that home brew taste

[gorymorph]

i brewed beer from kits about 5 or 6 years ago and my dad has been brewing beer for as long as i can remember. I don't know what it is maybe the water or something but every time i drink mine or my dads home brew there is a distinctive taste that says homebrew. I bottled some stout about 3 weeks ago, it was a joint enterprise between myself and a friend, tonight i went to his home to get my share of the brew. While there we sampled a bottle of the stout that he had in the fridge, it was nice but it still had that familiar taste that says to me "homebrew". I was wondering if anyone has any ideas allthough i may be a little vaige as to the actual taste maybe its the water i dont know, it was untreated will treat next time and see what happenes. ANY IDEAS

[ade1865]

Daab suggested it may be old ish extract. Basically i mentioned how the Coopers IPA I made with the one can of extract and a Kg of spraymalt didn't have that homebrew taste and he said it was possible that it was cos the spraymalt doesn't age. I'll try and find the link.

I've heard it said that modern dme produces a much fresher tasting beer. Fresh LME is great but more than a few months old and that 'extract taste' will start to appear, dme doesn't suffer this problem.

there you go, straight from the brewers mouth.

http://jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6140

I'd be grateful if you could decribe the taste, cos I can't. Its sort of there at the back of the throat, perhaps a bit earthy?

[David Edge]

I know exactly what you mean. It seems to crop up more often than not in kit beers although I've tasted extract and kit brews from some of the Oxford brewers that are free of it.

There's a school of thought that it is due to liquid malt extract that's past it's best - not necessarily sell-by date.

[gorymorph]

the homebrew recipe for the stout was

1 Coopers Stout Kit
1KG Dark DME
1/2KG Light DME
1/2KG Muscavado Dark Unrefined Sugar
we boiled the DME and sugar for about 15 minutes then put all in fermenter dropped temp to about 70 added yeast and left it
this is the site for the recipe http://www.homebrewandbeer.com/ourhomebrews.html
look at stout and then "Enter the Dragon Stout"

[niall]

Reading a lot of US forums though it seems to be widely agreed that DME is less prone to producing a beer that suffers from 'that extract taste'.

Just speaking from personal experience I noticed that my beers that were made from DME were free of the 'extract tang' whereas some of the kit/LME brews had it. There is a suggestion that DME stores better as the water has been removed.

[ade1865]

Well I've got an all dry brewers choice best for my next kit, so hopefully i might be able to put to rest my lme days if it turns out grand. looking at ag anyway.

[lorand]

Brewers Choice Best kit made by who?

[CrownCap]

Brewers Choice

[nicktherockstar]

is it just a case of mixing in a powder instead of a liquid, i.e when you have to add "sugar" or spraymalt to a LME kit? because that sounds quite good to me!?!?

[Orkney_Rob]

Hmmm - I was wondering about giving one of the Hambleton Bard kits a go, think they are all dry.... That or one of the Brewers Choice ones that I have seen about the web!

The homebrew taste has always seemed to me a very yeasty and sweet beer - and it comes through in come commercial stuff like Berserker from the Hebredian Brewing Co or Delerium Tremens (though it was donkies ago I tried that!)

[delboy]

maybe its the water i dont know, it was untreated will treat next time and see what happenes. ANY IDEAS

My money is on the untreated water, i had the homebrew taste as well until i started treating the beer with campden tablets to take out the chlorine and chloroamine which gives you that very distinctive phenolic homebrew twang.

Maybe i just had real crappy water but i would say treating with campden made the the second single biggest difference to the quality of my homebrew.

The single biggest difference was going all grain, which completely eradicated any hint of homebrewness .

[sinkas]

I think alot of crappy homnbrewhas off flavours, form lack of diacetyl rest after ferment, adn from oxidation at bottling. Extract twang doesnt help either. Some people here claim that Cask conditioned ale in the UK has some Diacetyl, particularly if the barrel is a little old...

[Ned Buckton]

Delboy

Do you add the campden tablets to the water or the mixed kit?

I've done two werry kit's recently, both conditioned for 6 weeks plus and both as ropey as hell with ‘that taste’. However just done a recipe out of a CAMRA book using extract and it tastes better out of the secondary fermenter than the werry.

Still looking for a 27mm hole saw to fit the tap to my cool box mash tun and then will hopefully be free of the homebrew taste

Cheers

[David Edge]

Daab:

the cidery taste procuced by adding sugar

Perhaps worth mentioning that this is another of our American chums' little foibles - by 'cider' they mean apple juice.

There is no doubt (in my mind) that extract beers and kit beers can make a beer of such high quality that it would impossible for many people (including me) to differentiate them from a commercial brew

Oh we really are going to have to get you to Sutton!
http://www.cheerswinemakingandbrewing.c ... bfest.html
Hope I'm not offending anyone, but of the kit and extract entries there's seldom anything in the same league as the middling mashed beers - but then you're not claiming that kit or extract compares with top-quality full mash home brew, only commercial beers.

Commercial brew could refer to Trent Bitter or Tesco Value Bitter 2.0% in which case I'd agree; it could also refer to the beers in the seven GBG pubs I need to pass to get to the station and I'd be a little sceptical, but delighted to be proved wrong. Another point is that the faults in commercial beers are different to those in homebrew - commercial bottles suffer from skunking, staling and pasteurisation while cask ales suffer more from the evils of poor cellarmanship, low turnover and dirty lines.

I'd love to see more top quality extract beers and people coming out of the closet and telling us their secrets!

Anyone fancy writing for Brewer's Contact / CBA website? Or has it already been written in which case, where?[/quote]

[David Edge]

Sinkas:

Some people here claim that Cask conditioned ale in the UK has some Diacetyl, particularly if the barrel is a little old...

where would that be? ;-)

Yes it has diacetyl! Depends on the beer of course, but it is a trademark of the biggest brewery in Kimberley, Notts (Holland Brewery), for example. Cask ales have esters and astringency too and we like it that way! The trademark of Adnams is sulphur and Pedigree and Bass were similar before they were dumbed down.