The Home Brew Taste

[BS Brewing]

What exactly is the home brew taste and what causes it?
To me it's that bitter taste at the back of the throat.

Could it be caused by boiling the shit out of everything for health reason (sterilising), especially adding the hops too early to the boil.

I would love to hear experts options and theories.

 

[tangent]

there's a number of things that contribute, but I'd say cane sugar and isohop in extract tins would certainly be a large % of the problem.
But you could also be tasting a lot of other things/problems.
The term "home brew taste" is unfortunate because I brew at home and get none of those flavours anymore. Maybe it's more of a "Kit & Kilo taste".

 

[bugwan]

I am no expert, but I would suggest that using inexpensive ingredients (or brewing from a can and following the directions EXACTLY) would result in that 'homebrew taste' which drives many an aspiring (and impatient) homebrewer to leave the fold.

The best advice I can offer someone who is brewing from kits and unhappy with their results is to avoid using sugar (this should be a given) and to avoid the dried yeast in the lid. Get some decent yeast, boil your extract with water and hop your brew appropriately. It's a small price to pay (if at all) to improve your end product 100 fold.

Cheers!

 

[Trev]

I think one of the major reasons for that 'Homebrew Twang' that some people describe is not so much the fact that sugar is added, but rather that the wort is under oxygenated and the yeast is stressed and produces much more acetaldehyde in the final beer. Given that acetaldelyhyde is produced in all beer ferments, but low oxygen, underpitching and maybe even high temperatures all contribute to the 'twang'

There are many examples of sugar being used in brewing, OK, maybe Invert and Candi sugar in the Belgian styles, but the twang is thankfully missing.

Use healthy yeast, oxygenate your brew and see the difference.

Trev

 

[pbrosnan]

HI there,

I reckon it's high ferment temps. The K&K manufactuers tell us its OK to fermerment in the 25-30 range but in my experience this is not is (generally) a good idea. I brew exclusively with liquid yeasts but after tasting some of my brother'e K&K brews fermented at low temps I suspect that it should be a general rule that fermentation is preferably kept at sub 20C temps unless you're looking for a particular style.

 

[Darren]

I have tried making a kit beer I won in a comp (was a premium kit beer too).
Treated as I would have my AG beer. It still tasted like a kit.
You need to add extra hops and malt to bring a kit beer up.

cheers

Darren

 

[Screwtop]

Probably will be swooped on from a great height here. It is MHO that Chlorinated water contributes to ciderey/phenolic tastes like a metallic taste in the back of the throat. A campden tablet can assist but affects salts present in the water also. In ales brewed with sugar there is a lack of maltiness and phenolics are more detectable. I have brewed using cane sugar additions in AG and still noticed a cideryness. I dont believe it comes from the sugar as it is commonly used in commercial bewing. Using kits, when I heated my water the day before and allowed it to cool overnight without a lid to drive off chlorine I did not get the cideryness so now do this with AG as well.

 

[hughman666]

Hi there,

I used to get this when i first started brewing, and due to the hot Perth summers I was unable to keep a brew under 25c.

Then I got hold of a 100 can cooler from K-Mart and packed it with ice bottles, managed to keep the brew at a steady 18c. At the same time I bought a 2nd fermenter and started racking my beers. I keep primary going at 18c for 7-10 days and then rack to secondary at 18c for another 7-10 days. The improvement was good but still a slight "homebrew" taste lingered.

My next step was to look at the ingredients I was using. Standard Coopers kits with your typical kilo of dextrose. I had tasted good Coopers kits from mates so decided that perhaps it was the dextrose that was the outstanding issue. I started experimenting with using 500g dextrose/500g malt booster packs in place of a kilo of dextrose. The difference was notable, however still a bit of the taste lingered (although about 80% less than when I first started). It tasted like it was "amost there".

Looked again at the ingredients. I started trying the SAF yeasts and not the ones that came with the tin. The fermentation speed picked up a fair bit at the 18c temps than I was experiencing with the tin yeasts. Also, the sediment was fairly solid, quite compacted at the bottom of the fermenter.

Now it was tasting like good beer. I then read somewhere on AHB that it was preferable to boil the ingredients prior to throwing them all in the fermenter. So I began using an 11L pot to mix the can contents & booster packs to a slow/near boil for 10 minutes, letting it sit for an hour in the beerfridge and then adding it to the fermenter. Also when adding it to the fermenter I pour from around a metre high to maximise oxygen with the splashing etc and giving it a good stir.

At this stage the beer was fantastic. Friends of mine who were suspicious of homebrew were genuinely impressed.

Then I moved to kegging a couple of months ago. Even better, it tastes somewhat "cleaner" due to the lack of priming sugar required (my theory anyway). I still bottle 4-5 longnecks out of every brew (damn 18.9L kegs) which is good for beer mobility.

The difference between now and my first few brews is amazing. It now tastes better than any of the $30-40 cartons that I used to buy and the above improvements can be applied to any beer style, so I'm miles ahead as far as I'm concerned. The cost of a brew when I first started was generally $15 for a basic $10 kit and bag of dextrose. Granted, I do pay around $25-30 now for a brew ($10-$18 kit, $7-10 for booster pack and $3-4 for the SAF yeasts) but that is still $25-30 for over 2 cartons of very nice beer.

