My beers are completely undrinkable!

[rockdemon]

I've made two saisons and theyre both horrible! I made one with less malt and one with more, pg 1054 and OG 1080.
The 1054 one tastes like an overfermented lager and the 1084 is dark in color and tastes like a horrible sweet brown lager...
I used light pilsner malt and light DME...
First i thought that i needed to wait longer but theyre still horrible after a month in the bottles... Ive tried 3 of each last saturday and poured them all out the sink...

My biggest concern is why they got that awful lagermalt flavour... not like tasty american lagers, more like awful swedish or english ones...

 

[mrphillips]

What was your FG for the 1.080? If it tasted ugly-sweet, then maybe you just needed to give your bucket a subtle jostle to liven up your yeast to eat up some more of the sugars.

I'm not sure what you mean by "overfermented lagers." Does it have a sulfur smell/taste? Does it have an unpleasant alcohol burn?

 

[Doctor_M]

When are you adding your extract to the boil? All at the beginning or a little and then a big late addition?

 

[poptarts]

Recipe
FGs
Temps
Times

 

[chad_]

What is a lager malt flavor?

 

[thegreatmaibockaddict]

Not enough input to compute.

you definitely need to be very descriptive about what you did for anyone to help...or take the beer to a local shop or homebrew club.

 

[rockdemon]

Ok. Heres the recipe for the lighter saison.
I only made about 4 litres.
O,85kg pilsner malt
O,125 grams Light DME
22 grams saaz hops.
French saison yeast

I mashed at 70 degrees celsius for 40 min.
Added the DME and got it to a boil. Added hops and boiled for 15 minutes.
Cooled dit Down to 23 defgrees C.
OG 1045
FG 1001 after about Three weeks.
Now when ive made other beers i understand that the way i made that saison is weird. I followed instructions from a beginners psle ale that turned out great...

 

[rockdemon]

The other saison was made the same way buth with more malt and dme. It came out brown. Like a brown ale... Og 1070 fg 1004

 

[rockdemon]

What is a lager malt flavor?

Im not sure that its the malt but that sweet flavour that lagers have that ales usually dont.

 

[rockdemon]

Sorry about all the weird spelling. Had swedish T9 turned on...

 

[Arrheinous]

Saisons ought to be mashed in at a lower temp to get that drier body (if that's what you're looking for). 70C (158F) seems high even for a full bodied stout (154-156F, 67C-69C). Something like 66C (150F) for 90 minutes would be better. That's what you'd use for tripels and other styles with the dryness you'd expect in a saison.

71-75C is the temperature you should be mashing out at to kill off the enzymes and stop conversion of starches into fermentable sugars and you're at the brink of that during your mash. This is a process that is sensitive down to the half degree Celsius - don't get crazy over that just yet, just get close enough.

Another issue would be controlling the fermentation temperature. What temperature are you pitching yeast at and can you reliably control the temperature during fermentation? The temperature in the fermenter can be much higher than the temperature outside, especially with some of the energetic Belgian strains. You may need an water/ice bath or swamp cooler to vent off the extra heat from fermentation.

I'm not sure what quality of the beer is making it undrinkable - if it's a syrupy sweetness and too thick of a body then it's the first issue because a 70C mash is just too high to produce fermentable sugars out of the starches (sounds like your 1.080 beer). If it tastes too alcoholic or harsh, almost like solvent, with too much fruit odor then it's the fermentation temperature that's the problem (sounds like your 1.050 beer).


EDIT: The other thing is with your lager/pilsner malt you should be doing a full one hour boil to rid the beer of the dimethyl sulfide (DMS) from the grain. This is a compound that'll add a cooked corn flavor to the beer unless it is boiled out.

With beers based on pale malts or darker ones it's not as big an issue. Your choice of a 15 minute boil is from your IPA instructions? A full 60 min boil for most beers with also improve other qualities of the final product.

