Lager With A Cidery Taste!?

[Diggles]

Has anyone any advice, my lager has a cidery taste!!

Fermented at 12deg, raised temp after initial fermentation by 2 deg, held for 2 days, crash chilled to 2 deg, transferred into 2nd fermenter with gelatine and kegged after 2 days. Currently carbonating.

Had a small taster and seems to have a cidery taste or that home brew taste as some would say....if that makes sense!!

 

[Scruffy]

What did you make it with?

 

[Diggles]

What did you make it with?

Lager is a Cortez

 

[Mr.Moonshine]

I don't know what you mean by "a cortez", but if you're fermenting with a lager yeast then a diacetyl rest at 14 degrees for 2 days seems a bit low. I reckon you should try 16-17 degrees for the diacetyl rest, to make it clean up faster and more thoroughly. The "homebrew" "cidery" taste you describe may be a result of the beer not being adequately rested, OR you may be tasting a fairly "green" beer and the cidery homebrew taste will dissipate with time.
I had a few ales using coopers yeast that reeked green apple for the first 2-3 weeks, then settled right down into malty Australian goodness give your beer a bit of age and see how it goes.
Mind you, if you used regular table sugar, that's the cause of your cider-y flavour. The only simple sugars you should really be adding are dextrose, unless you're making a belgian.

Cheers,

Mr.Moonshine

 

[mwd]

Quote From Dr k from another thread regarding sugars.

"Really, raw sugar is just white sugar that had not had the colour taken out yet (bit like guinness vs urine..or perhaps not). Th imparting a bad taste to your beer is an old wives tale that originated back in the early days of kit/extract brewing, fermented sugar (sucrose) does not of itself throw an apple cider like finish. What was happening was a combination of poor quality extract, poor quality yeast, way too high ferment temps and incomplete fermentation. Where the sugar was a culprit was that it fermented pretty much right out resulting in a much drier beer which accentuated the fusels, nasty esters and acetaldehyde produced by the rest of the process.
Thank goodness all this has changed these days but poor old sucrose ((which btw is broken down during fermentation by an enzyme called invertase into fructose and glucose (or dextrose)) still gets the blame!!"

Could not figure out how to link directly to that one particular post so did a cut and paste. :unsure:

 

[Bribie G]

Lion and Carlton pump heaps of sucrose into their beers and, whatever else you can say about the taste, cidery isn't amongst them. I regularly put some white sugar into my UK bitters and milds for better attenuation and to mimic what they actually do in many UK breweries.
I find that most kit beers nowadays, even when fermented at correct temperatures, have a somewhat acid taste, but I wonder if this is more of a malt extract 'twang'. You would certainly notice it more with a lightly hopped beer such as a Cerveza.

 

[barneyb]

Quote From Dr k from another thread regarding sugars.
Thank goodness all this has changed these days but poor old sucrose ((which btw is broken down during fermentation by an enzyme called invertase into fructose and glucose (or dextrose)) still gets the blame!!"

I was reading about sugars last night in the latest edition of Palmers How to Brew (the bit about sugar doesn't seem to be in the online version) and his argument was that while the yeast will break sucrose down into into fructose and glucose it will always do this first before breaking down the rest, meaning if the yeast is not pitched properly or not enough yeast is pitched, the breaking down of the sucrose will "wear it out" (sorry can't think of a better explanation) and it won't get through the breaking down of the rest of the sugars, leaving the fermentation process incomplete.

 

[Maple]

Has anyone any advice, my lager has a cidery taste!!

Fermented at 12deg, raised temp after initial fermentation by 2 deg, held for 2 days, crash chilled to 2 deg, transferred into 2nd fermenter with gelatine and kegged after 2 days. Currently carbonating.

Had a small taster and seems to have a cidery taste or that home brew taste as some would say....if that makes sense!!

Cidery taste eh? depends really, from that description it could be a number of things. the thing that jumped out in my mind is Acetaldehyde. Can be caused by unhealthy yeast, under-nourished yeast, lack of O2 or incomplete fermentation. that's just my thoughts from your description.

It could also be esters thrown by the yeast, but given the temps you have stated, it would be really strain dependent.

If there is no yeast left in the solution, I wouldn't expect this to go away with time, as the yeasties are the clean-up crew and as others have suggested, your Diacetyl rest may be a bit low to be effective in that timespan.

 

[Diggles]

Thanks guys, Only sugar added was Dextrose, I may have stopped the fermentation slightly early as my last attempt finished at 1008, where as this batch FG was 1010 from memory.

It does seem to be coming good or I'm getting used to the taste :icon_cheers: .

 

[Fermented]

If I recall correctly, Cortez is a cervza-ish product.

Generally, they need two to four weeks after fermentation to settle down and gain their true taste.

Cheers - Fermented.