Hay-like flavours....Help!

[All.Hopped.Up]

I have been having an on-going problem of late with all of my brews, after carbonation my beers are developing a hay-like after taste. I originally put it down to old hops/malt and I have replaced all of my supplies and in the first two brews that I have produced the dreaded flavour is back!

I have done a lot of reading and I can't seem to nail down what the problem could be?

I brew using the BIAB method. All beers (ales) were mashed at 64 degrees in a keggle and sparged by suspending the bag over the kettle and pouring 74 degree water through the grain, generally around 10 litres. Would this be considered over sparging as I have read that this could possibly be the cause?

This is driving me slowly insane as I never used to have any problems and I can't see how my procedures have changed at all.

I would really appreciate any advice/suggestions.

 

[luggy]

Could be brettanomyces/wild yeast infection, if it's a brewhouse infection it could be difficult to isolate and get rid of. More details of process would help others to offer advice

 

[All.Hopped.Up]

Could be brettanomyces/wild yeast infection, if it's a brewhouse infection it could be difficult to isolate and get rid of. More details of process would help others to offer advice

I stripped, cleaned and sanitized all of my equipment before the last brew and this has been in the last 4 or 5 kegs I have produced. I have even stripped down the kegs and taps ect.

My process is as follows:

Cleaning/sanitising my equipment with PSR/starsan.
Grain is cracked using a barley crusher mill.
Water is town water run through a carbon water filter.
Mash in at 64 degrees and hold for 60 minutes.
Bag lifted and suspended over kettle and fly sparged with 10 litres 74 degree water.
1 hour boil.
Chilled with sanitised stainless steel immersion chiller.
Keg drained via pick-up tube into food-grade hose (sanitised) to the fermenter (also sanitised).
Fermented in temp controlled fridge at 18 degrees.
Crash chilled for 24 hours and transferred to keg using food-grade hose and force carbonated.

I hope that helps.

 

[luggy]

How big is your batch size and where are you brewing? Inside/outside?

 

[All.Hopped.Up]

I brew outside under a covered balcony.

Batch size is 23 litres.

27 litres mash.
10 litres sparge.

 

[luggy]

Do you cover the kettle while you're chilling the wort?

 

[All.Hopped.Up]

Do you cover the kettle while you're chilling the wort?

Yes.

I use foil to stop anything flying into it.

 

[luggy]

I'd be looking to have a knowledgeable local to try your beer, that way you can pin point the exact flavour that you're picking up and that will give you a starting point of where to look in your process for how to avoid it in the future.

When you say hay-like do you mean like barnyard or a grassy quality?

 

[All.Hopped.Up]

I'd be looking to have a knowledgeable local to try your beer, that way you can pin point the exact flavour that you're picking up and that will give you a starting point of where to look in your process for how to avoid it in the future.

When you say hay-like do you mean like barnyard or a grassy quality?

Barnyard with a slight bitter after taste. The beer looks, smells and tastes fine until the after taste hits. I haven't experienced any adverse effects from drinking it, other than bitter disappointment. :unsure:

I was hoping to brew beer for my wedding which is in 3 weeks and now I feel like I can't serve any of it up.

 

[luggy]

Barnyard is a typical descriptor for brettanomyces, I'd be looking to restrict any exposure to air outside where you are brewing, if you have fruit trees around you will usually find wild yeast as well and this may be contaminating your beer. Isolating these problems can be difficult as the infection could be from nearly any part of the process.

Hopefully some of the more experienced brewers will chime in with their advice but if I was you I'd be looking at every step of my process and trying to eliminate the source, and like I said before try to get someone near you to try the beer and confirm what you are tasting.

Best of luck with it

 

[All.Hopped.Up]

Barnyard is a typical descriptor for brettanomyces, I'd be looking to restrict any exposure to air outside where you are brewing, if you have fruit trees around you will usually find wild yeast as well and this may be contaminating your beer. Isolating these problems can be difficult as the infection could be from nearly any part of the process.

Hopefully some of the more experienced brewers will chime in with their advice but if I was you I'd be looking at every step of my process and trying to eliminate the source, and like I said before try to get someone near you to try the beer and confirm what you are tasting.

Best of luck with it

Thanks Luggy.

I have been pulling my hair out over this for months and I feel like I have re-examined all of my processes and I am still getting nowhere.

 

[MHB]

Sounds like Oxidation, a pretty common cause of Straw/Hay like flavours, time to have a long hard look at your O2 pickup, especially as you said in the OP that its post carbonation.
Other causes can be bacterial, yeast stress and aged hops (more often called grassy) but if its showing up in packaging I would be looking at O2 first.
Mark

This is great View attachment Complete_Beer_Fault_Guide.pdf(been posted before) but search the doc for Straw, Hay... might give you some ideas.
M

 

[All.Hopped.Up]

Sounds like Oxidation, a pretty common cause of Straw/Hay like flavours, time to have a long hard look at your O2 pickup, especially as you said in the OP that its post carbonation.
Other causes can be bacterial, yeast stress and aged hops (more often called grassy) but if its showing up in packaging I would be looking at O2 first.
Mark

This is great

Complete_Beer_Fault_Guide.pdf(been posted before) but search the doc for Straw, Hay... might give you some ideas.
M

I am thinking I might replace all of the beer and gas lines on Monday and see if that helps. I just stripped and rebuilt the kegs before filling them so it must be something in the O2 lines perhaps?

 

[motman]

I have thought I had this flavour before from overly fine malt grind, making the husky flavour and astringency from the barley hulls come through. Are you grinding over fine? I'd also consider trying standard biab with no sparge in order to eliminate husk based tannins.

Good luck

 

[yankinoz]

Experiment by trying an extract brew using a light dose fresh hops or hop-flavoured LME, maybe making a blonde that tends to show faults . If that develops hay flavour, infection is your problem. If not look at your malt use.

 

[Brew Forky]

Or try no chill and then you can cut out a lot of variables.

Nothing alive should survive the cube.

 

[Kev R]

I had one that made 3 in a row tast like cloves. Starsan ect didn't help. Think they are great on bacterial stuff , wild yeast spores type stuff not so good.
I put anything that would fit in the pressure cooker. The rest got soaked in strong bleach solution.
Any valves ect need to completely striped down first
No problem since.

 

[All.Hopped.Up]

I have thought I had this flavour before from overly fine malt grind, making the husky flavour and astringency from the barley hulls come through. Are you grinding over fine? I'd also consider trying standard biab with no sparge in order to eliminate husk based tannins.

Good luck

I might increase the spacing in my mill and skip the sparge on the next batch. I feel like this is probably a prime candidate for the cause. I used to use a corona mill and hand crack everything, I guess the new mill is the variable I hadn't really considered.

 

[All.Hopped.Up]

Experiment by trying an extract brew using a light dose fresh hops or hop-flavoured LME, maybe making a blonde that tends to show faults . If that develops hay flavour, infection is your problem. If not look at your malt use.

I picked up a fresh wort kit this afternoon which I will put down to test this theory.

 

[All.Hopped.Up]

Or try no chill and then you can cut out a lot of variables.

Nothing alive should survive the cube.

Cube.jpg