Extract brew almost completely tasteless?

[slash22000]

Okay so, bit of an odd situation I've run up against.

I've recently been making extract brews in my Birko urn, that is, starting with a base of unhopped dry malt and working my way up from there. So far, relatively good, I guess. However, I still have a few Coopers tins lying around and since I needed a quick keg filler, I brewed up a random beer with a Coopers English Bitter tin added at the end of the boil.

I will post the exact recipe when I get home, but I basically used a can of Coopers amber extract (which I also wanted to get rid of), boiled it for ~20 minutes with maybe 20g of EKG for flavour, then at flame out (switch off?) I added the Coopers English Bitter tin and maybe another 20g EKG for aroma.

Fermented for 2 weeks at 18ºC with Safale S-04. Fermentation was crazy. First time I've ever used a blow off tube on my Willow jerrys, krausen absolutely exploded everywhere. Fermented all the way down from 1.048 to 1.010 for ~5% ABV.

Cold crashed for 72 hours, kegged, force carbed and consumed maybe a week later. At three weeks I expected it to perhaps taste "young", but it tastes like ... nothing. Like bitter water. There's a hint of estery aroma, presumably from the S-04, and a very, very mild taste of malt at the back of the mouth, as if it's beer diluted with water.

Has anybody run into this situation before? Just a "nothing" tasting beer? Again, not "bad" tasting, it literally tastes like alcoholic water.

 

[beerbog]

Yeah, I,ve got that at the moment with a Galaxy, all grain. I left out the dry hop this time, bittered and flavoured to about 35 IBU. I can hardly taste the galaxy. Surely dry hopping galaxy doesn't add all that flavour as well! :huh:

 

[manticle]

Some infections can strip malt and hop flavour.

 

[eamonnfoley]

Maybe stale extract given you said its been lying around.

 

[slash22000]

Some infections can strip malt and hop flavour.

Possibly, the krausen blew the cover completely off my Willow jerry and it was basically open to the world for anywhere between 9 - 12 hours before I got the blow off tube installed. As I said it doesn't taste or smell bad, just like "nothing". I didn't see any obvious bacteria growing on the beer but who knows?

Maybe stale extract given you said its been lying around.

I didn't think it was that old but looking through my e-mail, it looks like I ordered them September 25th last year ... Didn't realise they were 4 months old. I can't imagine that helped.

 

[carniebrew]

4 month old malt certainly shouldn't be the issue, unless maybe it was already old when you bought it, and/or had been handled poorly. But then you used two cans of malt in the brew, not likely both were bad. And that Coopers English Bitter is a pretty strong kit, with 33 odd IBU right out of the can....and then you added more via the EKG hops. No way would should that recipe come out bland.

I reckon Manticle must be right, the 9-12 hours where your fermenter was open is a likely culprit. Where was the jerry, outdoors? Garage?

 

[slash22000]

It was inside my fermenting freezer, which is indoors. I can't really think of any other factors that might have caused an infection unless I just got unlucky.