all grain brewing problem

[soupdragon]

How do you mash? and what yeast's do you use?

Hi

I mash in my 15 ltr stockpot on the stove top and just tip the grain through a large sieve and allow the wort to drain into a holding bin. I put the grain back into the pot and batch sparge ( tipping through the sieve again ) twice till I have around 12 ltrs of wort. I then boil up with the full ammount of hops before cooling and tipping through the sieve into my fermenter. I add the ballance of fermentables as dried malt extract and top off at 5 gallons. I've been using s-04 up to now although I used Nottingham for my last extract only brew.
I now have a bucket in a bucket type lauter tun to filter out most of the break material, although my 1st brew that had a good inch and a half of break and grain bits in the bottom of the fermenter turned out very nicely

Cheers Tom

[gnorwebthgimi]

Just to keep you all up dated.

I have brewed and I am now into fermenting a blonde beer with a single hop (first gold). Everything went fine and I reduced the mash and sparge exposure to oxidation.

So far so good.

Another note on water treatment is that adding campden to the water before mash and sparge will also reduce the possibility of oxidation. I didn't do this as I wanted to rule out water treatment but will be doing this in the next brew as it sounds like good practice. Although I do prefer to keep it simple.

[Big G]

Good Luck, Im sure it will be fine.

[gnorwebthgimi]

Another update

Had a look at the beer in the fermenter, and it was clear but there were different "things" floating around than I am used to. There appears to be more stuff floating on top and there is less sediment at the bottom of the fermenter. All of my break material goes through to the fermenter so I usually expect a lot of sediment.

Also the fermentation seemed to start quicker and last longer.

I'm guessing this has more to do with aerating the yeast when the wort is cool rather than reducing hot side aertation.

I am hoping to barrel the beer tonight if a second gravity reading is at 1.011/ 1.010, which is a little low for the estimated IBU of 30. (isn't is annoying that you fix one problem and there's another)

With a little refinement in my sparging technique I should get more sugar off the grain, including some more unfermentables to increase the gravity of the finished beer.

Big G, how much aeration do you think you get from moving the grain from the mash tun to a separate vessel? I have a theory that this causes very little aeration if you are careful because steam drives off any oxygen, my current thinking is that it was the muslin filter (which is completely pointless for clarity purposes when using whirlfloc) that allowed hot side aeration.

In two weeks we will know if this is a hot side aeration/ wort aeration issue.

[Big G]

I suppose not enough to cause any problems, as I havnt had any.

I suppose you could mash your grain in the large sparge/grain bag, then the transfer would be much easier and wouldnt disturb the grain as much....I myself wouldnt bother.

[gnorwebthgimi]

Hi Everyone

Just to let you know everything has gone according to plan so far, the beer is great.

The stats are:

Blonde beer with only pale ale malt
It's only 3.5% ABV but that makes very easy to drink.
The final gravity was 1.010 and about 30 IBUs giving it quite a bitter kick but it has loads of outstanding hop taste. I used first gold hops only for this and dedicated quite a lot of the hops to taste and a bit to aroma.

It's my favourite so far and I'm usually a dark ale fan.

The beer is ever so slightly cloudy (and not 100% brilliant bright but see through and clear).

Only a few weeks to wait to see if any "off flavours" develop.

[gnorwebthgimi]

It's day six after barreling and I am not sure if I can detect the first signs of a slightly tart sourness creeping into the beer in place of the malty tones. However, the hop flavours and bitterness are still in abundance.

I MIGHT be being paranoid but I think that the beer doesn't taste as good as it did for the last few days. The beer still tastes exceptional at the moment, but I am now fearing the worst.

If the sourness does creep in the possibles are:

Yeast (why does nobody else have this problem with s04?)

Water treatment (why does this not affect kit ales?)

Oxidation (possibly due to barrelling, why does nobody else have this problem? possibly due to siphoning technique, will do research into this)

I can't think of any more right now, will see if I have a problem in the next few days.

