Folks,
Please forgive the long post. I've been trying to isolate my problem for over a year, so I want to provide a high level overview so that anyone willing to try to help can eliminate potential explanations.
First, the problem. I cannot brew a pale, hoppy beer without a nasty astringency. Yes, I know there are other threads on this, and I've read them many times. Before telling you what I've done, let me first give some additional background. My problem has actually improved. It use to be that all of my beers were astringent. Then I educated myself on the importance of water PH, and now that I monitor mash and sparge ph, there's no doubt that the astringency has disappeared from my lagers, ambers and stouts. I can successfully brew sound, tasty beers ranging from a Munich Helles (I cut my water with distilled for that) to fantastic oatmeal stouts. I also have to say that my hoppy pale beers have also improved. Unfortunately, while improved, those hoppy pale beers are not "cured" of the astringency like the others are.
So, because I've successfully managed mash and sparge ph for other beers, that tells me that I can remove these factors as possibilities. I'd also say that fermentation and sanitation must have nothing to do with it--again, because I am capable of producing wonderful examples of other styles.
So what's the variable? My Helles is very pale, so it must not be the color. It has to be, it seems to me, something connected to the amount of hopping associated with my troubled (and favorite) styles. There are a couple of things I still plan on trying, and I'll lay those out in a minute, but I'm desperate for someone to help me identify where I'm going wrong. First, a little more detail on my water and my brewing practices. Here's my water profile:
Ca: 36
Mg: 9
Na: 20
Chl: 41
Sulfate: 37
Alkalinity: 80
PH: 7.6
My approach has been not to mess with things too much. I use the advanced brewing water calculator on brewersfriend.com. For my hoppy pales, I typically add about 4 grams of gypsum to the mash. Otherwise, I add enough lactic acid to get both the mash and sparge water ph to 5.4. Other than that, I try not to go nuts with the chemistry. Again, this has had a significant positive impact on my results.
One thing I've wondered is if I'm getting hop astringency from the boil--perhaps my pre-boil kettle PH is too high? If that could be my problem, I can always add more gypsum or some CaCl to the kettle to bring it down to the 5.2 5.3 range. Unfortunately, I haven't been testing my kettle PH, so I have no data on that.
I'm also wondering if all of my astringency problems could be coming from dry hopping. I use pellets. My process is typically to rack to a keg, cold crash and use some gelatin to drop as much yeast as possible. I then do a closed transfer of the clear beer to a second keg. I then dry hop in that keg with a stainless dry hopper. This one:http://stainlessbrewing.3dcartstores.com/Dry-Hopper-with-twist-cap_p_155.html. I leave the hops in for about a week and remove. At least once, I'll jostle the keg to make sure the hops are getting good contact with the beer. Honestly, the dry hopper does a pretty damn good job of keeping most hop bits out, but there's no doubt that my first few pours are pretty much undrinkable, as they have too much hop material. But that does improve after the first few pours.
I put a lot of care into this process. While 8 or so months ago the tannins were so bad that I would dump the entire batch (before I started managing PH), the astringency is still there at an unacceptable level.
So, any thoughts?
Please forgive the long post. I've been trying to isolate my problem for over a year, so I want to provide a high level overview so that anyone willing to try to help can eliminate potential explanations.
First, the problem. I cannot brew a pale, hoppy beer without a nasty astringency. Yes, I know there are other threads on this, and I've read them many times. Before telling you what I've done, let me first give some additional background. My problem has actually improved. It use to be that all of my beers were astringent. Then I educated myself on the importance of water PH, and now that I monitor mash and sparge ph, there's no doubt that the astringency has disappeared from my lagers, ambers and stouts. I can successfully brew sound, tasty beers ranging from a Munich Helles (I cut my water with distilled for that) to fantastic oatmeal stouts. I also have to say that my hoppy pale beers have also improved. Unfortunately, while improved, those hoppy pale beers are not "cured" of the astringency like the others are.
So, because I've successfully managed mash and sparge ph for other beers, that tells me that I can remove these factors as possibilities. I'd also say that fermentation and sanitation must have nothing to do with it--again, because I am capable of producing wonderful examples of other styles.
So what's the variable? My Helles is very pale, so it must not be the color. It has to be, it seems to me, something connected to the amount of hopping associated with my troubled (and favorite) styles. There are a couple of things I still plan on trying, and I'll lay those out in a minute, but I'm desperate for someone to help me identify where I'm going wrong. First, a little more detail on my water and my brewing practices. Here's my water profile:
Ca: 36
Mg: 9
Na: 20
Chl: 41
Sulfate: 37
Alkalinity: 80
PH: 7.6
My approach has been not to mess with things too much. I use the advanced brewing water calculator on brewersfriend.com. For my hoppy pales, I typically add about 4 grams of gypsum to the mash. Otherwise, I add enough lactic acid to get both the mash and sparge water ph to 5.4. Other than that, I try not to go nuts with the chemistry. Again, this has had a significant positive impact on my results.
One thing I've wondered is if I'm getting hop astringency from the boil--perhaps my pre-boil kettle PH is too high? If that could be my problem, I can always add more gypsum or some CaCl to the kettle to bring it down to the 5.2 5.3 range. Unfortunately, I haven't been testing my kettle PH, so I have no data on that.
I'm also wondering if all of my astringency problems could be coming from dry hopping. I use pellets. My process is typically to rack to a keg, cold crash and use some gelatin to drop as much yeast as possible. I then do a closed transfer of the clear beer to a second keg. I then dry hop in that keg with a stainless dry hopper. This one:http://stainlessbrewing.3dcartstores.com/Dry-Hopper-with-twist-cap_p_155.html. I leave the hops in for about a week and remove. At least once, I'll jostle the keg to make sure the hops are getting good contact with the beer. Honestly, the dry hopper does a pretty damn good job of keeping most hop bits out, but there's no doubt that my first few pours are pretty much undrinkable, as they have too much hop material. But that does improve after the first few pours.
I put a lot of care into this process. While 8 or so months ago the tannins were so bad that I would dump the entire batch (before I started managing PH), the astringency is still there at an unacceptable level.
So, any thoughts?
