What went wrong?

[Flaviking]

Hey guys,

So I brewed a "Cream of three crops" type beer a couple of weeks ago. Everything went perfect. Mash temps stabilized perfectly, hit my OG right on per beersmith and sanitized the crap out of everything. Something however is not right....

So full disclosure.. I bottled it a week ago, and I have a hard time waiting to taste my beers, however, there is almost 0 head retention. I get a head, then 2 seconds later it is gone and ends up looking like flavored water. It also tastes fairly watery... not like a creme ale, but I feel like I can actually taste water in the beer.

Here is what I did step by step:

I used Spring Water from my grocery store for all water

2.5 lbs flaked Corn
6lb two row pale malt
14 oz, Uncle Ben's Minute Rice
.85 OZ Willamette (60 minute)
Whirlfloc Tablet (15 minutes)
Whit labs WLP080

I mashed at 152 for 90 minutes
Batch Sparged at 168 (let it rest 10 minutes before second runnings)

Pre Boil Volume was 5.25 gallons..
Boiled 60 minutes (pre boil gravity was 1.050)

Boiled off ~1.25 gallons and was left with ~4

Added 1 gallon of Spring water to sanitized (star san) Carboy and racked remaining 4 gallons from boil kettle on top of water in Carboy.

Mixed well.

Pre fermentation SG was 1.050. Right on target. Pitched White Labs Creme Ale WLP080 after wort cooled to 75 degrees.

Had a weird looking fermentation (to me) https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/infected-384969/

But after a few days everything settled out and it appeared to be fermenting along just fine. After two weeks, fermentation stopped at 1.004, again, perfect.. just what I was looking for.

I bottled, after cleaning the bottles in both b-bright and star-san.

Went to taste it last night and it tasted like what I can only describe as watery corn juice...Not good at all.

Can anyone point out where I went wrong... Two things I did differently with this beer than all my others.

1) I used spring water from my grocery store (publix brand) for all the water, normally I use my city water right out of the hose.
2) I used a new carboy cap: (http://compare.ebay.com/like/380427969106?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar) It just didnt feel like it got the best seal during fermentation on my glass 6 gallon carboy.

I'm thinking maybe because of the water i used, my PH Was waaaay of? I dont know though. really sucks.. this was supposed to be for friends coming to visit in two weeks and my first ever competition.

I'm going to let it sit another two weeks and try it again.. First impression though was: "I cant serve this to my worst enemy".

Thanks for your time in advance.

 

[Varmintman]

1.004 is pretty low and I have found with mine that if I add some unfermentable sugars like maltodextrine it gets some mouthfeel to it.

Also not knowing what the alpha acids were on your hops you might be a little low on bittering

 

[RM-MN]

First thing to come to mind is time. At a week your beer isn't mature and it isn't fully carbonated yet. Those things will affect your taste and head retention. The second is oils or detergents, in the entire process. Any residual oil or especially detergent from anywhere in your process is a head killer. I didn't rinse my bottles well enough after washing in Oxyclean and killed the head in 3 batches before I found out why.

Another 2 weeks in the bottle will change how it tastes too.

 

[Cyclman]

Your recipe has a very high percentage of adjuncts (non grain). So I am not terribly surprised it is very low in flavor, you also have exceptionally low FG, which dries out the beer- unless it has strong malts that also leads to low flavor. A couple of weeks is a very young beer, it needs time to carb up better. I also was very frustrated with my beers not having head retention, found out that it is best to hand wash beer glasses and rinse many times in very hot water. The dishwasher "anti spotting" treatements leave a film on glassware that kills the beer head.

 

[Flaviking]

Thanks Everyone... Definitely going to let it sit longer. As far as the oil is concerned, I'm not sure that is it (but could be) i soaked the bottles in b-brite overnight and then hand rinsed them. I'll let it sit another couple of weeks and see how it turns out... hopefully that is all that it needs.

 

[jake-k]

Was adding 4 gallons of beer on top of 1 gallon of water with star san a typo, or did you dump out the gallon of water before racking into the carboy?

 

[TrubDog]

I was thinking the same thing. Once the wort has been boiled and chilled I never add water to it. Just plan ahead and sparge with enough water to get the correct pre- boil volume.

 

[Flaviking]

The water was not a star San mix... I dumped out the star San mix... And added clean water. I have a 6 gallon kettle so I can't get enough water in there to boil down to 5 gallons. I'm looking into getting a bigger kettle, but for now... I gotta work with what I have... Using the water tool in beer smith really helps.