently decided to share on HBT some uncommon techniques I use and also see what my fellow brews are up to. It's been interesting to say the least.

 

[Sauls]

Curious what your cleaning with. I also have an Anvil and was hesitant at using bar keepers friend as so many people recommend, but find it works the best on the bottom. Is it possible you doing the same and maybe some reside for the cleaner is hanging around? What are you using for your other cleaner and sanitizer products? 1 more thought is to pull apart all ball valves after a brew or two. I have been finding some yuck in mine as well as the pump that pbw wasn’t able to get to.

 

[BarryBrews]

Why and how can squeezing the mash bring bitterness? If you're thinking of extracting tannins, they can cause astringency, not bitterness. They can be confused, but once you know which is which (suck on a spent teabag), it's easier to troubleshoot.

Hmmm....sucking on a teabag is different than squeezing a brew bag how?

You wouldn't boil you wort with the grains present. Isn't the cloudy matter squeezed out of the brew bag just undissolved particles of grain that your vorlaufing was attempting to remove? It's all about degrees of perfection. BTW, I am sure good beer can be made either way.

 

[TheMadKing]

Hmmm....sucking on a teabag is different than squeezing a brew bag how?

You wouldn't boil you wort with the grains present. Isn't the cloudy matter squeezed out of the brew bag just undissolved particles of grain that your vorlaufing was attempting to remove? It's all about degrees of perfection. BTW, I am sure good beer can be made either way.

One has tea in it, the other has grain, different compounds. Tea is extremely tannic whereas the polyphenols in grain require both high pH and high temperature working together for extraction. It's a chemical process not a mechanical process.

I do decoction mashes where I boil my grain regularly without issue.

The cloudiness also includes proteins. Perfectly clear tannin free beer can be made without vorlaufing. Cloudy wort does not make cloudy (or astringent) beer.

 

[jerrylotto]

I have been finding some yuck in mine as well as the pump that pbw wasn’t able to get to.

In a flash of the blindingly obvious I want to point out that pumps and other mechanical devices need grease. If you take them apart make certain that you're only concerned about the liquid path and not removing critical lubricant from mechanical assemblies.

 

[TheMadKing]

@alexipa

So far the only description of your actual problem we have is "bitter thin and harsh"

This is extremely vague. So anything you could had to clarify would be helpful, especially if you could make some comparisons to other flavors.

You mentioned that your efficiency is low. Does that also mean that your original gravity is also low? If so did you adjust your hop schedule to compensate for your actual preboil gravity rather than your expected gravity?

It sounds like your beers may just be out of balance. Low OG could easily result in beers tasting bitter thin and harsh.

Also, if you are putting in late hop additions, how much time passes between adding them and the beer cooling below 180F? Your late additions can easily contribute more bitterness than intended if your wort isn't chilled as quickly as you used to

I would check a few things having recently observed a brew day on an anvil system:

Make sure your mash water to grist ratio looks right. The BeerSmith profile is wrong and results in an extremely thick mash.

Try stirring your mash frequently and ask your LHBS to double crush your grist.

Make sure you are adding the right amount of hops for the beer you're actually making, and not just what the recipe says. By that, I mean adjust for your expected original gravity once the mash is complete, and the alpha acids of your hops.

Check your whirlpool time, it may be significantly longer than it used to be on your old system.

 

[BarryBrews]

Curious what your cleaning with. I also have an Anvil and was hesitant at using bar keepers friend as so many people recommend, but find it works the best on the bottom. Is it possible you doing the same and maybe some reside for the cleaner is hanging around? What are you using for your other cleaner and sanitizer products? 1 more thought is to pull apart all ball valves after a brew or two. I have been finding some yuck in mine as well as the pump that pbw wasn’t able to get to.

Never used Bar Keepers Friend outside of the kitchen pots and pans. How does it compare to PBW?

I Dawn clean the mash tun gear, PBW the boil equipment, fermenters and kegs, and StarSan sanitize the fermenters and kegs. I find the RIMS tube from brewhardware.com and the Riptide pump to be extremely easy to disassemble to clean and dry and then reassemble. I'm very lazy when it comes to the valves, my bad!

 

[BarryBrews]

You mentioned that your efficiency is low. Does that also mean that your original gravity is also low? If so did you adjust your hop schedule to compensate for your actual preboil gravity rather than your expected gravity?

In lieu of forth coming evidence, this is a definite possibility. I like this concept and am guilt myself for having never corrected my hops addition to match my final wort gravity. Though I am always within a point or two of the design, it's just something I don't think about outside of the recipe development.

 

[BarryBrews]

I do decoction mashes where I boil my grain regularly without issue.

Excellent point about the decoction method which has it's place in brewing styles. I was speaking about dissolve materials verse suspended materials getting into the boil kettle. Perhaps my efforts are in vain, but for me clear wort is easy to produce.

 

[VikeMan]

By squeezing you may release some more dust, not-so-soluble fiber, and such, giving extra cloudiness that's gonna settle out as trub in the end, either in the kettle and/or in the fermenter. It won't harm your beer.

It will also increase the level of lipids that get into the fermenter, which can be a bad thing for foam retention and for flavor stability (accelerated staling).