 

[PRE66_6TART]

I've read that you should do at least 90 minute boils when using Pilsner malt to boil off the DMS. 60 minute boils for other types of malts, 90 minutes for Pilsner is what I've seen. Extract has already had the DMS taken care of so it doesn't need a long boil.

 

[duboman]

I picked up on the short boil time as well, DMS production and cooked corn taste.

To the OP, a much better process description would help greatly!

As for the one that was brown, perhaps you used a different DME by mistake?

Either way, pilsner malt needs a vigorous boil for at least 60 minutes, preferably 90


Sent from the Commune

 

[rockdemon]

I picked up on the short boil time as well, DMS production and cooked corn taste.

To the OP, a much better process description would help greatly!

As for the one that was brown, perhaps you used a different DME by mistake?

Either way, pilsner malt needs a vigorous boil for at least 60 minutes, preferably 90


Sent from the Commune

Yeah it was that stupid pale ale kit that said 15 minutes. I made a new saison and a triple last weekend. Boil time 90 minutes at 67degrees C.
According to the pale ale recipe i added the hops at the same time as the dme. On the new beers i added at 4 different time. Some kind of hop schedule...
I really hope that im having more luck with these beers. Its a sad thing to pour out my own beers...

I only have one kind of DME, the light kind. Could it be the high boiling and alot of dme that made the beer dark?

Im gonna try a recipe from this site on sunday. A sweetwater 420 clone called Coldwater 420. I guess from what you guys are tellin me that temp might be my biggest concern?

If the temp in the fermenter is too high will it help to get it down a few degrees temporarily? Like opening a window for an hour or two? I cant really get the temp below 17 C in the room. No air conditioner...

 

[Hello]

Use a swamp cooler (bucket of water) to control your temp.

 

[manitoid]

Freeze a few water bottles to drop into the swamp cooler every few hours as well.

This helped me get fermentation room temps down from 73 to 64.

 

[mbobhat]

Use a swamp cooler (bucket of water) to control your temp.

I he's using Saison yeast, he can just let it ride and not worry about keeping the temp low. If he kept it low the yeast may have stalled out, which they are known to do. They actually recommend a heater on your bucket if you aren't brewing a saison in the summer because of the stalling out.

 

[Foosier]

Another thought. Rather than using instructions from another beer kit for another beer style, check out the recipe section here on HBT. there are some great looking saison recipes in the Belgian ale and Belgian strong ale sections. Those recipes will give you a lot better instructions which are specific to the style you are trying to produce. Most have Extract versions too. This will allow you to eliminate instructions which are not meant for the style to negatively impact your beers.

 

[WayFrae]

Ok. Heres the recipe for the lighter saison.
I only made about 4 litres.
O,85kg pilsner malt
O,125 grams Light DME
22 grams saaz hops.
French saison yeast

I mashed at 70 degrees celsius for 40 min.
Added the DME and got it to a boil. Added hops and boiled for 15 minutes.
Cooled dit Down to 23 defgrees C.
OG 1045
FG 1001 after about Three weeks.
Now when ive made other beers i understand that the way i made that saison is weird. I followed instructions from a beginners psle ale that turned out great...

So did you only have a 15 min hop addition? You didn't add any bittering hops? Maybe the sweetness you are getting is because you don't have any bitterness to balance out the malt.

EDIT: Whoops, I forgot to read the second page.

 

[thegreatmaibockaddict]

Guys, I have never had a beer that was from a batch size that is less that 5 gallons that I actually thought was really good. Seeing that this was a 4 liter batch, well it could be the problem. I have always found that my starters taste generally crappy myself, and that is maybe 1 liter of beer or less.

That said, I also know that when you do a starter, the excess fermented beer is supposed to be poured off due to a high concentration of yeast off flavors that you do not want to pour into the wort of your new beer. This is what I think the problem is here. You used a saison yeast with lots of off yeast flavors -intentionally so- all concentrated into a small amount of beer that should basically be used as a starter for a big batch and poured off.

