Hey guys!
I used to brew a lot, but hit a dry spell between 2013 and June of this year. I am generally an AG brewer, but I decided to do an extract batch for my first brew in three years because I didn't trust myself to remember how my process worked.
Brew day went OK. I brewed BYO Magazine's Brainstorm dark mild recipe. I was raring to go after that, so I slammed through three (!) AG batches over the weekends that followed.
All but one of those beers is on tap, and the mild is the worst of the bunch. Super cloudy, a weird fruity taste, a nutty finish that borders on astringent.
I'm trying to figure out what went wrong. The beer was fermented at 66 degrees with S-04, but my bitter - one of the AG batches - used the same yeast at the same temp and it's delicious, without the overbearingly fruity profile.
It cold crashed at the same temperature and duration as the AG bitter (in the same fridge at the same time, in fact!) but did not clear at all. In contrast, the bitter is the clearest beer I've ever brewed! Both beers were treated with Biofine Clear before cold crashing, and again during transfer to keg.
The only differences in process I am aware of are:
- The mild had a steep grains step for one hour at 160f
- The bitter used whirlfloc, the mild did not
- The mild conditioned for two weeks longer than the bitter
- The mild was an extract batch
- The mild had a small amount of hose water leak into the kettle during cooling
Has anyone seen this symptom (cloudy + abrasively fruity + weirdly nutty/astringent) before? Am I dealing with some weird infection? The beer reminds me of nothing so much as my first ever batch, which isn't good... and has me a bit freaked out.
Just to add insult to injury, the hydro sample I took two weeks ago was delicious and tasted nothing like the beer I have now... though it was still exceptionally cloudy.
I used to brew a lot, but hit a dry spell between 2013 and June of this year. I am generally an AG brewer, but I decided to do an extract batch for my first brew in three years because I didn't trust myself to remember how my process worked.
Brew day went OK. I brewed BYO Magazine's Brainstorm dark mild recipe. I was raring to go after that, so I slammed through three (!) AG batches over the weekends that followed.
All but one of those beers is on tap, and the mild is the worst of the bunch. Super cloudy, a weird fruity taste, a nutty finish that borders on astringent.
I'm trying to figure out what went wrong. The beer was fermented at 66 degrees with S-04, but my bitter - one of the AG batches - used the same yeast at the same temp and it's delicious, without the overbearingly fruity profile.
It cold crashed at the same temperature and duration as the AG bitter (in the same fridge at the same time, in fact!) but did not clear at all. In contrast, the bitter is the clearest beer I've ever brewed! Both beers were treated with Biofine Clear before cold crashing, and again during transfer to keg.
The only differences in process I am aware of are:
- The mild had a steep grains step for one hour at 160f
- The bitter used whirlfloc, the mild did not
- The mild conditioned for two weeks longer than the bitter
- The mild was an extract batch
- The mild had a small amount of hose water leak into the kettle during cooling
Has anyone seen this symptom (cloudy + abrasively fruity + weirdly nutty/astringent) before? Am I dealing with some weird infection? The beer reminds me of nothing so much as my first ever batch, which isn't good... and has me a bit freaked out.
Just to add insult to injury, the hydro sample I took two weeks ago was delicious and tasted nothing like the beer I have now... though it was still exceptionally cloudy.
