About 10 years ago I decided to switch to all-grain brewing. My 1st batch seemed to go perfectly, as did maybe half a dozen more batches. However, every single one, no matter whether a light cream ale or a black dry stout, had a harsh astringency that made it undrinkable. So I gave up. I don't even remember now what exact additions I made to the water to correct the problem, but nothing I tried worked. I recently tested my water again. Here are results.
Why can't I brew all-grain with this water?
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The numbers on that water indicative it is an excellent base with which to brew. It's almost Pilsen-like and there seems to be nothing in it that would create an astringency problem. The minerals are very low as is the alkalinity. This makes it fairly simple to add what you need to match just about any beer style. That said, you need to do your water modifications correctly. I'd strongly suggest checking the archived and posted info in the Brewing Science section of HBT. There's plenty of details there which will get you pointed in the right direction.
My other suggestion would be to review and check your brewing procedures, recipes, grain crush, and anything else you can think of. Over-sparging, high pH, and too finely milled malt are all possible contributors to astringency.
My other suggestion would be to review and check your brewing procedures, recipes, grain crush, and anything else you can think of. Over-sparging, high pH, and too finely milled malt are all possible contributors to astringency.
Robert65
Major Obvious (recently promoted)
The primary and in fact nearly universal cause of perceived "grainy astringency" is hot side oxidation. Things like rising sparge pH and husk damage from a crudely managed crush can aggravate the situation, but addressing these alone will not alleviate the fundamental problem.
Everything I have read from the low oxygen folks (but I will admit I am far from an expert) says the effects of hot side oxidation lead to subtle flavor changes, but never heard anything about astringency. Also, some commercial breweries use hammer mills which pulverize everything. I doubt they would do this if "husk damage from a crudely managed crush" caused astringency. Do you have references for this? The primary cause of astringency from my reading is high pH (greater than ~6) during sparge. Given the provided water profile, high pH seems unlikely.
We need to know more about OP's process.
Brew on
archthered
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I also think it's likely a process issue and I wouldn't rule out a high sparge pH. I'm no expert, and it completely depends on the water additions, but with the water profile having so little in it to act as a buffer I could see a pH spike if the sparge was not acidified.
Robert65
Major Obvious (recently promoted)
Oxidation of polyphenols from the husk negates their antioxidant effect, leaving them to express their natural, extremely harsh, astringency. It is therefore critical to either preclude oxygen exposure or provide preferential antioxidants. Supposed subtle flavor effects of low oxygen brewhouse methods aside, this effect is inescapable, and unsubtle. The German term for these oxidized husk polyphenols is Herbstoffe (bitter substances,) given considerable attention in Kunze and the rest of the literature.Everything I have read from the low oxygen folks (but I will admit I am far from an expert) says the effects of hot side oxidation lead to subtle flavor changes, but never heard anything about astringency. Also, some commercial breweries use hammer mills which pulverize everything. I doubt they would do this if "husk damage from a crudely managed crush" caused astringency. Do you have references for this? The primary cause of astringency from my reading is high pH (greater than ~6) during sparge. Given the provided water profile, high pH seems unlikely.
We need to know more about OP's process.
Brew on
So how do you explain the massive numbers of beers that have been brewed without hot side oxidation prevention that have no hint of astringency? And (paraphrasing) "read the literature" is not a reference.
Brew on
I agree with doug293cz , we need to see more of the OPs process. Is their salt and acid additions , mash ph check ? I've never heard of astringency from husk milling harshly. Not saying it's not true just never heard of it .
Robert65
Major Obvious (recently promoted)
I detect this graininess and astringency in all American lagers, and once you learn to identify it it's easy. The effect is somewhat diluted in macro beers with high levels of low-polyphenol adjunct, much more apparent in craft lagers. It cam be masked in styles with high hopping, roasted grains, and other strong flavors. So the brewers using hammer mills are generally the high adjunct ones. Also there is of course some inherent reduction of HSO simply due to increased volume to surface area in large commercial systems. The problem is much more significant at the homebrew scale. I struggled to identify the problem for years (decades really) and it was the deciding factor that made me adopt low oxygen methods on the hot side as much as possible. I realize I failed to give specific citations last night, but this is peppered throughout discussions of various topics from mashing to stability in package. There were a couple of MBAA podcasts last year on HSO and I believe they covered polyphenols along with lipids and other issues, don't recall exactly. Sorry, I'll try to respond more helpfully when I have time to collate some things.So how do you explain the massive numbers of beers that have been brewed without hot side oxidation prevention that have no hint of astringency? And (paraphrasing) "read the literature" is not a reference.
Brew on
I wouldnt rule out the possibility that the consistent flaw is not being mischaracterized as astringent when it could be another off flavor. I have had a lot of people give me a beer to evaluate and say astringent when it was an acetyldehyde bomb.