Fuel for thought...

 

[rockdemon]

Another thought. Rather than using instructions from another beer kit for another beer style, check out the recipe section here on HBT. there are some great looking saison recipes in the Belgian ale and Belgian strong ale sections. Those recipes will give you a lot better instructions which are specific to the style you are trying to produce. Most have Extract versions too. This will allow you to eliminate instructions which are not meant for the style to negatively impact your beers.

Yeah i know but the reason was that i couldnt find "beer for dummies" instructions...
1. add this amount of water
2. bring it up to 65 degrees
3. add malt

etc etc...
Ive made a new batch of saison in a completely different way. 65 degrees C in 90 min with hops added at different times and so on... If this one doesnt turn out descent

 

[Arrheinous]

At this rate I'm sure it will be a great saison and you've learned which is what you can take away from the ordeal. The specifics of beer brewing can be very specific.

65C for 90 min is a much better mash setup for what you want. Now just keep the fermentation under control and warm at about 21C to get the ester contributions.

What was your boil like? 90 minutes with a 60 minute addition of 1oz Saaz or something?

 

[gromitdj]

Guys, I have never had a beer that was from a batch size that is less that 5 gallons that I actually thought was really good.

The 1 Gallon Brewers unite thread has 400+ pages of information that would disagree. Since I brew 2 1/2 gallons, I have serious doubts that batch size is your problem. I would instead focus on the ingredients, boil times, mash schedule, and fermentation factors.

 

[jro238]

Ok. Heres the recipe for the lighter saison.
I only made about 4 litres.
O,85kg pilsner malt
O,125 grams Light DME
22 grams saaz hops.
French saison yeast

I mashed at 70 degrees celsius for 40 min.
Added the DME and got it to a boil. Added hops and boiled for 15 minutes.
Cooled dit Down to 23 defgrees C.
OG 1045
FG 1001 after about Three weeks.
Now when ive made other beers i understand that the way i made that saison is weird. I followed instructions from a beginners psle ale that turned out great...

***EDIT: missed the second and third page of comments because my HBT wasn't refreshing correctly so most of this has already been said. Cheers!***

I also have no idea what you mean by lagermalt or overattenuated lager. The only thing I can think of is a lack of body or watery?

I plugged your recipe into beersmith and it looks like you hit your expected gravity and will end up with ~17 IBU which is fine. It is a bit more conventional to use some bittering hops in a longer boil as opposed to just loading up the flavoring hops but whatever works for you I guess

What I don't understand though is how you mashed at 70C (158F) and are getting down to 1.001. 158 is a very high mash temp and should really leave you with a much less fermentable wort. I guess some more specifics as to exactly what you are tasting in your beer are needed. It generally takes a lot to make a beer undrinkable

 

[Aonghus]

If the temp in the fermenter is too high will it help to get it down a few degrees temporarily? Like opening a window for an hour or two? I cant really get the temp below 17 C in the room. No air conditioner...

To control temperatures:
You might try filling your bath tub from the cold tap. And placing a large t-shirt over your fermenter bucket and placing the whole thing in the tub. If you have a fan, place it in a safe place (so you do not electrocute yourself) whereby it is directed at the t-shirt covered fermenter and run the fan. You can also use frozen water bottles, as suggest by a previous poster, in the tub to drop the temp even more. Just mind that the t-shirt does not start to mold. I have put a bit of bleach in the tub to keep that from happening before.

 

[thegreatmaibockaddict]

The 1 Gallon Brewers unite thread has 400+ pages of information that would disagree. Since I brew 2 1/2 gallons, I have serious doubts that batch size is your problem. I would instead focus on the ingredients, boil times, mash schedule, and fermentation factors.

