Citra beer doesn't taste right

[Sunter0100]

I brewed the following beer 6 weeks ago:

3.5kg Maris Otter
500g Munich
350g Caramalt

20g Citra 14.4% 60mins
20g Citra 10mins
40g Citra 0 mins
20g Citra dry hopped

Wyeast 1056 yeast

I have brewed a few beers with Citra and have always loved them. This one seems to have a strange flavour to it. Not infected or undrinkable. Just too sweet and the hop flavour is muted. It is as if the malt flavour and the tropical hop flavour are clashing! Does anyone have any thoughts on the recipe that might be causing the problem?

[Morten]

Mash temp?

Munich adds quite a lot of body.

[keith1664]

Assuming you've changed nothing else in your process then I would suggest you have too much caramalt for your tastes, or as morten says a higher mash temp will leave more unfermentable sugers.

[Sunter0100]

Mash temp was 66. Fermentation went well at constant 18.

I was starting to suspect the caramalt.

[Barley Water]

Generally that yeast strain will do a good job and attenuates really well however if the beer is sweet I would suspect some sort of fermentation problem. Did the beer get overly cool during active fermentation by any chance? A sweet beer is going to tend to cover some of the bitterness the hops would normally add to the mix, that's why I try to dry out both APA's and IPA's that I make. Incidentally, at least in my opinion Citra is a good hop but really does best when combined with other ale hops, it's just a little too "catty" for me but of course that is just my subjective opinion so take it for what it's worth.

[Morten]

Less than 10% cara will not give a sweet beer.

But combined with the dextrins from the munich and a mash temp of 66° might be too much for your taste.

What was FG?

[Sunter0100]

Fermentation seemed to go ok with no major fluctuations in temperature. FG came out at 1.010 as expected.

It must have been a combination of the caramalt and munich.

[zgoda]

I'd suspect caramalt. I never use more than 200 gms per 21 ltr brew length because of its sweetness, and only in lightly hopped beers.