Burnt taste

[rtwdonald]

Hello,
I just brewed a Best Case IPA, and transferee it to secondary. It tastes really burnt. Does anyone know why this could be? I’m thinking of trying to turn it into a coffee IPA with cold brew to mask some of the burnt.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[Gravity]

There's not enough information about your recipe or process to give usable advice.

 

[ReaperOnefour]

Sounds like you scorched the extract on the bottom of the kettle. Are you using liquid malt extract?

 

[rtwdonald]

I did use liquid extract, and that’s what I thought, but nothing was stuck to the kettle.

 

[Rob2010SS]

Perhaps post the recipe and how you did everything? This may help understand what happened. As you've already stated, you may have scorched the extract but without knowing exactly what was in the recipe and at what times you did things and if you took the kettle away from the flame when you poured it in, it's hard to tell exactly what happened.:rockin:

 

[rtwdonald]

I steeped some Munich and crystal malts at 155f for 20 minuets in 9 litres of water. I then brought this to a boil, removed from the heat and added 9lbs of light LME. I returned this to the heat and boiled for 30 minutes, adding my cascade hops at the desired times. There was a total of 1/2 lb of hops.
Hope this helps.

 

[flars]

I steeped some Munich and crystal malts at 155f for 20 minuets in 9 litres of water. I then brought this to a boil, removed from the heat and added 9lbs of light LME. I returned this to the heat and boiled for 30 minutes, adding my cascade hops at the desired times. There was a total of 1/2 lb of hops.
Hope this helps.

The burnt taste may just be from boiling the 9 pounds of LME in only 9 litres of water. The Maillard Reaction will darken extracts being heated, but may contribute the off flavor when the concentration of sugars is extremely high.

I looked at the generic instructions for Best Coast IPA DIY. They're not good. The instructions I looked at had all the extract added to only 4 to 5 litres of water that the grains would be steeped in for 23 litres of volume in the fermentor.

 

[Rob2010SS]

The addition of 9lbs of LME to almost 2.5gal of water isn't a good practice. I just did this with my first batch and unfortunately learned that a better method is to do about 1/3 of the LME at the beginning of the boil and then the rest with like 10 min remaining in the boil.

As you added the LME, were you stirring, or did you dump it all in and THEN stir? This could have made a difference as well, even though you removed it from the heat, it could have gone down to the bottom of the pot and gotten scorched....

 

[IslandLizard]

The burnt taste may just be from boiling the 9 pounds of LME in only 9 litres of water. [...]

Yow....sers, the way you put that...!

To the OP:
Burnt flavors don't age out very well, but darkening them, if palatable, could hide them very effectively.

Maybe run some small tests first, before committing the whole batch. I've had some very dark "IDAs" or "IBAs" ("Pale" really makes no sense there) that were out of this world!

 

[rtwdonald]

Thanks for the tips. I will definitely try doing it differently next time.
I’m sure I will still get through the whole batch.