I don't brew small batches like that and never have. I have had other peoples brews from small batches and they were terrible. That said, someone will have to bring me a good one to change my mind, as I am not going to try making one as it sounds like more trouble than its worth. As I said, I have always dumped out most of the extra beer in starters as it is generally nasty, and this is a procedure that was preached to me. Old habits die hard. I know I either read or was taught by a pro that anything less than 5 gallons is potentially a problem and that was at least 15 years ago, and I have not given it any thought since, so don't shoot the messenger...Yes I have been running a homebrew club since 1998, and have a pro brewer as a member (and founding member).

 

[gromitdj]

I guess we'll just agree to disagree, but my 2 1/2 gallon batches have tasted good. My intent was not to prove you wrong, however, I just don't think this is the source of the O.P.'s problem.

 

[rockdemon]

I believe that my big problems was
1. boiling time
2. very warm fermentation

My new saison thats in 2nd ferm right now will be very interresting, used the same ingredients but changed everything else, including lower fermentation temp with about 5 degrees c.

The new saison is has a quite dark color considering I used light pilsner malt and light dme... why is this? can the malt in the bottom get burnt in the pot?

 

[rockdemon]

wrng pic, dont know how to delete...

 

[rockdemon]

These are the new saisons in the glass bottles. Ive now moved them to secondary but still they have that brownish color...

 

[Arrheinous]

A lot of people around here would rather not use a secondary and just leave it in primary for the required number of weeks.

The only real reason for you to use a secondary is so I can sell you more fermenters. But it also helps clarify the beer, harvest yeast, or add bulk ingredients like fruit, way after most of the fermentation is complete. Certain styles won't need a secondary. But YMMV.

At this rate you probably haven't hurt anything but if you started that batch while this thread was going then you might have moved it to secondary a little too soon. :cross:


It's going to look darker in the carboy than the glass.

A substance is going to lot darker with the more stuff in it and the longer the amount of it you look through. More stuff in a longer distance means more stuff to block or deflect the light - making it a lot darker than it will in the glass. If you've ever been swimming in a murky pond or something you can see your hand up close but farther away it's blocked.

In general, adding the DME at the start of the boil will increase the darkness versus adding at the end of the boil.

 

[rockdemon]

I noticed these little white dots growing on top of my secondary. Is this some yeast stuff or an infection?

 

[SmokeyMcBong]

Hard to tell from the picture. Could be yeast rafts, could be mold. Are the floaties fuzzy?

 

[rockdemon]

No they dont look like hairy so hopefully its not mold. I have the same dots in my gooseberry saison. On some of the berries aswell...

 

[chickypad]

I don't brew small batches like that and never have. I have had other peoples brews from small batches and they were terrible. That said, someone will have to bring me a good one to change my mind, as I am not going to try making one as it sounds like more trouble than its worth. As I said, I have always dumped out most of the extra beer in starters as it is generally nasty, and this is a procedure that was preached to me. Old habits die hard. I know I either read or was taught by a pro that anything less than 5 gallons is potentially a problem and that was at least 15 years ago, and I have not given it any thought since, so don't shoot the messenger...Yes I have been running a homebrew club since 1998, and have a pro brewer as a member (and founding member).

You seem to be forgetting that a starter is plain DME, no hops, with a relatively huge pitch rate and often uncontrolled temps with the sole purpose or propagating yeast. Of course it tastes like crap when it's done. That's fine if you think small batches are a waste of time, and I'm sorry the ones you've had were bad, but you're mistaken in assuming you can't make good beer that way. Good technique is much more important than batch size IME. No offence to the pro brewer, but I suspect he/she has not actually tried brewing on that scale on a regular basis.

OP it sounds like the changes this time will be for the better, although like Arrhenious I wonder if you might have transferred early especially as you were fermenting cooler this time. When was brew day? Also which yeast strain did you use and did you take any graviities? With the Belgian yeasts one common technique is to start them cool and let the temp rise to get the best attenuation. I like the flavor profiles with a slow rise over a week or so but some just let it go wild.

