beer kit twang

[Shn00dleS]

hey, i have noticed the same signiture beer kit twang in all my 4 brews that i had done. i initially thought that this was down to bad fining on my part but i believe reading a previous post that this is true in all kits,
is there anything i can do apart from adding a dash of sparkling water to my brew to take this away? or am i doing some thing wrong.

[brysie]

what have you brewed?
bottle or barrel?
sugar or dme/lme?
how long from brew to drink?

[delboy]

Have you treated your water with half a crushed campden tablet to remove chlorine, if you haven't that might be the cause of the twang (not a nice flavour). If you have taken the neseccary steps to eliminate chlorine and the twang that it yields then i guess you are left wit it coming from either the over use of sugar (cidery taste) or with the proper beer kit twang which seems to be part and parcel of using malt extracts (liquids especially). Obviously if its excess sugar you could try the all malt kits or substitute the sugar with spraymalt.

Or you could try moving to extract brewing using dried spraymalt which doesn't seem to suffer as much from the twang as the liquid malt kits. Or dare i say it move on to All grain brewing, no twang whatsoever

[Lillywhite]

hey, i have noticed the same signiture beer kit twang in all my 4 brews that i had done. i initially thought that this was down to bad fining on my part but i believe reading a previous post that this is true in all kits,
is there anything i can do apart from adding a dash of sparkling water to my brew to take this away? or am i doing some thing wrong.

Could be a problem with too much chlorine in your water, as mentioned above, or you could be trying to drink your brew whilst it is still green and not fully matured. I reckon home brew doesn't come into it's own until at least 6 weeks after kegging and it will continue to improve and mellow with time.

[Shn00dleS]

oo, very speedy replies!
yeah, i use the expencive beer enhancer stuff £4.50, use 1 campden tablet, i generally follow instructions from this forum very well. the only thing it could possably be is the oxidisation, when bottling it does tend to splash when transfering to bottle through the pipe. i used to prime with sugar but now use soda stream! very efficient.

i will definetely use a dry kit next time, see if that is better, or dare i say it, jump deeper down the rabbit hole and try extract.

[Shn00dleS]

i always use a whole campden tablet, could that be a possable cause?? its like an aftertaste, maybe not a twang

[delboy]

i always use a whole campden tablet, could that be a possable cause?? its like an aftertaste, maybe not a twang

A full tablet whilst not necessary (half is fine) won't give you a twang.

The muntons beer kit enhancer is 50:50 spraymalt:sugar so you are still adding quite a bit of sugar. I would push the boat out and go with all spraymalt. It'll certainly improve the quality of your beers.
Also like DaaB said be careful when transferring the beer to the barrel (use a tube that reaches to the bottom of the barrel to minimse splashing etc).

After all that if you still have the homebrew twang (unfortunatley i suspect you will, though your beer will still be of a high quality) then im afraid thats as good as its going to get unless you make the transition to extract or all grain.

[Shn00dleS]

love it delboy. great answer, i shall prevail as i have 2 kits left to use, but i think extract is on the cards

[RichardG]

I understand that the freshness of the extract, espcially liquid extract, can have a bearing on 'twang' as well. A simple answer maybe to ensure that the kit/extract you buy is the newest, freshest possible. As has been mentioned above, this doesn't seem to be such an issue with dry extract.

[brysie]

you havnt said how long you leave it to condition.
i know im a bit hasty myself, but ive found that the kits ive done so far [apart from the wherry which was ace almost from the start]
have all improved given time.

[sam c]

i have had the same twang on both my first 2 kits. HB lager supreme dry kit brewed with 1.2kg white sugar-left for 6 weeks and a coopers ausie pale ale brewed with 1 kg beer enhancer-left for 3 and a half weeks so far. i thought at first this was maybe an infection of some sort but it just doesnt seem that way or taste really bad or vinigery at all, however the twang is not a nice taste.so it seems this is just a kit taste. planning on doing a kit with added hops and dme, wonder if this will cover the tang at all?

[Jim]

HIgh fermentation temperatures can also cause a twang, which some people might mistakenly attribute to extract twang.

From posts I've read, it seems the instructions on many kits give an upper limit for fermentation that horrifies me.

[brysie]

thats interesting jim

what sort of figure are we talking about here?

[Jim]

thats interesting jim

what sort of figure are we talking about here?

Depending on the yeast strain, anything over 25C is very likely to cause off flavours. I aim to keep my fermentations below 22C.

[brysie]

cheers jim.

my coopers stout is going berserk right now in my insulated cabinet which is 19 degrees.
the fv thermometer is showing 24 on its own.

how do i go about cooling it down then?