Lost a few batches already to what I think is astringency. Is my Coron

[KevinR]

Look at were you are brewing.
Infection can live in porous surfaces and when disturbed float on dust particials,as the brew cools it will condense and draw in air (and the dust particials)
Starsan ect but the surface tention of the liquid will not let it get to the bottom of scratches and when conditions are favorable the infection can bloom. If you are using plastic as suggested in other posts toss the cube.
Partrs of your setup can store nasties. If you have valves pull them appart,i spent money on sanitary valves,pulled them appart and they had crap inside.Threads are bad, they trap crap in the bottom of the v.
I'm not sure how efective no rinse sanitizers are on wild yeast strains.
I have little experience, this is my 15th brew and of the first 10 lost half.
Anything that would fit was disassembled and put in the pressure cooker for 30min (ihave read some spores can surive boiling water)
Other stuff went in the oven over night. I bleach the daylights out of the brew area and keep it damp with bleach solution untill the brew is safe in the fermentor,I figure if it's wet it can't make dust and transport nasties. Bleach my brew stuff, rince in fresh water then starsan. Don't forget to rinse as chlorine (bleach ) +acid (starsan)=chlorine gas (was used in WW1 as a chemical weapon )
A good starter helps by out breading nasties. Brews that take 2,3 days to take of are inviting infection to get a foot hold.
I also started fermenting in glass . Don't know if it helps, but it's sure is cool watching the ferment churn and being able to watch the process.
Feel free to contradict any of this as I'm more than happy to learn and don't want others put on the wrong path.
Cheers
Kev

 

[Rocker1986]

BIAB is not going to cause low efficiency just because it's BIAB. It's also not going to cause weird flavours just because it's BIAB. Squeezing the bag does not extract astringent flavours (tannins), it's an old wives tale that's somehow snowballed into one of these myths that everyone seems to believe in.

I regularly get between 70% and 75% brewhouse efficiency on my system. It's not the "lofty heights" of 80 odd %, but it's consistent which I think is far more important than getting big numbers, within reason of course. If you're going under 60% regularly then I'd be looking at some fixes for it. But, with consistently hitting between 70-75, I'm happy with that. The beers all turn out great, and being consistent makes it a hell of a lot easier to design recipes, and to me that's the whole point of working out the efficiency in the first place, is it not? h34r:

 

[ebyelyakov]

A note on sparging -- 77C at PH 8 (I'm in Sydney - Prospect Reservoir) will extract lots of tannin. 1 ml or 20% phosphoric acid will bring you to 5.4. Check on Brun's water website.

I prefer phosphoric since this is the stuff you get in your wort anyway when Phosphorus from the malt joins with sulphites in your water.. One of the reasons gypsum facilitates PH drop.

 

[indica86]

I pour 4 1/5 litres of water from the hot tap over my BIAB bag. This is at 8.3pH and I do not extract tannins.

 

[hellbent]

I was having similar trouble for a while and I finally tracked the trouble back to the ball valve from my kettle, seems that the assembly had been tightened too much causing the washer inside to squash right up and when I pulled it apart there was gunk and shit stored up everywhere and reeked something shocking.... got a new ball valve and the beer has been great ever since... Just a thought

 

[MHB]

Apart from the infection problem that I hope you have solved.
I am wondering why your efficiency is so low, there are a couple of possibilities that come to mind: -

Temperature, how are you measuring temperature? you need a decent thermometer that you can trust, always stir and measure your strike water before mashing in. Water layers with Hot floating on Cold and if you aren't careful the temperature at any one point can be very different to another.

Really bad water chemistry can cause low efficiency, make sure you have enough Calcium and that the pH isn't too far out, if your water has a lot of carbonate you will need to acidify, I am a big fan of Lactic Acid, it will buffer more effectively than will mineral acids.

If you are sparging remember to acidify your sparge water.

Mark

 

[wynnum1]

A new study into lead contamination in North-East Tasmanian drinking water has revealed high levels of lead
That proves that drinking water may not be drinkable when the water is tested they know that is going to be tested and can do everything correctly the week before .In Tasmanian they blamed the pipes for the lead .If you live in wrong area the water could be crap chlorination is not all the same .What does it cost to buy RO water or get some good rain water.

 

[loco88]

I was having similar trouble for a while and I finally tracked the trouble back to the ball valve from my kettle, seems that the assembly had been tightened too much causing the washer inside to squash right up and when I pulled it apart there was gunk and shit stored up everywhere and reeked something shocking.... got a new ball valve and the beer has been great ever since... Just a thought

I went through hell trying to get the weldless fitting watertight, so this wouldn't surprise me. I'll pull it apart tonight and see what I find...