The best way to minimize lipids is with a good vorlauf, because recirculated lipids tend to form a layer on/near the top of the grain bed.

 

[Bobby_M]

I have a lot of thoughts and some of them are based on assumptions because not everything has been explained yet.

Bitter: This can be IBUs out of balance with the final gravity. First, you can have high IBU in a beer that has late hops where you're not chilling down fast enough. The other possibility is that your IBUs are recipe-correct, but your lower efficiency is contributing to a low OG and therefore a higher than prescribed OG/BU ratio. In other words, the beer is out of balance. Rather than trying to troubleshoot the efficiency, just scale whatever recipe you use from the listed efficiency to your consistent 60% and it will have you use more grain. You didn't mention how far off the recipe OG and FG you have been.

Bitter can also be a misdiagnosed astringency. Spring water is usually moderately soft so if your beers have been lighter in color and you haven't added any acid, your mash pH is probably too high. Try half an ml of lactic acid per gallon of strike water for light beers. This gets even worse if you're sparging. You can add a little acid to the sparge water or; I'm not sure which size system you have, but if you have the vessel capacity, try doing a full volume no sparge because it's more pH stable.

Bitter can also be acetaldehyde, which comes across as a tart green apple or some people pick it up as the interior of a raw pumpkin. This has nothing to do with the hot side but is a fermentation thing. If you are severely underpitching yeast, if you rush the beers into packaging, or if you don't give the yeast time to clean these compounds up post fermentation, all can contribute. If you commonly use liquid yeast and only use one package of some aging stuff, try using dry yeast or use a yeast pitch calculator on brewer's friend, beersmith, mrmalty.com etc... If you have temp control, ramp the temp up a couple degrees at day 5 and hold it there for another week. I have tasted a lot of beers from acquaintances in my customer base and homebrew club that have a persistent acetaldehyde problem. Bitter and Thin is a pretty common descriptor if you don't know exactly what you're tasting.


It could be a little of all these problems....

 

[alexipa]

First of all, you all are awesome and this community is great. Thank you so much for the help. Here's hopefully a good breakdown of my full process for my latest finished beer, an amber ale that I wanted to be on the sweeter side. It's been in a keg for two weeks and tastes just like the others (bad). My best explanation is bitter, harsh, and slightly chemical. My wife and I have been trying to assign more 'flavors' to the problem (medicinal, green apple, vinegar) and have been striking out a bit - I don't think my palate is tuned to these off flavors well. My foundry is the 10.5 gallon and I run it on 240v. Here's the full process (which I took directly from the Foundry manual) and recipe:

4 lbs Maris Otter
5 lbs 2-row
1.5 lbs Crystal 80L
1 lb Amber Candi Sugar

.5 oz Chinook (60 minutes)
.5 oz Chinook (10 minutes)
1 oz Willamette (0 minutes)

US-05 yeast with no starter

Brewed 10/25/2020. For this one I used Eldorado spring water with no adjustments (at the advice of my LHBS). I filled the Foundry with ~7.7 gallons and started heating to 158. Upon reaching 158, I threw the grains in and stirred vigorously until the temp came down to 152. After 10 minutes, I started the recirculation pump and lowered the flow rate until it was consistent and not dropping the water level of the mash. At 25 minutes, I stopped the recirc and raked the top ~1/3 of the grain bed. I did this again at 40 minutes. At 60 minutes I stopped the recirc and pulled the basket up, letting the wort flow through the grain bed and back into the foundry. Simultaneously I turned the temp up to boiling. I removed the basket after the dripping slowed considerably (no squeezing or pushing the grain bed down). Once it started boiling (pretty quickly), I threw in .5 oz of chinook and started my timer. I followed the rest of the hopping schedule and also tossed in Whirlfloc, the candi sugar, and the anvil immersion chiller at 15 minutes left in the boil. After the 0 minute hopping addition, I turned the anvil off and started cooling. Cooling took about 20 minutes, at which point I dump out the sanitizer that's been in the fermentation bucket and reassemble the ball valve for that bucket. After taking a sample and testing the OG (which was 1.050), I let the wort from the foundry flow through the valve, through a sanitized mesh screen, and into the fermentation bucket. Once it's all in, I pitched the entire packet of US-05 (no starter) at about 64 degrees. It stayed between 62-64 the entire fermentation period.

I kegged this on 11/24 at a FG of 1.007. I tried some just last night and it was the same badness as the others (about 8 in total at this point). These beers always look beautiful though and this one was no different.

The crushed grain looked like all of the pictures I've seen of a good grain crush, but I can't say exactly what the mill was set to unfortunately. Here's the chemical analysis of the water: Eldorado Springs Water Chemical Analysis .

Thanks again everyone.

 

[alexipa]

I just tried it again now. Not sure if this is helpful, but the harsh taste is MUCH more pronounced now then when I first put it in the keg. Super bitter taste, like so bitter it's hard to taste anything else. Reminds me of west coast IPAs during the IBU craze. Probably not bad if you're into that sort of thing... However the smell is straight up medicinal chemicals.

 

[Newtobrewing85]