And the journey continues. I'm now experimenting with adding different hops to the boil and other things.

Sorry if I've gone on too long (this is almost a PistolPatch-length post ) but I thought I would share my experiences in getting rid of that homebrew taste.

To sum it all up I would say sanitisation, consistent 16-20c temps, lose the dextrose & use a booster, good yeast and evetually move to kegging (if desired).

 

[QldKev]

The *best* changes I believe I have made; which confirm the above posts.

Using dextrose/malt, not sugar
Fermentor fridge with temp controller.
- Same temp all year (I have a belt heater in mine for winter)
- I think temp fluctuations are very bad for taste
CC to allow clearing (min 1 week)
Kegging - agreed with the cleaner taste finish
Hops, hops and more hops - I'm a hop head.....

 

[Barry]

Good Day
I think it is a combination of the factors already mentioned, high temps, too much sugar, chlorinated water (kit brewers are more likely to add 20L of water straight from the tap), etc.
I also believe it comes from old extract. Even if you have bought it this morning how long has been on the shelf? One more good reason to buy from a good HBS that has a high turnover.
Several years ago two very good and experienced home brewers, Eric and Lorraine Young, did a trial for Nestles extract. They made three identical brews and held a blind judging at an informal monthly meeting with 15+ home brewers one Friday night. Two of the beers were scored highly (Coopers extract and Nestles extract) but the third really had that "home brew taste" and came last by a long way. Turned out to be Coopers extract BUT it was 6 months old, used as a type of control. So old extract does give that "home brew taste" (oxidation) IMHO.
PS The Youngs judged at many comps and kept coming across a strange taste in many entries. They tracked it down to brewers boiling their kits. The made up similar trial batches using different kits which they boiled. They got the same strange taste in many of the batches but not all (eg. Coopers kits did not have it). They believed it depended on the isohops used. They advised not to boil the kits and the kit makers certainly did not advise it either. This was in an artcle in Ausbeer several years ago.
Hope this adds something to the debate.

 

[Kai]

I agree with Barry about old extract, without the backup of any valid study. However, I think the "homebrew taste" is not any one flavour and is as such obviously caused by a range of issues like too much sugar, low quality ingredients, improper yeast management, temperature, sanitation, etc, etc, etc.

 

[BoilerBoy]

Only been brewing for 2 years, but looking back at my record the point at which that taste started to dissapear was using -

Liquid yeast
unhopped extract
and then part mashing

I've been doing full mashes for a year now so that taste has long gone, every now and then a kit brewer will give me a brew to try and I usually revisit that taste all over again. Its a shame, in that for every well intentioned kit brewer who naturally wants to share his beer with mates the stereotyped home brew taste lives on.

I agree with Barry and Kai about old tins of extract, like alot of food in tins it has a certain taste or "twang" its probably no different with extract.
If using cans your probably better off buying them from a reputable shop that can guarantee how fresh they are (I know Grumpy's will do this) rather than the supermarket, it will cost you more, but in the end its what your tastse buds and mates are prepared to put up with.

Like anything food and drink related fresh is usually best.

Cheers
BB

 

[pint of lager]

My brewing methods have ranged from standard kit and kilo, through liquid yeasts, partial mashing, some extract brewing and then onto ag.

A few months after brewing and drinking ag beers, I went back and sampled a partial pale ale that I had been very happy with. It was brewed with a liquid yeast, rain water, partial mash over a kit and had won awards. There was that distinctive kit twang. Possibly it could have been aged extract flavour, but after drinking ag brews, it was the last flavour I wanted in my beers.

Since then I have tasted many kit brews and most (90%) but not all have that distinctive twang.

 

[peas_and_corn]

I've got to agree with boilerboy; for each of those steps I have made I could taste a HUGE difference. I remember drinking my first beer made with no sugar; only a can and malt. The jump in quality made me really get into brewing and want to find an online brewing community (and led me here, thanks to the magic of Google). Moving towards using more malt and better quality malt makes a huge difference to the final product.

 

[tangent]

lose the extract, lose the bleah taste
grain tastes good - even with dry yeast

 

[sosman]

Here's my list of possible contributors (some already mentioned) and leaving aside infection:

• Stale extract.
• Poor quality extract.
• Higher levels of chlorine getting into the fermenter.
• High levels of adjunct.
• Tendency to lower gravity beers (if made to manufacturers recommendation).
• Poor fermentation management (temp, aeration).

As for the last one, it would be an interesting experiment to take the yeast from the lid of a kit, make an AG recipe and ferment at 25 C. As far as I know they are designed to run hot. If there was any increase in fruitiness the impact would be style dependent.

In any case, it is possible to reduce or eliminate each of these factors and create award winning beers.

PS I know the thread wasn't specifically about K&K brewing. The whole other side to this is the "big beer" that craft brewers often make which overwhelms the senses of your typical VB brewer.