So my home brew batch is good....just one thing I can't get over.

[Alan Tufano]

So this isn't my first batch and certainly won't be my last I'm pursuing this as my profession and trying to work my way up. But i brewed a honeydew flavored wheat ale and one thing I cannot get over is this pungy resin taste I get it's similar to a hazy ale flavoring and I was wondering what I can do to prevent this in my next batches. Thanks for the replies

My set up is the standard 2 gallon small batch a regular fermentation glass carboy racking bucket and everything THOUGH this time i went cheap and bought a 12 pack and just rinsed them out with rinse beer cleaner and let them sit over night in boiling hot water then rinsed them out the day before bottling.

 

[cactusgarrett]

Could you post your recipe and a bit of your process? I'm assuming you calling it a honeydew flavored beer you're adding fruit or flavoring at some point. I don't understand what you're getting at when you say a "hazy ale flavoring" - could you elaborate?

 

[bracconiere]

have you used wheat before?

 

[mongoose33]

What hops did you use?

I'm not saying it's this, but I do not care for Mosaic as a hop. It has a sort of sour/resinous aftertaste to me that is rather offputting. Not uncommon for me to ask for a taster of something in a taproom and BOOM! There it is--Mosaic.

What you describe is not unlike how I'd describe finding Mosaic in something. It's a common hop in IPAs.

So--what's your hop bill, how much did you use, how long was it boiled....as @cactusgarrett asks, what was the recipe and the process?

***

My last batch was my Darth Lager. Great beer...unless the pump fails at flameout and suddenly I have 20 more minutes of time at +200 temps than my recipe demands. That beer is NG because the isomerization of alpha acids--which is what produces bitterness--went on much longer than I want. The 60-minute hop addition went 80 minutes, the 20 minute addition went 40 minutes, and the 0-minute addition--which should have added flavor only--went 20 minutes.

And that added much more bitterness than I want. Instead of that terrific malty finish that lingers...I have bitterness. Uck.

It's darned near a dumper, and may yet get dumped. I've tried hard to like it, but a bad beer is that. I can't even use "ugly baby syndrome" to get past this.

***

All that is meant to indicate that if you're not taking very good notes as you brew, including amounts, times, temps, water adjustments, etc. etc. etc., you won't likely be able to recreate a beer. And if you are wanting to pursue brewing as a profession, I'm sure you know that reproducibility is key. And notes are the key to reproducibility.

So, let's see your notes on this beer, and perhaps we can come up with some ideas for you.

 

[Alan Tufano]

Recipe I used was Briess Bavarian Wheat (https://www.northernbrewer.com/products/fermenters-favorites-briess-bavarian-wheat-dme) and 9 1/2 grams ounces of Cascade hops. along with letting the honeydew rims sit in the secondary fermentation for 2 weeks before bottling so maybe that could have something to do with it

 

[balrog]

how much DME?
Grams or ounces of Cascade?
How many rims (rinds?)

 

[mongoose33]

Recipe I used was Briess Bavarian Wheat (https://www.northernbrewer.com/products/fermenters-favorites-briess-bavarian-wheat-dme) and 9 1/2 grams ounces of Cascade hops. along with letting the honeydew rims sit in the secondary fermentation for 2 weeks before bottling so maybe that could have something to do with it

That's not a recipe, that's an ingredient list.

And do we have this right: you put the honeydew RINDS in the beer?

Just out of curiosity, as it may inform any additional commentary I send your way: how many beers have you brewed?

 

[Alan Tufano]

Actually no they were just strips of the melon i cut and threw into the secondary fermentation. This would be around my sixth batch moving from 5 gallon to 1 gallon to conserve money and space.

It was about a pound of DME
and 2 ounces of cascade (1oz at the 60 min mark half ounce at the 20 minute mark and another half at the 10 minute mark)
and 4 rinds with a inch of honeydew still on attached.

