Unpleasant bitterness in my last brew

[kryznic]

Hi all,

I brewed what was to be a session beer, a Creme Ale I got out of the BYO 250 Clone Recipes magazine. And it has a unpleasant bitterness that almost reminds me of a couple batches I made that got infected because of scratches in my bucket.

Well I bought a new bucket and ran a batch through, a coffee porter that was outstanding. Using the same bucket very careful not to scratch it I fermented this batch. Which only used about 3.5-4 lbs DME and I think 3.3 lbs LME and a maybe 2oz of hops. I also used 4 vanilla beans, scrapped and the skins in the boil. I don't have the recipe in front of me right now. It used a White Labs English Ale yeast (liquid). The fermentation was going within 24 hours and raged on for 3-4 days at which point I became too busy to bottle and it sat for about 3 weeks in the fermenter.

When I went to bottle it I could small this bitterness (I don't know how else to explain it) a kind of "astringent" smell? I am not sure if that is the right term. When I tasted the beer this bitterness was more prominent over the malt flavor as well as the vanilla and in my opinion was just a ruined beer. But since I have heard stories of brews making a miraculous turn for the better I bottled it anyway. It should be carbonated by next Wednesday.

I'm wondering what could have gone wrong here? My sanitization is very good, I am very anal and clean and take extra care not to scratch or damage anything. I did make one hop addition 10 or 15 minutes too early but I don't think it should "ruin" the beer. Maybe the yeast worked too fast?

Oh and one off topic question, if yeast eat all the sugars in a brew, how does it manage to stay sweet? Is it because there are sugars that are unfermentable?

Thanks!

 

[o4_srt]

Yes, there are unfermentable sugars. In general, higher mash temperatures give mote unfermentable sugars, and increase the body of the beer. I just made a cream ale that should be very bmc-ish, and mashed at 149 for 90 minutes, hopefully resulting in a very light final product.

 

[EricT]

Hi all,

I brewed what was to be a session beer, a Creme Ale I got out of the BYO 250 Clone Recipes magazine. And it has a unpleasant bitterness that almost reminds me of a couple batches I made that got infected because of scratches in my bucket.

Well I bought a new bucket and ran a batch through, a coffee porter that was outstanding. Using the same bucket very careful not to scratch it I fermented this batch. Which only used about 3.5-4 lbs DME and I think 3.3 lbs LME and a maybe 2oz of hops. I also used 4 vanilla beans, scrapped and the skins in the boil. I don't have the recipe in front of me right now. It used a White Labs English Ale yeast (liquid). The fermentation was going within 24 hours and raged on for 3-4 days at which point I became too busy to bottle and it sat for about 3 weeks in the fermenter.

When I went to bottle it I could small this bitterness (I don't know how else to explain it) a kind of "astringent" smell? I am not sure if that is the right term. When I tasted the beer this bitterness was more prominent over the malt flavor as well as the vanilla and in my opinion was just a ruined beer. But since I have heard stories of brews making a miraculous turn for the better I bottled it anyway. It should be carbonated by next Wednesday.

I'm wondering what could have gone wrong here? My sanitization is very good, I am very anal and clean and take extra care not to scratch or damage anything. I did make one hop addition 10 or 15 minutes too early but I don't think it should "ruin" the beer. Maybe the yeast worked too fast?

Oh and one off topic question, if yeast eat all the sugars in a brew, how does it manage to stay sweet? Is it because there are sugars that are unfermentable?

Thanks!

Since you are using extract, you shouldnt have that much unfermantable sugar left. What was your SG and FG? What temp did you ferment at?

 

[kryznic]

I'll have to get that info when I get home later. I know I very close to the SG the recipe listed but for the FG I was about 5 points higher than I should have been. I believed it fermented at around 67-68 degrees F.

 

[Rickycore]

I'm still the new kid in the class but I recall from reading How To Brew, Palmer talking about astringency coming from steeping grains for too long. I didn't see any mention of any specialty grains so this may not even matter but if you did steep maybe you could go back and look at the temp and amount of time you steeped.