Extract beer too sweet/poor head

[elollerenshaw]

Several of my beer's brewed via the extract method have turned out too sweet with little head.
The best way I can describe them is a bit like a soft drink.
And yet a very similar recipe using a hopped can of malt , comes out superb.

My specific question is am I doing something wrong with the bittering hops?

Last batch I used 30g centennial & 10g POR boiled for 60 min.
Also 30g centennial for 30 min.
This is with ~600g malt in about 7-8 L of water.

23L volume in total with 3kg LME,400g DME,300g steeped carapils grain,
150g dextrose,200g malto-dextrin.

 

[menoetes]

I'm not sure if you're doing anything wrong, the maltodextrin and the carapils will add a little sweetness to your beer but not so much it should be noticable, was your FG high? Say, above 1016? It could be that your yeast lost momentum before eating all the sugars in the malt.

Or perhaps you just favor a drier tasting beer, if that's the case your local homebrew shop probably stocks dry enzyme which can be used to give your beer a crisper final taste.

I'm no expert but that's my two cents.

 

[tricache]

I would be checking your FG for sure...I have had a couple of sweet beers which have been because they finished too early and still had a heap of sugars left in there.

 

[manticle]

Carapils and maltodex will do the same thing. Drop the malto-dextrin.

How are you doing your boil and what FG are you getting? Sounds like underattenuation. Increase the dex slightly and reduce the LME slightly (so the OG is where you want it). Make sure your yeast is fresh and healthy.

 

[Alex.Tas]

Being overly sweet and having poor head retention is as you suggest a hallmark of underhopped beer. ie. the hops balance the sweetness with bitterness, and the hops also aid in head retention.
however your recipe looks balanced. I calculate 1.054-1.015 og/fg and 65.5 ibu.
So as the others suggest, your FG will give you an indication if you have bottled too soon. if you have, the beer may be overly sweet or even worse, explode.

 

[pcmfisher]

As others have said, what was your FG?

For my taste I would leave out the maltodex, reduce ldme, and reduce the grain.

Which leaves
3kg LME
200g ldme if you must
500g - 700g Dex to up the gravity as desired.
150-200g carapils or crystal.

US05 at 18 deg and make sure you let it finish fermenting.



Cheers

 

[elollerenshaw]

Thanks for the replies.
I am guilty of not measuring FG, so can't answer that.
I did use US05 @ 18C (will check calibration, maybe reading high?) and left for 2 wks.

Agree it may be under attenuated, if this is the case,
I would expect that over time (months) the pressure will increase in the bottles and,
sweetness will reduce. ?

To answer "how i boil". It is just on the stovetop in a big pot after steeping and adding ~600g malt.
hop pellets in a bag.

It sounds unlikely that I am adding the bittering hops incorrectly.

Yeast health? Possible, is there a quick and easy way of checking this?

 

[manticle]

Just make sure the yeast you are buying is not too old (should be a manufacture date on the pack), has been kept in the fridge at the brew shop and that you use enough for the gravity brew you are making.

Aerate well at the beginning of fermentation, especially if using a liquid yeast.

Rehydrating dried yeast according to manufacturer's instructions (they all differ) may also help. I personally don't (it's super rare that I use dry at all though) but theoretically I am being very lazy.

Measure your FG and bottle when it's ready. My vote goes to under attenuated.

 

[Ninegrain]

From what I have read it is preferable to get you boil liquid to 1040 gravity for the most effective hopping. The 600g to 7-8L will not give that. I think it is about 100g/L ldme. The spreadsheet says to add a bit more than that. Perhaps that's why the bitterness sit as pronounced as you hoped?


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[bmarshall]

When im too keen to try my brew after only a few days in the bottle its sweet from the bottling sugar drops.
How long after bottling are you drinking?

 

[glaab]

"about" 7-8L is probably not good enough, you need to be measuring everything accurately for reproducability.
600g in8L with the carapils will give you a BG too high causing low IBU's. I think 200g dex with 300g carapils in 5L
is more like it. I need to reinstall beersmith to check. either way , your software should work it out.
with 3kg LLME I'd just add carapils and dex

 

[Impy]

"about" 7-8L is probably not good enough, you need to be measuring everything accurately for reproducability.
600g in8L with the carapils will give you a BG too high causing low IBU's. I think 200g dex with 300g carapils in 5L
is more like it. I need to reinstall beersmith to check. either way , your software should work it out.
with 3kg LLME I'd just add carapils and dex

First of all the gravity of the boil doesn't really affect IBUs. That's a brewing myth that's been debunked in recent years. The alpha and beta acids in hops will isomerise at the same rate regardless of the boil gravity.

Secondly, 600g in 8L give a gravity of 1.028... not anything anyone would consider "too high".

An easy thing to remember is that 100g sugar in 1L = ~1.040

Agree it may be under attenuated, if this is the case,
I would expect that over time (months) the pressure will increase in the bottles and,
sweetness will reduce. ?

If a beer is so sweet that you can taste it, then reducing the sweetness in the bottles = bottle bombs. The sugar required to carbonate only adds about 1 point of a gravity to a beer. A beer being under attenuated and "sweet" requires quite a few gravity points to be perceived.. so in other words WAY too much sugar than can be reduced while in the bottle (because they would explode before it became "not sweet")

Although, since you said you kept it in the fermenter for two weeks, you should be ok. For a normal gravity beer 2 weeks is more than enough time to ferment out with an average fermentation.

I find that beers containing all DME, LME plus steeping grains come out a little syrupy. To get around this you can swap out some DME for Dex to maintain the gravity but reduce the malty sweetness.

To answer "how i boil". It is just on the stovetop in a big pot after steeping and adding ~600g malt.
hop pellets in a bag.

It sounds unlikely that I am adding the bittering hops incorrectly.

I doubt it, so long as they are boiling for long enough (~60min) and they have room to move around in the bag then you should be fine.

If you don't think your bitterness is coming out as much as it should, try adding a couple of grams of Calcium Sulfate to your boil. Adjusting minerals in your water is a very complicated topic, but it's easy to chuck a couple of grams in and it has a HUGE impact in the perceived flavour.