[Naich]

Water treatment (why does this not affect kit ales?)

Do you check the pH of your mash? If you are in a hard water area, the chances are that the alkalinity of your water will be high, meaning that the mash pH will be too high, causing off-flavours. Check the sticky posts in the Brewing Liquor forum for more info about testing and adjusting your water. You won't have this problem with kits because the mashing has been done for you, using water that is suitable for the style of beer.

[Spud395]

Water treatment (why does this not affect kit ales?)

Because the water was treated when the grains were being mashed to make the kit

[gnorwebthgimi]

Thanks for the recent replies.

I don't think my issue is water treatment because:

The taste develops on conditioning two weeks after the ferment and

I have made brews up with darker grains (which would lower mash PH) and they have had the same issue.


That said I will be looking into water treatment to improve the quality of my beer anyway.

I think I'm just being paranoid, the beer is fine and the sour taste hasn't presented yet and I'm still hopeful it won't but I still have a week to go.

[gnorwebthgimi]

My current beer is heading south (starting to show the sour (not like lemon) stale weird taste) and I suspect gusher infection.

So, I'm going to take two samples in two sterilised wine bottles

Camden tablet in one bottle

add sugar to the other bottle

the barrel being my control group.

Then I will see what happens....

[Naich]

My current beer is heading south (starting to show the sour (not like lemon) stale weird taste) and I suspect gusher infection.

What did it ferment like? I think I might have had one in one of my brews I did recently because of the way it fermented - very vigourously (despite the chiller keeping it at 19C), spunking out of the airlock for about 4 days. A week later and it was still bubbling away at a rate I would normally associate with a fermentation that was about a day in. It was still going after almost 2 weeks and, while it is improving slowly since it's been kegged, it's not right. There is very little body and the bitterness is sharp and sour, as you describe.

I hope yours improves, but I think this is a danger of brewing in the summer months when there are more wild yeasts floating around.

[gnorwebthgimi]

Mine fermented fine and normal.

It's only on barrelling that I suspect that an infection creeps through, either infected siphon or yeast in the air settling into the brew because siphoning isn't as quick as just dumping the brew into a fermenter.

It's then taking them 5 days to take hold, which is a suspiciously similar time pattern to oxidation, but I'm positive I ruled out oxidation.

[gnorwebthgimi]

The results of my first test:

The bottle that has added sugar - no further fermentation! (which suggested the yeast or water treatment is my issue, unless somehow the no yeast got through or the wild yeast can't ferment simple sugars).

I'm sure my beer has gone stale now so my issue is NOT HOT SIDE AERATION or OXIDATION, both of which I was VERY careful to eliminate.

So the issue could be:

1. Gusher infection (wild yeast)

2. Safale s04

3. Water treatment

My plan is to:

Do a 1 gallon batch and store these in 2 x 2 litre plastic bottles. Campden tablet one of the bottles and carbonate the other.
In order to do this I will be using a new, heavily sanitised siphon. If it's the yeast creating off flavours during conditioning or a gusher infection, it will let me know because one will taste ok (but with sulphites) the other will taste stale. If the conditioned bottle tastes ok then either I have rid myself of a gusher infection OR transferring to my keg is somehow oxidising the brew.

Do a second 1 gallon batch and store in 2 x 2 litre plastic bottles use water purchased from a supermarket and a new, heavily sanitised siphon. If these taste fine then its the water, if they don't it's the yeast.

[gnorwebthgimi]

I took a gravity reading from some of the beer, after I removed as much carbonation as possible and the reading was 1.005.

1.005 is pretty low against the gravity of 1.010 at barrelling, which was already low.

Could this low gravity be causing the absence of flavour? Do you think it's caused by low mash temperature and fermentation on conditioning or a gusher infection?

I'm guessing low mash temp as I know my thermometer is out (it reads 69 'c at the start of the mash and 68'c at the end of the mash, which is not right).

Is the yeast causing off flavours because it's stressing by doing so much fermentation beyond it's 70% attenuation (going up to 87%)?