I appreciate all responses so far

 

[bracconiere]

I can't even use "ugly baby syndrome" to get past this.

I just saved something similar...I manged to somewhat save iit by making a strong pot of coffee (4x), and adding it to the keg......

(back to the problem at hand!)



from that link...."65% wheat to 35% barley. The info is on the Briess website."

i'm not a pro on wheat beers, but that seems high for the wheat....

 

[mongoose33]

So, apparently, the rinds are in there. I wouldn't do that in a thousand years myself. There's a reason people don't eat the rinds. They don't taste good.

If I wanted to do a melon-flavored beer, I'd probably juice the melon and add that juice. I wouldn't include the rinds.

One issue with the rinds is whether you sanitized them or not. Not sure how you'd do that, but they would almost certainly have all sorts of microbiological nasties on them which were introduced into the beer.

And that suggests off-flavors from some sort of infection.

PS: How many total brews have you done, 5-gallon and 1-gallon?

 

[Cavpilot2000]

I'm all for having goals and ambition, but you may be getting ahead of yourself in planning to do this for a living.
In a few years, the nanobrewery bubble will burst, and 75% of the new breweries that have opened in the last 5 years will go under. And that is a GOOD thing, because most of them are run by people were mediocre homebrewers and went pro, which doesn't magically improve one's brewing skills - in fact in most cases it's the opposite.
90% of the micro/nano beers being made in such breweries today are eminently forgettable and mediocre at best.

I mean, I'd love to become a pro football player, but being realistic, it just isn't in the cards for me.

Sorry for sounding like a jerk, but a reality check may be in order.

 

[Alan Tufano]

I'm all for having goals and ambition, but you may be getting ahead of yourself in planning to do this for a living.
In a few years, the nanobrewery bubble will burst, and 75% of the new breweries that have opened in the last 5 years will go under. And that is a GOOD thing, because most of them are run by people were mediocre homebrewers and went pro, which doesn't magically improve one's brewing skills - in fact in most cases it's the opposite.
90% of the micro/nano beers being made in such breweries today are eminently forgettable and mediocre at best.

I mean, I'd love to become a pro football player, but being realistic, it just isn't in the cards for me.

Sorry for sounding like a jerk, but a reality check may be in order.

All good I made this thread for constructive criticism and that is what I'm getting right now, even though my skills may not be up there with all the genius big name breweries I'm not gonna stop trying to achieve my goal

also yeah I'm realising now that maybe the rinds weren't the best idea and I should have been more deligent in my notes but those are things I can work on next time.

 

[Alan Tufano]

So, apparently, the rinds are in there. I wouldn't do that in a thousand years myself. There's a reason people don't eat the rinds. They don't taste good.

If I wanted to do a melon-flavored beer, I'd probably juice the melon and add that juice. I wouldn't include the rinds.

One issue with the rinds is whether you sanitized them or not. Not sure how you'd do that, but they would almost certainly have all sorts of microbiological nasties on them which were introduced into the beer.

And that suggests off-flavors from some sort of infection.

PS: How many total brews have you done, 5-gallon and 1-gallon?

id say 3 big 5 gallon batches and then 3 smaller 1 gallon batches

 

[bracconiere]

Not sure how you'd do that, but they would almost certainly have all sorts of microbiological nasties on them which were introduced into the beer.

pressure cooker, throw them in a mason jar. pressure cook....how we do it for growing mushrooms....

 

[mongoose33]

id say 3 big 5 gallon batches and then 3 smaller 1 gallon batches

OK, I suspected that.

Please take this in the spirit in which it is intended. I believe that new brewers should start out with relatively simple processes and recipes. The reason is the more moving parts you have, the harder it is to isolate problems. There are just too many potential reasons!

This means producing good, simple recipes to get the process down. (I'm going to guess that your first three larger batches didn't turn out all that well, and you changed to 1-gallon to limit the losses with a bad batch? I know how that sounds, but it's the kind of thing I might have done.)

