Substitute For Us-05

[aaronpetersen]

Are you boiling them in wort or water?

Wort. Don't know what the gravity of the boil was but I had about half a tin of LLME in about 4L of water, which is about 1066 according to the spreadsheet I've got. My understanding is that you get astringency (or something undesirable) if the boil gravity is low, not high, although I may be wrong. Could the small boil be the problem? I had 15g Cascade and 10g Cluster in the boil for 15 min. I also dry hopped with 12g Chinook near the end of primary fermentation. After doing a bit of a search I read that some people commented on undesirable flavours (can't remember if it was astringency) from dry hopping. Could that be the cause? Although, now that I think about it, I have dry hopped other beers with no problems. Are there certain hops that aren't so good for dry hopping? Having said all that, it does seem to be improving with age, so maybe I just need to leave it for a while longer (currently 2 months in bottle).

 

[manticle]

Yeah too low is what [supposedly] gives harsh bitterness. Too high just makes utilisation suffer as far as I know.

You can get not so good flavours from dry hopping but I don't remember astringency being one of them. Grassy, vegetal or just plain inappropriate are either things I've heard of or things I've experienced (experienced grassy and inappropriate).

Astringency can also relate to shredded grain husks and over hot liquor when steeping or sparging grains (pH dependent as far as I understand)