Best way to help is to see a recipe with process listed as well as any session notes. If you are not note taking in detail, start. Times. Temps. Missed marks. PH tests. Water salts, acids.
Best way to help is to see a recipe with process listed as well as any session notes. If you are not note taking in detail, start. Times. Temps. Missed marks. PH tests. Water salts, acids.
BrewnWKopperKat
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What common food / flavor descriptors do you use to differentiate astringent and acetyldehyde?
(aside: I "duckduckgo"ed it, off-flavor lists/articles are easy to come by. I'm more interested what others actually use).
My first reaction when reading the OP was that he had too high a pH and temp in the sparge, which I've always understood to be a major potential source of astringency (with a shout-out to @Bobby_M's comment that maybe it's not actually that).
Sparge process, water temps, water additions (if remembered) would all be things to identify before we can go any further in deciding what the problem was--though I think it's a fool's errand to do that, for this reason:
I see a lot of people on HBT who are trying to fix a bad process, and one of, if not the, major reasons for this is they're just throwing process ideas at the wall to see what sticks.
Instead of trying to fix this--based on 10-year-old memories--I think OP would be better off to start with identifying a good process and then follow that. Agree with @BigEd that the water is a great foundation (mine has 400ppm TDS
), but it's not going to be just that.
It's the whole process, skimp or cheat on any part of it, and there you are. Palmer's "How to Brew" book is a good place to start with that.
******
For OP: IMO, you need to build your process up from ground zero. Process trumps recipe; a good process will allow virtually any established recipe to turn out well; at the same time, no recipe can save a bad process.
There are several water calculators out there (Brun'water, EZwater, some others) that are in spreadsheet form and allow you to enter your water's characteristics, and then you can adjust various additions to what you want.
And start with a relatively simple recipe; get the process down first.
My 2 cents.
Sparge process, water temps, water additions (if remembered) would all be things to identify before we can go any further in deciding what the problem was--though I think it's a fool's errand to do that, for this reason:
I see a lot of people on HBT who are trying to fix a bad process, and one of, if not the, major reasons for this is they're just throwing process ideas at the wall to see what sticks.
Instead of trying to fix this--based on 10-year-old memories--I think OP would be better off to start with identifying a good process and then follow that. Agree with @BigEd that the water is a great foundation (mine has 400ppm TDS
), but it's not going to be just that.It's the whole process, skimp or cheat on any part of it, and there you are. Palmer's "How to Brew" book is a good place to start with that.
******
For OP: IMO, you need to build your process up from ground zero. Process trumps recipe; a good process will allow virtually any established recipe to turn out well; at the same time, no recipe can save a bad process.
There are several water calculators out there (Brun'water, EZwater, some others) that are in spreadsheet form and allow you to enter your water's characteristics, and then you can adjust various additions to what you want.
And start with a relatively simple recipe; get the process down first.
My 2 cents.
archthered
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I couldn't agree more with mongoose33, we could play this game about guessing what exactly it is, yes I know I was doing that, but it may just be better to start from the ground up and look at every aspect of your process and try again. Once you know what you are doing and what the result is we can all provide insightful feedback based on our experience and your results rather than random guesses based on what we think you may be doing that could have that effect.
Thanks everyone for all the responses. Yes, it's useless to try to fix this based on my old faulty memories. I'll try another go at this in a month or two and see what happens. Thanks again for all the responses.
-- revbish
-- revbish
Acytaldehyde for me is green apple and raw pumpkin guts.
Astringent is more of a mouthfeel that makes me feel like my saliva stopped working. Overbrewed black Tea with no sugar.
Brewers with a less developed palette to vocabulary ability may just generalize both to whatever word comes to mind. Yucky.
i remember, before i lowered my sparge temp...i got what i thought was yeasty taste....tannins, what temp is your sparge water? it should be 160f or so.....
Actually, the sparge water can be cold. The only reason I know of to heat sparge water is to hasten getting to a boil....
Since the sugar in the wort is already dissolved, all we have to do is rinse it off the spent grain. Any water below 170 degrees, aside from the frozen kind, will do that....
BrewnWKopperKat
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What would you suggest that they do to develop their palette?
edit: spelling of palette
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Drink lots of different beers in different styles with quality ranging from excellent to "where's the spittoon"?
Cheers!
Cheers!
ESBrewer
Well-Known Member
You should brew another batch and write down some notes. First of all, at what stage does the unfamiliar taste appear. Is it preboil, postboil or post fermentation? Describe your process and recipe. This would help a lot. Fermentation conditions and yeast health/pitch rate are probably the most critical factors when trying to eliminate off-tastes. The water is very soft and looks great, but some mineral additions could be beneficial for most beers (especially Ca2+).