Doing a 1-gallon batch off what doesn't appear to be an established recipe is a recipe for, if not disaster, then a bad beer. The key, IMO, for new brewers is to get good simple recipes and learn the process. No recipe development until you've proven you can brew good beer with established, known-to-be-good recipes.

And if they don't turn out, then there's a process error--but it's much easier to pin down because you don't have to wonder if it's the recipe that's to blame.

A good basic pale ale, or an amber, or an English bitter--these aren't that hard to do. When you are jonesing for one of your brews, when your friends want more than one, then it's time to scale the ladder a bit.

***

There are things related to brewing that new brewers often miss. One is water. My first three batches weren't very good because I had mistakenly followed the advice that if your water tastes good, you can brew good beer. Well, maybe. Mine tastes fine, but it's lousy for brewing.

New brewers also often ignore fermentation temperatures, which can introduce significant off flavors if not correct.

This is why @cactusgarrett is asking about process, recipe, and so on. We can't easily pin down where your troubles might lie if we don't know those things.

Once you have the process down, you can probably brew anything, but getting that process right is the key.

 

[mongoose33]

All good I made this thread for constructive criticism and that is what I'm getting right now, even though my skills may not be up there with all the genius big name breweries I'm not gonna stop trying to achieve my goal

also yeah I'm realising now that maybe the rinds weren't the best idea and I should have been more deligent in my notes but those are things I can work on next time.

Now those are the words of someone who wants to get better. Good on you.

Everybody starts at the bottom, and makes mistakes along the way. I won't bore you with some of mine, but everybody who posts here has made them.

The trick is to learn from them. I figure every time I make a mistake I learn something. There are times I think I must be approaching genius status as a result.

My first notes were very sparse. Over time, I became more detailed with them. There are lots of ways to do that. Some use forms, others use unstructured notebooks. Here's one of mine, may give you some ideas. I'm not saying this is the only way--what matters is that you record what you do as best you can.

Keep learning, and this is a good place to do that.

 

[Saunassa]

This is what I use, my notes may not be perfect but I can read them and reproduce the brew from it. I started with extract and partial mash kits and those are even recorded because by doing that I figured out exactly what I wanted to write down. Since I dont do lagers yet that is the time it sits before bottling.

 

[bracconiere]

Now those are the words of someone who wants to get better. Good on you.

and on that, i'll bow out. i'm perfectly happy to remain a boy amongst men, and keep smiling!

 

[Nate R]

If it helps...
I used this book as a basis for my own Excel sheet (my handwriting is like a 5 year olds). But i also have a $0.25 spiral notebook for misc. notes. I think it cannot be stressed enough to take notes of everything! Especially so you can come here and ask for help!

Sale on this log until tommorrow at 8:59am pst.
$2.99

https://www.morebeer.com/dod

 

[Cavpilot2000]

Yeah, I'd say the best thing you can do to help yourself improve is to keep meticulous notes.
I suggest the following:
1. Brew a lot
2. Before you go trying funky stuff like melon beer, brew simple things with two focii: nailing down good fundamental processes, and gaining a solid understanding of what every basic ingredient brings to the table. To that end, brew some SMASHes. Then brew a simple beer with all base malt plus ONE additional malt, like a 2-Row Pale with 5% biscuit malt, then the same beer with 5% crystal 60 instead of biscuit, etc. Because you've READ what biscuit brings to the table, but do you really know how it is perceived?
The biggest flaw I see in so many homebrew recipes that inexperienced brewers put together is they have too many ingredients. Every inggredient should be in there for a specific purpose or it shouldn't be there. People will make a pale ale with base malt plus biscuit, plus crystal, plus some munich, plus this and that, because they've heard all those things make good pale ales, right? Wrong.
Know exactly what you are putting in and why and what it will bring to the table.

So to summarize, the best thing you can do to become a better brewer is start simple, learn basic ingredients well, and nail down solid, consistent process.