A nod to Crankshaft

[Skillz]

Hello brains trust.
I brewed this a month ago and was very happy with the beer initially.
2 weeks in it lost most of its hoppy appeal.

Any suggestions on why this might be?

I put the dry hops in just after high krousen, purged with co2. Used a brewloon to capture co2 and used it for suck back at cold crash.
Full starsan keg purge with co2.

This is the most effort I have put into oxygen mitigation and the results have left me a bit bewildered.

Cheers in advance.

Ps I will be keg hopping to bring it back up to standard

 

[kadmium]

Hey mate. Will need some more information I guess? What kind of fermenter? Can you share a picture of the beer? Was it hazy and gone clear? How did you transfer to keg?

 

[Skillz]

Standard hdpe fermenter, wasn't a hazy beer, bit of a chill haze though and the colour has held up well.
Did a closed loop transfer.
I don't think its an oxygen problem. Looking for suggestions on how to make the aroma last longer

 

[fdsaasdf]

Sorry if you think this is telling you to suck eggs, but if your aroma is disappearing you almost certainly have an oxidation problem. Even if you have done a closed loop transfer into a well-purged keg then you can pick up oxygen; and there are other steps earlier in the process that can introduce oxygen that reduces the stability of your beer.

 

[Skillz]

Nah can't offended me, all thoughts are valid and helpful.
The only other thing I didn't mention is that I had no means to do ph adjustment and according to brewfather it was 5.5.
I wouldn't expect this to do anything to the hops though.

 

[kadmium]

High final beer PH can effect beers final taste

 

[Grmblz]

Crack open a crankshaft and pour it into a glass, wonderful aroma, for about a minute, it then disappears quite quickly.
Perhaps it's just the nature of the beast, all those volatile hop oil aromas are, well, volatile, so almost by definition they will be fleeting.

 

[deevee]

You might want to split the dry hops between day 0 and day 7. That is throw first set of dry hops with your yeast, and then throw the second lot at day 7 of fermentation. If your pressure fermenting which you aren't, have it at 0.5 bar and ferment wort at 20c. Maybe that may give u more aroma. Rest of the recipe looks decent although they use joe white traditional ale malt and also maybe east Kent goldings for bittering.

Ive done a similar crankshaft style beer but added all the dry hops late in the boil, just prefer it that way. Cheers

 

[MHB]

Just out of curiosity how long was your boil?
I'm not sure about adding the Metabisulfite to the mash water, unless its the night before. I don't know how Met would interreact with the rest of the wort.

I also suspect your pH might be just a touch higher than you think, a small (2-3%) addition of Acidulated Malt or some Acid to get the pH down into the 5.3-4pH sort of zone.
Getting the pH down to 5.1pH or lower by the end of the boil can have some effects, one being to inhibit Lipoxygenase. Haven't seen much work done on lower pH's as they relate specifically to highly hopper beers, but there is a growing volume of research showing it helps with stability in a bunch of other ways.

I know Starsan and a purge is pretty common but have seen some reports that's it not quite as effective as people would like, put 1/2 a Campden tablet in the keg fill it with water, leave overnight, blow out with CO2 appears to be the nuts. Gets your O2 pickup down into the low ppb range, whish is about as good as you can do.
It takes surprisingly little O2 to make some beers go to shit very quickly.
The quest for stable hoppy beers looks like its going to keep lots of us entertained for the next couple of years.
Mark

 

[The Mack]

put 1/2 a Campden tablet in the keg fill it with water, leave overnight, blow out with CO2 appears to be the nuts. Gets your O2 pickup down into the low ppb range, whish is about as good as you can do.

Boiling water drives off most O2 (if I recall correctly) so would a keg full of boiled water and 1/2 campden tablet, left overnight- to be pushed out with CO2 or other inert gas be the go?

 

[MHB]

You would think so based on

Only concern would be to stop it reabsorbing O2 as it cooled, if the keg was left connected to the gas, a slight overpressure would stop any air getting sucked in, I suppose the Met is just a bit of belt and braces over caution, but It cant hurt.
Mark

 

[Skillz]

Was a 60 min boil.
I'm pretty convinced now that O2 is the problem.
It has now gone honey and malty with no hop at all and an acidic finish.
I tried pretty hard with this one to keep the O2 down so I'm now thinking a preasure fermenter is in my near future.

I also think Ph is an issue and will be dealing with that in the next brew day.

I thought it was fine to add campden tablets to the mash water not too long before mash in, if this is not the case I will need to change my process.

Thanks all for the advice.

 

[kadmium]

Was a 60 min boil.
I'm pretty convinced now that O2 is the problem.
It has now gone honey and malty with no hop at all and an acidic finish.
I tried pretty hard with this one to keep the O2 down so I'm now thinking a preasure fermenter is in my near future.

I also think Ph is an issue and will be dealing with that in the next brew day.

I thought it was fine to add campden tablets to the mash water not too long before mash in, if this is not the case I will need to change my process.