How are you carbing your beer? I had an issue with a faulty CO2 gauge reading too low. I would get this horrible dry bite to the beer and found out it was carbonic acid from overcarbing. Replaced the gauge, lowered the pressure and smoothed it right out.
Actually, the sparge water can be cold. The only reason I know of to heat sparge water is to hasten getting to a boil....
Since the sugar in the wort is already dissolved, all we have to do is rinse it off the spent grain. Any water below 170 degrees, aside from the frozen kind, will do that....
the book i learned to brew from had me using boiling water for the sparge though....
BrewnWKopperKat
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I'm still interested in advice to "Brewers with a less developed palette" to help develop their vocabulary for both common flavors as well as off flavors.
And relate that vocabulary to items in a grocery store.
for example: Acytaldehyde => green apple
for example: extract twang => _________
for example: rye toast vs sourdough toast
The fastest way to develop a palette vocabulary is to taste a lot of beer in groups with people who have more experience. Homebrew club meetings are a great place to do that. Also steward at as many BJCP competitions as possible and let the judges you're working with know that you're really interested in tasting entries with obvious off flavors.
Stand
Well-Known Member
I have heard sparging with cold water won't hurt anything, but sugars dissolve more readily and liquids are less viscous at high tempe, so why not?
Going the other direction people are doing decoctions and boiling the tar out of it.
I sparge Belgian beers at same temp as my mash to keep conversion going. Everything else I sparge at 168 and start heating kettle as soon as I get 1/3 full.
Going the other direction people are doing decoctions and boiling the tar out of it.
I sparge Belgian beers at same temp as my mash to keep conversion going. Everything else I sparge at 168 and start heating kettle as soon as I get 1/3 full.
Let me add a bit to Bobby's post.
That's the easiest and cheapest way to do it. As I noted above I attended an off-flavor workshop where they take a kit designed to introduce off flavors into beer, dose the beer, and then we tasted it looking for the off-flavors.
You can look around to see if such a class is offered anywhere (google something like off-flavors in beer workshop), or you could buy one of the kits and get some buddies to split the cost with you--they're not cheap.
Something like this: https://portal-siebel.lallemand.com/advanced-off-flavor-kit
When I did my workshop the cost was, IIRC, $150. You could buy the kit for about that, and split the cost with some friends, or do it at a LHBC meeting if there was enough interest.
Suggestion if doing that: We were given the spiked beer and asked to identify what the flavors were, which I found very difficult usually. If I were to do it again, I'd want them to tell me the flavor before tasting it. In other words, "Ah, this is what acetaldehyde tastes like" or "This is what oxidized beer tastes like."
Solid sugars do dissolve more readily in hot water, but in the mash all the sugar is dissolved as it is created. There is never any solid sugar to dissolve. The viscosity of wort drops only about 20% going from 150°F to 170°F, not a big deal. If you are sparging, the sparged wort already has a much lower viscosity than the first runnings because the sugar content is much lower.
Brew on
I batch sparge so after my sparge liquor is added I want my tun to be 170-172 and that is because I read somewhere that this is a dextinizing step that improves foam stability. So i underlet my grains with boiling(~209 after the pump) liquor and stop when at 170-172, rest 10 min and vorlauf then drain to BK. My step mash system didn't cost $6,000 and works every time.
Solid sugars do dissolve more readily in hot water, but in the mash all the sugar is dissolved as it is created. There is never any solid sugar to dissolve. The viscosity of wort drops only about 20% going from 150°F to 170°F, not a big deal. If you are sparging, the sparged wort already has a much lower viscosity than the first runnings because the sugar content is much lower.
Brew on
to get back on topic, using something like ~200f water for a sparge would extract tannins though right? and tannins taste astringent?
i was thinking maybe that was the OP's problem...not water profile..
Yes tannins cause astringency. Tannins are extracted from grain husks when you have both high temp (above ~170°F) and high pH (above ~6.0.) High temp alone will not extract tannins. If it did then all decoction mashed beers would be astringent. Sparging with too hot and too alkaline water is what gets you tannins. Acidify your sparge water to pH 5.8 or less, and it doesn't matter how hot it is.
Brew on
Yes tannins cause astringency. Tannins are extracted from grain husks when you have both high temp (above ~170°F) and high pH (above ~6.0.) High temp alone will not extract tannins. If it did then all decoction mashed beers would be astringent. Sparging with too hot and too alkaline water is what gets you tannins. Acidify your sparge water to pH 5.8 or less, and it doesn't matter how hot it is.
Brew on
glad we're back on topic with OP's problem....i had a serious tannin problem, i thought it was yeasty, bought all kind of filters and stuff...i asked the local brew-pub owner about it, he told me right off the bat, "lower your sparge to 160f", solved my problem...that was before i had a ph meter, and i'd have no idea what the ph was...but i was using boiling hot water....
BrewnWKopperKat
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