Too much water withy specialty grains?

[Ben1]

Hey guys

Been lurking for a while, thought I would do my first post.

I did my first extract brew a couple of weeks ago. I steeped 250g of Carared grains for 30 mins @ 70 degrees.

I did a full boil, following beer smith instructions, adding 2.5kg of light DME and the following hop times:

Cascade 40g @15 mins
Cascade 30g @5mins
Cascade 20g @0 mins (after no chill)

The beer has turned out truly dreadful. It's really light and has a bad tea flavour. I tried to do some research and found out I may have steeped in too much water. I steeped in an esky with probably 15l water. Do you guys think this is the likely cause?

 

[verysupple]

That could be the cause. Some people hold the opinion that if you steep your grains in too much water - more than about 6.25 L/kg - then you risk excessive tannin extraction which can give an astringent quality. Although, I'm not too sure there's a lot of truth in that given a liquor-to-grist ratio of > 6 L/kg is commonly used when doing BIAB.

Can you give us a bit more info on the recipe like batch size, OG and FG, yeast strain, ferment temp.? Also, I assumed "bad tea flavour" meant astringent, like when you leave the tea-bag in too long and it goes kind of bitter and mouth puckering. Is that what you're getting?

 

[pat86]

That could be the cause. Some people hold the opinion that if you steep your grains in too much water - more than about 6.25 L/kg - then you risk excessive tannin extraction which can give an astringent quality. Although, I'm not too sure there's a lot of truth in that given a liquor-to-grist ratio of > 6 L/kg is commonly used when doing BIAB.

Can you give us a bit more info on the recipe like batch size, OG and FG, yeast strain, ferment temp.? Also, I assumed "bad tea flavour" meant astringent, like when you leave the tea-bag in too long and it goes kind of bitter and mouth puckering. Is that what you're getting?

If 6L/KG is the cut-off it could be the reason. With 250g of steeping grains, the ratio here is actually 60L / KG grain.

Your hop amounts don't seem crazy or anything, but perhaps the bad tea flavour could be coming from some hop grassiness perhaps? I don't no chill but I am sure some others here could give more info.

After seeing a couple of brews change a lot after >6 weeks in the bottle, I would definitely recommend giving it some time, you never know how it will come out with a bit more waiting.

As VerySupple said, maybe provide a bit more info on gravity, time and temp?

 

[hoping]

I'm certainly no expert, been doing some BIABs with limited success. One thing that caught my eye but seems too simple so I'm probably missing something: you don't list any hops boiled for 60 mins to add bitterness. 15 mins will get you flavour but not much bitterness, And even less from the 5 mins and zero. Can't really envisage what a brew would taste like without the boiled hops.

Thinness might have a bit to do with too high final volume and too low OG. Had that problem recently myself getting the volume all wrong and ending up with light watery beers.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Tannins dont generally come out untill about 88*c..

A good rule of thumb for steeping is about 3:1 water to grain. 15ltr is prob a liittle bit much for 250g. 250g in 2ltrs would be a good start

 

[hoppy2B]

Theoretically you should get more colour etc. out of your grain the larger the volume of water you have used for steeping. I take it you were expecting a deep red colour or something just going on the fact you used carared? Ditch the carared and use 60 grams of dark crystal next time to give you an aussie ale type of flavour that you may be more accustomed to.

It will still taste pretty fresh if you only did it a couple of weeks ago and should improve a lot after 6 weeks in the bottle. You may become accustomed to the fresh flavour after a while if you are chasing different hop flavours.

As others have said you probably don't have sufficient bitterness, so add more hops at 15 minutes or boil some for 60 minutes.

 

[carpedaym]

Others have suggested low bitterness. While the omission of a 60m addition is not the norm, I've seen plenty that only throw a few grams of pellets in at 60m, partially just to help avoid boil-overs.

Punching your hop schedule into a calculator using the Tinseth formula (and adding 12m to adjust for nochill) yields an IBU of 38, (assuming a 23L batch). The OG does look a little on the low side at 1.038, leaving an GU:BU ratio of 1, which is leaning on the bitter side but should not be "truly dreadful".

Carared vs Dark crystal? That is merely a matter of taste. I also prefer a little darker grade of crystal, but my first extract beer used steeped Carahell, which is even lighter than Carared. (And it turned out to be most drinkable.) Most pale ale recipes I've seen go with something in the 40L to 60L range.

The high liquid to grist ratio extracting more tannins is not something I have come across, so I guess I can't comment. It would surprise me to learn it had such an extreme affect!

 

[Ben1]

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. I'm a bit stumped.

Suggestions seem to be as follows:

- My suggestion of too much water (although people are unsure if it could cause such an extreme taste)
- Grassiness from the late hop addition
- Recipe being off particularly the hop schedule.

All I can say is the taste is not just a matter of being 'not perfect', it is truly toxic. I had my wife try it and she said it tastes 'metallic'. I would agree. It seems I have made a major mistake somewhere along the line.

OG was 1.037 and FG was 1.010. This was the Beersmith recipie and it ended exactly where it was supposed to. I had it in the fridge with a temp controller at 17 degrees. Also reasonably confident about my sanitation but I'm new so really can't say anythingdefinatively.

I'm going to head into CraftBrewer on the weekend so maybe I'll take in a bottle and make them taste my pond water! (Sorry guys).

I'll try again with less water and see if it makes a different.

I will also bottle the lot and give it some weeks to see how it goes.

 

[verysupple]

Most replies have been referring to astringency and grassiness. Metalic is a whole different kettle of fish. Have a read of this, it might help explain some tastes and give ideas about what the off flavour is. It's not exhaustive, but it's a good place to start.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section4/chapter21-2.html

 

[Ben1]

Thanks VerySupple. Palmers book was my first port of call when something was wrong. I would describe the taste as astringent not metallic but taste really is subjective.

I am using a 50l stainless steel pot so unlikely to have issues of a corroding pot.

I'll let you guys know how I go on round 2 when I try again. Hopefully it will elongate at least one of the options

 

[Ben1]

I just realised I contradicted myself in 2 posts about the taste. Goes to show I'm really not sure how to describe it.

 

[mrsupraboy]

My best bet is see if one of these experienced brewers will catch up with u and get them to try it. Maybe explain to u over a beer at the pub. I had someone do that with me and it turned out to be a bad recipe.