Thanks all for the advice.

Yeah it's fine to add it before hand. 1/2 tab is probably overkill for a 5 gal batch. I add 0.15g the reaction with chlorine and chloramine is almost instantaneous so there is no issue adding it before mashing.

I personally add my kmeta and salts and lactic acid when the water is cold. Bear in mind acidulated malt is hit and miss in terms of strength and that lactic acid is more repeatable but that's just my opinion. Acidulated malt is really just normal malt eith lactic acid on it so they are very similar.

Also, if you do go with lactic acid always add it when the water is cold as adding it when water is hot will reduce it's effect.

 

[MHB]

I'm not sure about what adding Met that close to the mash, or that much would do. Sulphur Dioxide used to be used as a preservative in beer but its gone out of fashion over the last decade. It can cause some flavour problems.
Its going to be very dose dependent.

Going to disagree with kadmium on using Acid Malt. Its just Pilsner Malt covered with a broth of lacto producing bacteria, that is then dried on and standardised. It is calibrated to give an 0.1pH drop per 1% of grist weight (recommended not more than 5% be used).
The one I use is Wyermann and its very precise and reliable, in Germany brewing under the Reinheitsgebot brewers aren't allowed to add acid, but bio-acidified malt is OK and its made to German brewing standards (dam good!)

If the Honey note continues to develop it might be an infection, it usually progresses toward a very unpleasant vegetal rotting fruit note if it is.

I doubt pressure fermentation is the answer, personally I wouldn't pressure ferment an Ale (not early, but pressure is OK late see Bunging)
Mark

 

[kadmium]

I'm not sure about what adding Met that close to the mash, or that much would do. Sulphur Dioxide used to be used as a preservative in beer but its gone out of fashion over the last decade. It can cause some flavour problems.
Its going to be very dose dependent.

Going to disagree with kadmium on using Acid Malt. Its just Pilsner Malt covered with a broth of lacto producing bacteria, that is then dried on and standardised. It is calibrated to give an 0.1pH drop per 1% of grist weight (recommended not more than 5% be used).
The one I use is Wyermann and its very precise and reliable, in Germany brewing under the Reinheitsgebot brewers aren't allowed to add acid, but bio-acidified malt is OK and its made to German brewing standards (dam good!)

If the Honey note continues to develop it might be an infection, it usually progresses toward a very unpleasant vegetal rotting fruit note if it is.

I doubt pressure fermentation is the answer, personally I wouldn't pressure ferment an Ale (not early, but pressure is OK late see Bunging)
Mark

I pressure ferment all my Ales and still end up with great esters and beers. Sure maybe not hefeweizens or something along that line but I haven't found a detriment to using low pressure on ales.

Kmeta removes chloramine from the water and chlorine too.

 

[Skillz]

Just to clarify as I'm now a bit concerned with my process being the issue.
I do a full vol mash 33lt and put half a tablet of campden in at the start while my strike water heats up.
I thought this was the right amount as 1 tablet seems to be for about 70lt.
I have a bit of Chloramine in my water that with out filtering this seems the best option to remove it.

After reading through some old posts this does seem the standard process but I do get a sharp taste on all my beers that I'm trying to remove now by getting into ph and water salts. Maby campden is my problem?

Also I'm not so much into the idea of pressure fermenting (I have plenty of time to wait for beer)
Its more for the closed system aspect of it, probably get a snub nose or all rounder to do the job.

 

[user 37368]

Water has oxygen in it, star-san goes in water.

Sure it's no-rinse but that's not on the packaging side.

 

[kadmium]

Just to clarify as I'm now a bit concerned with my process being the issue.
I do a full vol mash 33lt and put half a tablet of campden in at the start while my strike water heats up.
I thought this was the right amount as 1 tablet seems to be for about 70lt.
I have a bit of Chloramine in my water that with out filtering this seems the best option to remove it.

After reading through some old posts this does seem the standard process but I do get a sharp taste on all my beers that I'm trying to remove now by getting into ph and water salts. Maby campden is my problem?

Also I'm not so much into the idea of pressure fermenting (I have plenty of time to wait for beer)
Its more for the closed system aspect of it, probably get a snub nose or all rounder to do the job.

Nah mate campden has only a little kmeta in it. I use pure kmeta, but 1/2 tab won't hurt. Its better to use it than to not and potentially suffer chloramines.

You process seems fine to me. Sharpness or astringency can be from sooooo many variables I would look elsewhere before worrying about kmeta giving you that taste. I haven't known it to produce a bittering effect.

 

[goatchop41]

K Meta is also an O2 scavenger...300mg in a corny keg during transfer should help keep things more stable. Works for me with NE style pales that have 200g late + dry + keg hops

 

[deevee]

I doubt pressure fermentation is the answer, personally I wouldn't pressure ferment an Ale (not early, but pressure is OK late see Bunging)
Mark

Bentspoke pressure ferment their ale at 0.4bar at 20c using us-05