I wouldn't worry about the color, as was mentioned will likely be quite a bit paler in the glass. For reference check out the pics in this thread.

Edit: okay I see now it looks like you actually brewed weekend before last (sorry this thread is a little long). You are likely okay then, though depending on strain and how cool you kept it. Some of the saison yeasts can be a little finicky. If by French saison you meant 3711 then you should be good.

 

[rockdemon]

OP it sounds like the changes this time will be for the better, although like Arrhenious I wonder if you might have transferred early especially as you were fermenting cooler this time. When was brew day? Also which yeast strain did you use and did you take any graviities? With the Belgian yeasts one common technique is to start them cool and let the temp rise to get the best attenuation. I like the flavor profiles with a slow rise over a week or so but some just let it go wild.

I wouldn't worry about the color, as was mentioned will likely be quite a bit paler in the glass. For reference check out the pics in this thread.

Edit: okay I see now it looks like you actually brewed weekend before last (sorry this thread is a little long). You are likely okay then, though depending on strain and how cool you kept it. Some of the saison yeasts can be a little finicky. If by French saison you meant 3711 then you should be good.

I had it for one week, at the time i didnt know that it would stop fermenting when moved to secondary( seems like I learn everything the day after i do it). I tried FG today and its gone from 1065-1010 and it tasted quite ok, not sweet but a bit pilsner malty(which i really dislike). this beer will be drinkable even though i won let anyone else try it.

Ive tried pilsner malt and pale ale malt now and both have that lager taste that i dont like. Is the belgian pilsner malt much different?

I used wl french saison yeast, one vial for 10 liters.

When making belgian beers, is it a good idea to have it in 64F tha first week and maybe then go up to 75F? in my coldest room its 64 and in my warmest its 75...

Im fermenting a westmalle tripel clone and its went crazy day number two in my 64F room, burping like crazy and foam up to the lid... is it supposed to do that? even in a cooler room

 

[rockdemon]

Day three of westmalle foamparty

 

[chickypad]

If the fermenters are just sitting in the room like that, i.e. not in a water bath or anything, the beer temp could easily be into the 70's during active fermentation. Are you measuring the temp of the beer? Even a stick on fermometer will give you an idea.

Like the others I'm not sure I understand exactly what flavor you are describing that you don't care for. You call it lager taste, but earlier you said something about tasty American lagers vs. nasty Swedish and English ones. I'm not sure I even know any English or Swedish lagers, what beers are you referring to? You seem to like Belgians so I really don't think it's the pilsner malt that is the problem.

 

[chickypad]

Just thought of something, are you keeping your beers covered? I wonder if you are talking about a skunked/light struck taste. If you're getting imported beers in clear and green bottles maybe that's the issue? Grasping at straws here.

 

[rockdemon]

If the fermenters are just sitting in the room like that, i.e. not in a water bath or anything, the beer temp could easily be into the 70's during active fermentation. Are you measuring the temp of the beer? Even a stick on fermometer will give you an idea.

Like the others I'm not sure I understand exactly what flavor you are describing that you don't care for. You call it lager taste, but earlier you said something about tasty American lagers vs. nasty Swedish and English ones. I'm not sure I even know any English or Swedish lagers, what beers are you referring to? You seem to like Belgians so I really don't think it's the pilsner malt that is the problem.

Its so hard to explain, both me and my gf really dislike beers like, heineken and carlsberg. they have that sweet malt flavour. American lagers like bud or coors doesnt have that taste. or maybe they have it but really subtle.

Im not sure if its the malt but that flavor is what ive always called lager malt crap flavor, in ales that flavor isnt there, doesnt matter if its a IPA or a belgian whatever.. that sweet flavor that im talking about is very present in the beers that i have made.

About the temp. i have a stickertherm that is just laying on the lid of my fermenter... i only have one so i didnt want to paste it on the side and then have to get another one for next time...