Correcting for over sparging

[BreezyBrew]

I would love to hear how the beer turned out, I believe I may be encountering the same issue.

 

[cscade]

The beer is definitely improved. I have plenty of fine tuning to do yet to get my numbers working consistently again, but take-aways are;

• pH, pH, pH
• Reduce the vigor of your boil to reduce your evaporation, and therefore your required sparge volume. Don't go too far with this, as a weak boil imparts it's own problems, but if your boil-off rate is near 2gph for instance, your boil is probably too vigorous unless your kettle is 4' across and 6" deep.
• Really monitor the gravity coming off your sparge. For me, this required changing my sparge configuration from bottom-up to a hose hanging into the top of my boil kettle.

The beers I have made on this new process are definitely lacking the grainy problem.

Cheers!

 

[BreezyBrew]

So I did an experiment to try and eliminate water as the culprit for the taste.

I boiled to solutions of hops and water. The first, I made with the exact same water profile that I brew with. The second was 100% RO water. I boiled them for 60 minutes. After tasting both, they were very bitter (probably could have gone easier with the hops) but neither have that lingering "sour" flavor that only shows up a few minutes after tasting the beer.

I do use Bru'n water and my est PH of my brews is usually about 5.4. I haven't tested anything yet with equipment, that will probably be one of my next upgrades. My more recent brews I have FWH'ed so may be that's a cause of it too. This most recent brew, I took my mash water up to 2.0 qt/gal and also acidified my sparge water (which I usually do) but it happened to be a lot less. I did taste the wort when I took the OG reading, and it seemed to have the flavor. Now I am wondering what the wort would taste like "pre hopped". Really there's only two things left that come to mind about this flavor... process and possible contamination.

 

[PissyFingers]

can i ask what your water/grist ratio is in your mash?

 

[cscade]

I definitely recommend tasting everything at every step of the process. Taste all your grains individually before milling (except maybe black patent ). Taste your first runnings. Taste your final runnings. Taste the mixed wort prior to the first hops going in. Taste what goes into the fermenter. Taste it all! It's not going to taste like beer before the yeast does it's thing, but you will be able to identify if a flavor suddenly appears after step X.

I also use Bru'n water, and for my water it's pH estimates are always wrong. It's in what you could consider the ballpark I guess - typically within 0.2 pH - but for the mash that just isn't close enough. Don't get me wrong, it's a good tool, but if you want to know your mash pH, no spreadsheet is ever going to be able to tell you.

If the flavor you're experiencing is the same as mine, I'd say hops are certainly not the culprit. Although difficult to describe, there's no doubt the flavor in question is grain derived.

 

[BreezyBrew]

can i ask what your water/grist ratio is in your mash?

I've done 1.25, 1.5, and 2, and it doesn't seem to matter. Although, the 2.0 mash the verdict is still out, I don't have high hopes for the post fermentation taste to change much. I also do acidify my sparge water.

Great advice about tasting everything, had I thought about it before my last brew session... might have been able to pinpoint. Except for the black patent ;-) Adicifying my mash water I would try to get the pH as reasonably low as I could. Without having the hardness go into the negative range.

I also use lactic so I'm wondering if this and the grain mixture have something to do with it. I think I'm going to order some phosphoric since I've read that doesn't change the taste much. I've also thought about using 2% acid malt a twirl.

Thanks for the suggestions, and I'm open to any additional.

 

[cscade]

This reference - Lactate Taste Threshold Experiment - posted by Bsquared earlier in this thread, removed any fears I may have had about using lactic. So for me, I decided not to switch to a less forgiving acid.

I've not noticed mash thickness being an issue either. I run in the 1.5-1.75 qt/lb range typically. I have gone much higher on small BIAB batches and had no issues whatsoever. The pH really seems to come into play on this particular problem in the sparging step only - BIAB doesn't have one.

 

[BreezyBrew]

I realized that the aftertaste I'm experiencing is very similar to the after taste of yogurt. It's sour, milky tasting and long lasting. Palmer is quoted as saying the threshold is about 2ml/gallon, and some of my beers have been in the ballpark of that range. After doing some research on the last 5 beers I have produced, the one that relied least on lactic (had some darker grains) had the least amount of the lactic flavor.

I'm not trivalizing the study that was presented, because it's much more scientific then I would ever be, but it seems as though I need to run my own experiment. It doesn't seem terribly difficult to put some small increasing amounts of it in a flavor neutral beer and compare it to a control. By now I've got a pretty good handle on what I'm tasting.

I'm beginning to wonder if there are a couple of causes here... Water additions as well as astringency issues. The good news is that I purchased a pH meter with all the necessary solutions and it will be ready for the next time I brew. Also, it has crossed my mind that I haven't been converting the ml to tsp correctly, or accurately measuring them so purchasing a syringe is a good idea for me.

If these experiments don't pinpoint a cause, looks like I'll need to make room for some stout in my fermenter