Need help cleaning up beer profile

[c_e]

Hello, I've been brewing over a year now and thought I was getting pretty good at it until I put one of my brown ales in a blind tasting with a bunch of commercial beers. I honestly thought it was going to hold it's own, but during the tasting it was painfully obvious which one was my homebrew. It's hard to describe exactly what made it so different. The best I can come up with is that is was not nearly as clean and refined as the commercial beers. The aroma and flavor had yeast and hops and malts all over the place. After that night, I noticed that all my beers had the same messiness to them. When I drink them by themselves I don't notice unless I am thinking about it, but next to commercial beer it is really obvious.

So my question is... how do I make my beer better? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. I thought leaving it in the fermenter longer would help clean up the flavors, but I just tasted one that was in for two months and it has the same stuff going on.

For the record, I do stovetop partial-mash brewing (in my tiny apartment). I try to mash about 6 lbs of grain in a big pot and fill in the rest with extract. I've done all sorts of recipes using all sorts of yeasts and grains and hops, so I am sure the problem is with my process and not my ingredients.

Thanks in advance!

 

[ChillWill]

Are you doing your own recipes?

Maybe consider putting into secondary to help clear the beer up some more as it won't be sat on a load of trub / yeast cake for so long?

 

[Danbreeze]

Have you considered going all-grain? There are alot of threads on this site showing a cheap way to make that conversion.

All grain beers tend to be clearer as well as when you mill your own grains, you can make a finer crush and get higher efficiency.

 

[gregpio85]

I'll try to cover all the bases.
I take it your doing partial boils? If so, are you using tap or bottled water to fill?
What's your fementation temp? I've found that 62 is my perfect room temp balance between activity and low ester production. Try to control you ferment temps as anything above 68 or 70 will give you some twang.
What are you using to serve? Keg bottles? Are they being sanitized before use?

 

[gr8shandini]

For me, I've found that finings make all the difference. A little Irish moss in the kettle and gelatin in the keg drops a whole lot of junk out of suspension. Prior to that, my beers always tasted "muddy" - for lack of a better word. The flavors I wanted were there, but struggling to get through a dull haze of blandness.

Also, if you have enough space to keep a cooler, I'd suggest using one for a mash tun. Being off just a few degrees can throw off the balance of fermentable to unfermentable sugars and result in a beer you didn't intend. If I pre-heat my mash tun, I only lose about 1-2 deg F over an hour. I'd think it'd be pretty hard to hold that kind of consistency on a stove top.

 

[Revvy]

How long does your beer go from "grain" to glass? If yours are under 8 weeks, then that's biggest issue for flavor development. Not enough time. Most new brewers rush the process, especially if they follow kit instructions that say rack or bottle the beer after a week.

There's been a shift in belief over the past few years, now most of us leave our beers in primary for a month rather than rack to a secondary, and find our beers are better for being on the yeast that time. And clearer.

Fermenting the beer is just a part of what the yeast do. If you leave the beer alone, they will go back and clean up the byproducts of fermentation that often lead to off flavors. That's why many brewers skip secondary and leave our beers alone in primary for a month. It leaves plenty of time for the yeast to ferment, clean up after themselves and then fall out, leveing our beers crystal clear, with a tight yeast cake.

If you leave the beer alone, they will go back and clean up the byproducts of fermentation that often lead to off flavors. That's why many brewers skip secondary and leave our beers alone in primary for a month. It leaves plenty of time for the yeast to ferment, clean up after themselves and then fall out, leveing our beers crystal clear, with a tight yeast cake. And not a lot of yeast "bite."

Then if you let them bottle condition for a minimum 3 weeks @ 70 degree, this further allows for conditioning to happen in the bottle, it also lets flavors develop and smooth out. I use the spaghetti sauce analogy, that stuff tastes better after the flavor has a chance to "together." You'll find that matured homebrew can really taste no different than commercial beers with some basic things. And the biggest one is patience.

 

[samc]

I just tasted one that was in for two months and it has the same stuff going on.

Temperature, Whirlfloc, cold crash, fast cooling of wort - all of these will make a big difference. Patience is obviously not the issue for
the OP.